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Ed Koch assures Jews, Obama will maintain ‘commitment to Jewish state’ in second term

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In endorsing Obama for a second term, Ed Koch offers himself as the mayor of American Jews:

I’m proud to stand with Obama because he’s listened to the Jewish community and proven himself a true friend of Israel….

Koch says he was proud to hear Obama talk in the last debate about his unbreakable bond with Israel; and the former mayor quotes the president’s Gaza-rains-rockets-on-Sderot line from that debate. So Obama throwing the Palestinians under the bus in that debate was a quid pro quo?

You can forget about the two state solution. Koch tells us that:

“I’m confident President Obama will continue in his unambiguous commitment to the Jewish state in the second term, building on his record of leadership by preventing Iran….”

That commitment includes relieving pressure on Israel to end its colonization project.

Then there’s this frank appeal to dual loyalty.

I’d hope my opinion would be enough for you. But I’m joined in my confidence by guys you might know, like Defense Minister Ehud Barak…

Colin Powell– who cares! Look what the top title is on the stack of books on Koch’s left: an Ariel Sharon biography.

Sharon book
Sharon book, at right

And Obama’s domestic policy? That comes at 3 minutes in. Thanks to Scott Roth.

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So Mr Koch is asking American Jewry to back Israel come hell or high water.

Interesting proposition, I think too many American Jews have a very well developed social conscience which would cause them to question blindly supporting Israel once they become more aware of the “facts on the ground”.

We see this happening daily as others take the blinders off and look with clear eyes at what Israel has become, or maybe always was.

I hope that the very term “facts on the ground” could be used to open the eyes of American Jewry.

Friends don’t let friends drive drunk!

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A true friend of spain would never have supported fascism. A true friend of israel would never support YESHA. Jewish history is littered with examples of stupidity dressed up as wisdom. Just read the torah.

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Speaking of “facts on the ground” and “hell or high water,” a week after the final debate in which Global Warning was not mentioned once and Israel mentioned over 30 times, the former mayor of New York endorses Obama in language that suggests that his former constituents are more concerned about perpetuating Israel’s status quo than about Mother Nature occupying Wall Street.

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I don’t think the Democrats or the Obama camp are still listening to Ed Koch. After all he’s been endorsing GOP candidates, representing the Likud PM, and negotiating with Adelson and Romney over a possible endorsement in Florida:

From Ed Koch Got a Special Visit From Sheldon Adelson
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/10/ed-koch-got-a-visit-from-sheldon-adelson.html

Ed Koch’s relationship with the Obama campaign has been pretty loveless over the past few months. However, the former New York City mayor continues to tepidly support the president, despite their differences of opinion when it comes to Israel (among other things.) So, you can’t blame Israel’s richest cheerleader, billionaire Mitt Romney-backer Sheldon Adelson, for at least trying to get Koch on his team. During his traditional Saturday lunch circle, Koch recalled a recent visit Adelson made to his office. . . .

From Ed Koch furious at Obama over Israel — so why is he still supporting him?
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/09/24/ed-koch-furious-at-obama-over-israel-so-why-is-still-supporting-him/#ixzz2B0PC4bbK

Think of it as Ed Koch 3.0. It means Barack Obama can expect a New York headache any day now.

The Democrat and former mayor led the charge to elect a GOP congressman last year to protest Obama’s policy toward Israel, only later to make peace with the president and endorse him. Now he’s back on the warpath.

“I’m pissed,” he told me. “I’m not off the bus yet, but I’m pissed and I’m going to harangue them.”

The anger has a familiar, even circular ring: Obama’s making America look like a paper tiger in the face of Islamic violence, and his policy toward Israel is wrong. Obama’s refusal to meet last week with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “unacceptable.”

“There should be a certain courtesy involved,” Koch said. “You don’t just say we can’t fit him into our schedule.”

From Ed Koch ‘Doesn’t Trust’ Obama on Israel
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/koch-supports-obama-doesnt-trust-him-on-israel.html

“I don’t believe in trusting politicians,” the former New York mayor Koch said in a radio show with Aaron Klein, a Jerusalem-based right-wing author whose two new titles accuse Obama of being a secret Socialist. Still, Koch is campaigning for the president out of pragmatism: “I believe that he is going to win whether I vote for him or not. I believe that he is going to win. So wouldn’t it be better that he wins changing his positions?” he explained. The position Koch most wants to change? Obama’s wait-and-see strategy with Israel and Iran. “We should say that an attack upon Israel is an attack upon the United States and that we will militarily respond,” he said.

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RE: “In endorsing Obama for a second term, Ed Koch offers himself as the mayor of American Jews” ~ Weiss

MY COMMENT: Yippee! Obama gets the endorsement of a Likudnik Republican.

• “Why McCain Should Have Stood by Hagee”, By Ed Koch, Politico, 6/03/08

[EXCERPTS] Senator John McCain was wrong to reject the endorsement of Texas evangelist Rev. John Hagee.
Several years ago Rev. Hagee delivered a sermon that was caught on tape in which he preached, “Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun, and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, ‘My top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.” Anyone hearing the tape would conclude that Hagee is hostile to the Jews, but nothing could be further from the truth. He and his congregants are among Israel’s strongest supporters. For religious reasons, they want Israel to rule supreme over all of the lands that made up the ancient Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judea.
Evangelicals believe that the Messiah – Jesus Christ – cannot return to the earth until the Jews return to the land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael), they having been expelled by the Romans in 70 AD after the Second Temple — the one built by Herod — was destroyed.
Christian fundamentalists believe that every word of the Old and New Testaments represents the will of God. . .
. . . Rev. Hagee, being a fundamentalist, believes that each word is the word of God, and that everything that occurs on Earth happens as a result of God’s direction. Events caused by people like Hitler, for some fundamentalists, are explained as a punishment visited by God on Jews who had fallen away from the faith and did not follow all of God’s mandates. . .
. . . Rev. Hagee apparently believes that Hitler was used by God to bring the Jews back to the promised land. . .
. . . Hagee was not praising Hitler the monster, he was simply offering the fundamentalist opinion that Hitler was used by God to cause the creation of a Jewish state to which the Jews of the world would return.
Hagee’s followers have supported the State of Israel in many tangible ways. Evangelicals continue to visit Israel as tourists even during the most dangerous times, which is more than can be said for some Diaspora Jews.
It has become fashionable among liberals, including Jews, to ridicule and denounce Hagee and other fundamentalists. I do not. I appreciate their support of the State of Israel and thank them for their enormous contributions to the Jewish state. . .

ENTIRE COMMENTARY – http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/why_mccain_should_have_stood_b.html

• ED KOCH SUPPORTS REPUBLICAN “SOCIAL CONSERVATIVE”: “Republican Bob Turner wins New York special election”, By Agence France-Presse, 9/14/11

[EXCERPTS] . . . Samuel Abrams, professor of political science at Sarah Lawrence College outside New York City, said special elections like this often take on wider meaning as frustrated voters try to show off their power . . .
. . . But there were also significant local issues, especially the heavy concentration in the district of Orthodox Jews, who are socially very conservative and also fervently pro-Israeli.
Weprin [a Democrat], as a state assemblyman, voted for same sex marriage in New York and also has backed the constitutional right of Muslims to build an Islamic center near the site of the 9/11 attacks in downtown Manhattan. Turner, in contrast, portrayed himself as a social conservative and his campaign ads resurrected last year’s bitter public debate over the so-called “Ground Zero mosque.”
Turner [the Republican “social conservative”] won the support of a former New York mayor and lifelong Jewish Democrat, Ed Koch . . .

SOURCE – http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/14/republican-bob-turner-wins-new-york-special-election/

• ED KOCH SUPPORTS REPUBLICAN “SOCIAL CONSERVATIVE”[from Adam Dickter, The Jewish Week, 9/14/11]:

[EXCERPT] Interviews at the polls reflected the impact of two salient factors: Koch’s public call early in the campaign to elect a Republican in the district — for the first time in nearly a century — as a way to protest Obama’s priorities in the Mideast peace process and Orthodox anger about Weprin’s support for gay marriage.
The latter issue led some Flatbush Orthodox rabbis, in an unusually strident letter last week, to issue a prohibition not only against voting for Weprin but against donating time or money to his campaign. . .

SOURCE – http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new_york/turner_rides_voter_angst_victory

P.S. I have already voted for Stein/Honkala (Green Party) by absentee ballot. Here in Georgia I had to do so by write-in, but they will be on the ballot in most other states. Here is their map of ballot access in the various states. – http://www.jillstein.org/ballot
Notwithstanding Ed Koch’s endorsement of Obama, had I resided in one of the 2012 Swing States (the electoral votes of which might realistically go to either Obama or Romney), I might have voted for Obama.

P.P.S. “FREE DON” SIEGELMAN PETITION – http://www.change.org/petitions/president-obama-please-restore-justice-and-pardon-my-dad

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