Camelot’s Palestinian Problem

The descendants of Camelot surely have not lived up to their dynastic potential as America’s first political family. The halcyon days of John Kennedy’s glamorous presidency, and Robert Kennedy’s inspiring campaign for the White House five years after his older brother’s assassination, and a younger brother, Ted’s decades-long public service as a United States Senator, is the closest America has come—aside from perhaps John and John Quincy Adams, and George H.W. and George W. Bush—to political royalty.

Camelot came to an end when the many children and grandchildren of these men never could quite revive the Kennedy mystique as office-holders themselves. Few entered public life, and those that did plateaued in less lofty positions, none of which lasted very long. Far too many faced scandal, drug use, criminal charges, and premature death.

Ironically, the most interesting and accomplished of the clan might be the children of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian bodybuilding, movie-star former governor of California, who married Maria Shriver, a niece of the iconic Kennedy men and a former news anchor herself. Sometimes all you need is the drive and ambition of a European immigrant who entered America legally—and not southern border-crossing terrorists and Latin American gang members.

But now there is the matter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who just suspended his campaign for the presidency as an independent party candidate. Almost immediately thereafter, he endorsed Donald Trump, a Republican. The Kennedys are so widely identified as Democrats, some of RFK Jr.’s own siblings, not to mention some of his nephews and nieces, have publicly denounced him.

Camelot has, apparently, devolved into a large underachieving family that nowadays just bickers a lot.

How important is party loyalty to these Hyannis Port people anyway? You would think that the Kennedy men—scions who happen to be menaces to women— would recognize some commonalities with the former Republican president.

After all, there is an unconscious bond among men who graduated from tony prep-schools and the elite social clubs of the Ivy League. Raised in an atmosphere where the ordinary rules of gentlemanly behavior are largely ignored, these patricians often exist in an alternate reality marked by silver-spoon privileges, overlooked lawlessness, and winking sexual deviancy.

Is there any doubt that Trump would have put the moves on Marilyn Monroe, too?

Who knows whether RFK Jr.’s endorsement was more than just some cynical ploy to jumpstart a Cabinet Secretary appointment in the Trump administration. The two men probably have a lot to talk about. After all, their last names adorn New York City landmarks—like Trump Tower and the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. And they share the same secret handshakes and flirtations with the degenerate dark arts.

Many have speculated that RFK Jr.’s own dissolute life of school expulsions, drug use, marital difficulties, and philandering, along with his association with conspiracy theories, are the reasons why he never considered entering public life until now. Perhaps he sees Trump as a mentor who ran in the same social circles and paved the way for men just like him to receive absolution from a more forgiving electorate.

Or maybe RFK Jr.’s embrace of Trump runs much deeper, and is morally motivated—involving the Jewish State of Israel. After all, his namesake, New York’s former United States senator and presidential candidate, was assassinated in a Los Angeles hotel moments after being declared the winner of California’s Democratic primary in June 1968. RFK Jr. was then a mere 14-year-old. The assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, who remains in prison to this day, is a Palestinian who, one year after the Six-Day War, wanted to punish Kennedy for his support of Israel.

RFK Jr. was rendered fatherless by a Palestinian who hated Jews. The United States was deprived of a transformational figure in American politics because as a Democratic United States senator, Bobby Kennedy supported sending armaments to Israel.

Today, the Democratic Party, on several occasions, has held up those arms shipments, and threatened Israel that it must fight terrorism with “restraint” and “de-escalation.” Kamala Harris, like Joe Biden, is politically beholden, and emotionally sympathetic, to the progressive wing of the party—a wing that refuses to blame and punish Hamas for all that has happened in Gaza and southern Israel.

Bobby Kennedy Sr. was himself a progressive, but he absolutely would have rejected the critical race, anti-white, anti-free speech, pro-criminal, antisemitic “progressive” leaders of today.

Actually, today’s Democratic Party would be unrecognizable to JFK, RFK and MLK (Martin Luther King Jr.). They would be stunned that so-called progressivism has any affinity at all for terrorists who kill Jews in Israel, and campus radicals who make life miserable for Jews in America. Did the massacre on October 7, and the subsequent signage, chants, and bullying on campus, in any way resemble MLK’s passive nonviolent resistance?

Today’s Democratic Party would be unrecognizable to JFK, RFK and MLK (Martin Luther King Jr.) They would be stunned that so-called progressivism has any affinity at all for terrorists who kill Jews in Israel, and campus radicals who make life miserable for Jews in America.

These legendary leaders would be in utter disbelief that foreign policy for the Democratic Party is being dictated by the members of the Squad and the antisemitic voters of Dearborn, Michigan. Minnesota’s favorite son, Hubert Humphrey, would be equally appalled by the tolerance of crime in his state, and that a lightweight like Tim Walz actually believes he is qualified to assume the position that Humphrey himself once held, as vice president.

RFK Jr. obviously knows something that his dimwitted siblings can’t seem to comprehend: Kamala Harris is no Kennedy. This is a very different and diminished Democratic Party, and its descent is crystallized by the absurdity that Harris could possibly be its standard-bearer. Their uncle was a virtual god at the lectern at press conferences. Harris is a complete no-show. She can’t even survive a scripted twenty-minute interview without her equally unfit running mate by her side.

Party loyalty? How about fatherly loyalty? Respect your father and honor his memory.

Maybe, just maybe, RFK Jr. remembers something that most Americans have forgotten or never knew: his father was assassinated by a Palestinian solely for supporting Israel.

“I think if my dad were alive today, the real Robert Kennedy would have detested almost everything Donald Trump represents,” Kerry Kennedy, RFK Jr.’s younger sister, said. Maybe, but he would still be supporting Israel in ways that the Democratic Party no longer is. And it would still be obvious to him that Israel’s allyship is a moral and political imperative, while the Palestinians of Gaza, and the Islamists that support them, offer nothing but misery.

RFK Jr.’s younger brother, Max, speaking for the family, has made it known that he hated that Bobby has endorsed a Republican. “It is worse than disappointment. We are in mourning.”

So very typical of our cancellation culture. Need I remind them that their brother is still alive? Their father’s life, however, was cut tragically short by a terrorist.

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself,” and his forthcoming book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Is Israel Fighting a Just War in Gaza?”