{"id":7729,"date":"2011-09-15T12:47:29","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T17:47:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=7729"},"modified":"2011-09-15T12:58:45","modified_gmt":"2011-09-15T17:58:45","slug":"ed-koch-and-ny-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2011\/09\/15\/ed-koch-and-ny-9\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Koch and NY-9"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was looking for some news story about Ed Koch’s reaction to the loss of the Democratic candidate in NY District 9 so that I could comment on what he said.\u00a0 I suppose the article Ed Koch and NY-9<\/strong><\/a> in The National Review<\/em> will have to stand in for the video clip of Koch’s remarks that I saw.\u00a0 I wouldn’t normally quote The National Review<\/em>, but if you want to show somebody saying something weird, this is as good a place as any to go.<\/p>\n

The article first refers back to a March 29, 2010 A Passover Message to Americans from Ed Koch<\/strong><\/a> posted on a blog by Ron Radosh.\u00a0 In part the message states:<\/p>\n

President Obama\u2019s abysmal attitude toward the State of Israel and his humiliating treatment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is shocking.\u00a0 In the Washington Post on March 24th, Jackson Diehl wrote, \u201cObama has added more poison to a U.S.-Israeli relationship that already was at its lowest point in two decades.\u00a0 Tuesday night the White House refused to allow non-official photographers record the president\u2019s meeting with Netanyahu; no statement was issued afterward.\u00a0 Netanyahu is being treated as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator, needed for strategic reasons but conspicuously held at arms length.\u00a0 That is something the rest of the world will be quick to notice and respond to.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“As if?”\u00a0 If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it is probably a duck.<\/p>\n

The National Review<\/em> article goes on to say:<\/p>\n

Koch also clearly believes that Obama has broken with the supportive stance toward Israel shown by every previous president. Koch ends by saying: \u201cSupporters of Israel who gave their votes to candidate Obama\u201378 percent of the Jewish community did\u2013believing he would provide the same support as John McCain, this is the time to speak out and tell the President of your disappointment in him.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, this Jew believed that Obama would give Israel better support than John McCain because, unlike McCain, we would have the guts to tell Israel the truth about their self-destructive behavior.\u00a0 In this regard the Obama administration has lived up to most of its promise.<\/p>\n

I know that many in the Jewish community tend to justify any action that Israel takes, just because it is Israel.\u00a0 I don’t agree.\u00a0 Friends don’t let friends be self-destructive without trying to at least say something. True friends don’t even give hints to the self-destructive friend that the behavior is good or acceptable.<\/p>\n

To think that Koch would vote against the best interests of the United State in order to support Israel reminds me of the the stereotypical claim about Jews.\u00a0 The claim is that we have greater allegiance to Israel than to the United States.\u00a0 Perhaps this is not what Koch is demonstrating in that Koch is truly way more conservative than the mainstream Democratic party even in regard to American domestic policy.<\/p>\n

It is too bad that Israel does not seem recognize the similarity between its relation to the Palestinians and the relation of an abusive parent to a child.\u00a0 No matter what provocation a child may have committed, there is no excuse for the parent to be abusive.\u00a0 Moreover, the abuse often just inures the child to abuse and torture.\u00a0 Rather than reform the child’s behavior, the abusive way the child is treated is taken as the lesson in how to interact with others.<\/p>\n

Certainly one might talk about, I won’t argue justify, the current Israeli position as a role reversal with how they were treated by the Palestinians in the beginning.\u00a0 Their current attitude could be thought of as the result of abusive treatment I described above.<\/p>\n

So, on both sides, a distant observer can see where the behavior might be coming from.\u00a0 That does not commit that observer to agree that the behavior is acceptable.\u00a0 Each observer needs to try to change the behavior of the side on which the observer has the best chance of exerting influence.\u00a0 So if this Jew excoriates the behavior of Israel, there is no need to come back at me with, “Yes, but look at what the other side did or does.”\u00a0 I\u00a0 have very little influence in the matter, but if I have any chance and even a modicum of credibility on changing one side’s behavior, it is on the actions of Israel where I must concentrate.<\/p>\n

If I can just convince one or two of Israel’s supporters in this country to consider the fact that Israel’s behavior is counterproductive or that Greenberg’s Law of Counterproductive Behavior<\/strong><\/a> needs to be applied, then perhaps I will have accomplished something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was looking for some news story about Ed Koch’s reaction to the loss of the Democratic candidate in NY District 9 so that I could comment on what he said.\u00a0 I suppose the article Ed Koch and NY-9 in The National Review will have to stand in for the video clip of Koch’s remarks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-greenbergs-law-of-counterproductive-behavior","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7729"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7735,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7729\/revisions\/7735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}