Ed Koch
You might remember Ed Koch as the mayor of New York or as the judge on People’s Court but now he seems to be a not so wise pundit on Fox News.
‘Hundreds of Millions’ of Muslims are Terrorists
Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York City, told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto on Thursday that “hundreds of millions” of Muslims are terrorists.
Taking up the now-standard conservative political talking point, in the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt, that political correctness prevents the US from identifying Muslim terrorists as such, Koch said:
We’re afraid of calling them Muslim, Islamist terrorists. We’ll call them anything but. Because we don’t want to alienate Muslim countries. That’s ridiculous. Of course the vast majority of Muslims — there are a billion, four hundred million — are not terrorists, but there are hundreds of millions who are. They want to kill every Christian, every Jew, every Hindu who won’t convert. And we ought to put it on the table.
Host Neil Cavuto did not attempt to correct or even question Koch’s claim.
Joshua Holland at AlertNet gives Koch “the benefit of the doubt” and assumes Koch meant to say “hundreds of thousands” of Muslim terrorists. Even so, Holland argues, that suggests Muslim terrorists aren’t doing their job very well.
“Given that there were a total of around 9,000 fatalities worldwide resulting from Islamic terrorism in 2008 (the most recent year for which data is available), those hundreds of thousands must have been pretty damn incompetent,” he quips.
Koch was a Democratic member of Congress in the 1960s and 1970s, and was the Democratic mayor of New York for much of the 1980s. But in recent years he has taken to endorsing Republican candidates, including endorsing George W. Bush for president in 2004, although he endorsed Barack Obama in the general election in 2008. In his interview with Cavuto, Koch said he would fire National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter over the Christmas Day bomb attempt.
The following video was broadcast on Fox News’ Your World with Neil Cavuto, January 7, 2010, and uploaded to YouTube by user therightscoop.
January 12th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Ed Koch ought to retire gracefully. I’m sure senility is affecting the way he counts. His most outrageous statement above is:
“They want to kill every Christian, every Jew, every Hindu who won’t convert. And we ought to put it on the table”
No Mr Koch. They do not want to kill them because of their religion, they target them because of the Iraq War, Afghan War, the continued Israeli occupation….THAT is the reason. It could be argued that the neocons want to kill all Muslims and judging by the numbers they have killed, that statement would hold more substance.
To Readers
Ed Koch blogs at The Jerusalem Post, an Israeli centre right daily, which has a number of blogs from influential Jewish thinkers. Ed Koch has a blog here called Koch’s Comments
Koch’s Comments
Koch’s Comments New York’s legendary Jewish former mayor Ed Koch scopes out the scene in the US.
http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/koch/
January 12th, 2010 at 11:03 pm
Although I appreciate Holland’s sentiment, the number he uses (8,000) is almost certainly spurious. Here is a chart that documents the number of deaths from terrorism (not just Islamic terrorism):
http://www.systemicpeace.org/INTd06s.jpg
So in 2006, only around 300-400 people died from ALL forms of terrorism, not just Islamic terrorism, which only makes up a fraction of that.
Not even in 2001 (the 9/11 attacks) did 8,000 die from Islamic terrorism.
So his numbers are way off.
Sincerely,
Danios.
January 12th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
“They want to kill every Christian, every Jew, every Hindu who won’t convert. And we ought to put it on the table.”
Has this retard forgot about the anti-Christian pogroms by Hindu fanatics in Orissa, where YES these fundo wackjobs have been forcibly reverting Christians to Hinduism?
January 14th, 2010 at 1:50 am
How can you doubt the word of a Holocaust survivor.
When challenged on this, Koch explained
“I survived the Holocaust in New York”
March 4th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
WHAT ????? WHAT WAS THIS GUY ON AND HOW OLD IS HE NOW ? 100 ? someone needs to tell him that islam doesn’t force a single soul to convert …’there is no compulsion in islam’ , it is not forced on anyone. #2 , the
REAL holocaust is in occupied palestine…….right now, but of course this bastard knows it but won’t admit it , despite being what he really is.