How A Supporter of Obama’s Israel Policy Smears Mayor Ed Koch
One thing you can say with certainty is that Ed Koch is no wimp, especially in his continuing critical assessment of Barack Obama’s policy towards Israel. But Koch’s concern about Obama’s foreign policy extends beyond the situation in the Middle East. Yesterday, he elaborated on his post of last week, which I blogged about here. Now, in a column posted yesterday on the Huffington Post and in various newspapers around the country, Koch writes as he says in the title of his column, that “I Have Never Been So Terrified.”
What, you may ask, is the former Mayor of New York City so scared about? Koch points to the apparent new alliance between Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in which Chavez is seeking cooperation with Russia on both nuclear energy and a Latin American base for launching of Russian satellites. What, Koch asks, “would we do if Venezuela invited Russia to build a missile launch pad, or Russia provided Venezuela with the plans and material for building nuclear weapons?”
The former Mayor asks this question just as President Obama announced his new nuclear policy, which would disarm our country as others continue to build up their own arsenals, and just as our President is about to meet in Russia with Putin. Koch concludes with the following:
Based on our continuing failure to confront North Korea and Iran with regard to their nuclear activities, I suspect we would do nothing. I fear that we have lost the battle and lost our nerve. It appears that the Obama administration has decided to live with the idea that these two rogue states – North Korea and Iran – can do as they please on the nuclear front.
Koch campaigned for Obama among Florida’s Jewish community, many of whom are former New Yorkers familiar with and supportive of the Mayor. It must be painful for him to admit he led them astray. Koch now thinks:
There is a foul whiff of Munich and appeasement in the air. A harbinger of what is to come is the Obama administration’s abysmal treatment of our close ally, Israel. Some see Obama’s willingness to throw Israel under the bus as an attempt to court better relations with the Sunni Arab countries. Obama apparently believes that better relations with the Sunni Arabs will mean less hostility to the U.S. and greater access to oil.
Of course, many of Obama’s supporters argue that if only the U.S. remained tough with Israel, then our enemies would view us in a different fashion, and would stop giving us trouble. To this, Koch responds that “hatred of the U.S. has little to do with what we do and a lot to do with what we are – a free, secular and democratic country that protects the rights of women and minorities. No amount of appeasement will change this undeniable fact. Someone also has to explain to me how distancing ourselves from Israel is going to prevent Muslims from killing Muslims by the tens of thousands in Iraq, Iran and Pakistan.”
What is most frightening though is how Obama’s supporters have responded to Ed Koch’s continuing outspokenness. Look no further than the recent column by Media Matters writer and former editor of the weekly Jewish newspaper The Forward, M.J. Rosenberg. Remember, that Ed Koch is important to the Obama administration for one reason— his influence among Florida’s Jewish population, whose votes they hope to retain for Democrats in the next Congressional elections seven months from now. You may not remember or even know Ed Koch, but these voters in Florida do.
Rather than deal with the substance of anything Koch actually said, Rosenberg launched a vicious ad hominem attack on him. According to Rosenberg, Koch’s “accusations are utterly obscene” because he “condemns the American Jewish community and members of Congress for not speaking out against President Obama’s stance on Israeli settlements.”
The truth is that Koch, Peretz, David A. Harris of the American Jewish Committee and many others have written cogently about why American Jews should in fact speak out against the Obama policy. Harris, for example, pointed out the following:
But the truth is that the democratically elected Netanyahu had never pledged to stop building in eastern Jerusalem in order to restart talks. Moreover, the units are in an area that has thousands of Jewish residents and is placed inside Israel on every peace map, not in a new Palestinian state. And since 1967, each Israeli prime minister – right, left, and center – has strengthened the Jewish presence in a city that has embodied the Jewish people’s physical and metaphysical center for more than 3,000 years.
Worse, Koch, Rosenberg argues, “drops the H [olocaust] bomb with reckless abandon, standard operating procedure when one is on the losing side of an argument about the Middle East.” How wrong to take the man seriously! After all he is only a “nominal Democrat,” who in reality “is first and foremost a necon.” Somehow, when Koch was campaigning for Obama during the campaign, I don’t recall Rosenberg or anyone else making that charge. I think that if Koch is a necon, it is news to not only the former Mayor, but to the editors of The Weekly Standard and Commentary, which somehow never knew this, and hence missed the opportunity of asking him to write for them.
Koch, Rosenberg continues, “gets his 20th century history wrong.” And as for the present, the reason American Jews have been silent is because “they agree with” Obama, not Koch. “They understand,” Rosenberg writes, “that President Obama’s strong stand against expanded settlements testifies to his concern for Israel (and the Palestinians.)”
On what, I wonder, does Rosenberg base this claim? Has he hired a pollster to survey all American Jews? Or does he use the existence of a group like J Street as proof that their very existence proves his case, because we all know that they represent the “true” interests of American Jewry?
As for the real threat to Israel, it is not anything like Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. No, it is “the occupation itself.” So if Israel does what its ever smaller left wing wants, and what J Street and Rosenberg want, its problems will simply disappear overnight. And then, Rosenberg quotes another authority, whom he calls a “very pro-Israel editor,” The New Yorker’s David Remnick. That is akin to Rosenberg quoting himself. For the article he cites is one I already discussed here.
For those who have read Remnick’s column, they will find it is only pro-Israel in the eyes of M.J. Rosenberg and the J Street crowd. As I pointed out earlier, “its editor-in-chief David Remnick attributes Obama’s unpopularity in Israel only to ‘right-leaning Israelis,’ ignoring all the polls that show our President’s unpopularity extends across the board and exists among all political tendencies in Israel.”
Finally, in the version I link to, Rosenberg removed my favorite sentence in the original version he had posted earlier, which reads: “And, of course, Koch is no foreign policy expert. His experience in global issues is limited to marching in the St. Patrick’s Day (and Pulaski Day, and Columbus day, etc) parades.”
Obviously, Rosenberg realized that the above sentence was too much, and is so ridiculous he had to take it out. The truth is that Ed Koch, who was a Congressman for years before he was Mayor, knows as much about foreign affairs as M.J. Rosenberg or any other citizen. I know this personally. In 1989, I accompanied Koch through Central America, in a mission he put together to investigate the Central American conflict that was then raging. Koch undertook the mission with the blessing of President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, and upon his return, spoke before The Council on Foreign Relations.
That Koch’s critics have to resort to the innuendo and slander of the type written by M.J. Rosenberg is good indication that Koch’s columns are having a big effect. More power to him.
“’I Have Never Been So Terrified.’ Me too.”
The irony is that Ed Koch wrote his article before Barack Obama’s announcement last night that the United States will not respond with nuclear arms even if it is attacked by weapons of mass destruction. He might even be more fearful today. Well, better late than never. It is unfortunate that Koch failed to listen to those like myself who warned about Obama’s radical inclinations during the election campaign.
The former mayor of New York remains far too trusting of Obama. I shook my head in disbelief when Koch commended him for “for opening offshore areas for oil exploration.” Does he not realize that this is a mere con job? Obama’s administration is talking out of both sides of its mouth. We will not be drilling for oil anytime in the near future. I don’t think that Koch is willing to concede that Obama is a postmodern narcissist. The man has a different “truth” to continue squeezing, bending and manipulating in whatever manner that might best serve his purpose. He cannot be trusted! The number one immediate goal is to marginalize him. America and the rest of the free world is safer if Obama’s poll numbers are under 40%—and the Republicans capture both houses of Congress in the November elections by landslide proportions. Koch might feel a bit uncomfortable with helping to hurt the Democrats. What can I say? Life sucks, and then you die. Please don’t kill the messenger.
For a look at the long term strategy Putin took towards Venezuela see my article Russia, Venezuela and the Palestinian Authority in Midstream December 2000. Unfortunately the Bush administration never took strong enough action against Chavez while it had the chance and now with Obama in charge Russia’s re-entry into our strategic rear is vastly simplified.
The nuclear issue needs to be explained clearly and in detail to the public and the Republicans need to put national security on the front burner. Not only has Putin deployed new nuclear ICBMs but so had Yeltsin in the 1990s. A new set of reductions when we have not fielded new weapons for nearly two decades puts us at a disadvantage which is why the Russians were eager to sign. and now Obama foreswears use of nuclear weapons in response to WMD attacks and says we won’t build new weapons. Nor is missile defense being upgraded just at the time that new technologies are proving themselves and when we are letting lesser powers such as North Korea and Iran have access to nukes and missiles. Finally remember to count the Communist Chinese with the Russians who have been allies since their 1992 arms treaty. China is building new nukes and they have to be counted on the Russian side of the ledger. Whatever anyone thinks will happen between those two powers in the wake of a defeated US, for now they work in tandem to weaken our country and make themselves hegemonic powers. A world led by those two powers is one too bleak to contemplate but contemplate it we must if we are to set things right.
In your previous column regarding Ed Koch’s seeing the light about Obama, I was perhaps a bit harsh in my comments about hizzoner. I thought he was, in the main, a great mayor for New York at a time when the city really needed one.
But this is reaction to him is truly beyond the pale and, sadly, illustrates all to well the complete disconnect with American Jews and the values that made this country great and gave them the opportunity to excel that had been denied them for centuries across the world. To wit: conservatism.
I now salute and give my full-throated support of Mayor Koch against these vicious attacks on him. He is 100% right.
“MJ” Rosenberg must stand for “mock Jew”, because there is nothing in this man’s background that suggests he is interested in the safety, security, well being or advancement of the Jewish people in general and Israel in particular.
Guys like Rosenberg are JINO’s, who have leftism as their religion and are culturally inured to the plight of Israeli’s and other Jewish people who have suffered at the hands of those who mean to destroy them.
He has lead a sheltered and cocooned existence, safe in his arrogance that he and his fellow travelers dismissive attitudes toward real dangers. The only danger he ever faces is if his Prius’ accelerator got stuck on his way to a Cooper Hall or Berkeley seminar on how to reduce the influence of AIPAC.
It is more important that he be accepted by the leftist “crowd” and that he holds all the “appropriate” positions, lest he suffer the fate of Joe Lieberman.
The fact that he serves as the attack dog against someone brave enough to stand up and be counted, such as Ed Koch, means that Rosenberg has lost not just his conscience, but his soul, as well.
You didn’t mention that Ed also calls for the US to withdraw it’s troops from Afghanistan.
What would the consequences be?
withdraw its troops (excuse me)
So now we know… that vile neocon Koch managed to hide his festering racism for so long, but of course it eventually had to come out.
Racist racist racist. Bet he has a stars and bars flag in his basement. Right in front of the shrine to Jefferson Davis.
Seriously, if Koch did not anticipate being read out of the movement he’s an idiot, which I don’t think he is. But now, like Joe Lieberman, he’s put himself beyond the pale and and entered that circle of Hell reserved for traitors. Sadly he’s not really going to find a political home with the Republicans, even they don’t impose so many litmus tests for membership.
“The former Mayor asks this question just as President Obama announced his new nuclear policy, which would disarm our country as others continue to build up their own arsenals.”
Yes, now we’ll only have enough nukes to destroy the world a dozen times over. And if you actually read the terms of that policy, Ron, you’d know what you’re saying is pure horseshit.