Why then did various quarters in the country and around the world seek to downplay, to depoliticize the Arab-Israeli dimension of Sirhan's actions?

That's a very good question.

And in fact, in some ways, that's one of the main things I'm exploring in this book, is why Americans then and now did not fully understand the foreign policy dimensions of this crime.

And one answer, there are several, is that various parties, as you suggested, deliberately tried to downplay, or as I say, depoliticize the assassination.

First of all, the United States government, the administration of Lyndon Johnson, was very, very anxious that the public not blame the government of Jordan because while the Palestinian refugees are hand-carried Jordanian citizenship, the Johnson administration was fearful that there would be calls to cut off arms sales to Jordan.

The U.S. was in general trying to gently improve its image in the Arab world after the support the U.S. gave to Israel a year before in 1967.

So the Johnson administration was very keen to downplay the foreign policy aspects of the crime.

Professor Fischbach, why did most of the American public then and now miss the political and foreign policy dimensions and implications of the assassination, notably the violent blowback? Could you elaborate on that, please?

Before I ask the next question, I'm keen to know, when you were doing this research about Sirhan Sirhan's background, was it easy to find information, evidence about his background? I'm guessing it was not an easy task to go through all this archival information to build this particular individual's history and his family from Palestine.

Yes.

Well, actually, for many years, the investigative records of the Los Angeles Police Department, because the assassination took place in Los Angeles, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, that is the FBI's files, with certain redactions, certain things deleted, have been public.

They've been on microfilm.

They were uploaded online.

through a certain website.

And those are just thousands of pages of investigations, interviews, timelines that the police and the FBI came up with.

This

Can you tell us about this and also why in America so many people have decided to focus only on one aspect rather than focusing on these two aspects together?

Sure, that's a great question.

I usually describe it as a book that is examining Sirhan's Palestinian background or Palestinian identity and how that affected the assassination.

And I use those words specifically because as you just mentioned, he had a very conscious reason nationalist anger at Robert Kennedy, at the United States more broadly, because of his belief, as Robert Kennedy stated on the campaign trail, that he would supply advanced F-4 Phantom.

He was calling for the sale of F-4 Phantom fighter bomber jets to Israel.

And this just set Sirhan off for reasons we can talk about.

So that was a very conscious political narrative in his head.

I think the last one, as you mentioned in the book, was in 2024, right? When you as a historian step back from that individual story, what do you think Sirhan's case can tell us about the power, the enduring power, or the impact of Israel and Palestinian conflict on American political life and also collective memory, even today, which is, I guess, still very much front and center as well?

Before I ask the next question, I'm keen to know, when you were doing this research about Sirhan Sirhan's background, was it easy to find information, evidence about his background? I'm guessing it was not an easy task to go through all this archival information to build this particular individual's history and his family from Palestine.

Yes.

Well, actually, for many years, the investigative records of the Los Angeles Police Department, because the assassination took place in Los Angeles, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, that is the FBI's files, with certain redactions, certain things deleted, have been public.

They've been on microfilm.

They were uploaded online.

through a certain website.

And those are just thousands of pages of investigations, interviews.

But what was it about his public support for arming Israel that so much enraged Sirhan? Was it politically convenient to support Israel, or is that how Robert Kennedy truly felt about Israel and Palestine?