Ed Koch Is Mad

Ed 'Eddie' Koch questions President Lee C. Bollinger's judgment when extending an invitation to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Why provide the President of Iran — who supports terrorism and whose government provides bombs to Iraqi insurgents and terrorists who use them to kill American soldiers — with the prestigious platform at Columbia, a great Jewish American university?

Free Speech vs A Terrorist

Bollinger's change of style was, I believe, to blunt the enormous criticism that ensued following Columbia's invitation to Ahmadinejad to speak there. In his defense, Bollinger's supporters constantly invoke the concepts of free speech and the First Amendment. But in this case they simply don't apply.

Bollinger Is A Jew Himself

I am also distressed that the heart of Bollinger's objections related to Israel and Ahmadinejad's call for its destruction. Of course, that is important, especially to Jews and certainly to me, and to the world as well. But I would have preferred a question on Ahmadinejad's call for the destruction of the United States. Bollinger could have said, "with respect to the U.S., shortly after your election in October 2005, you called for a global jihad aimed at destroying the U.S., saying 'Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?' You went on to say, 'You should know that this slogan can certainly be achieved.

" Bollinger, a Jew himself, gave Ahmadinejad ammunition to be used among Islamic supporters that the battle at Columbia was primarily a battle between Islam and the Jews, and Ahmadinejad had bravely stood up to the mocking of the Jewish Bollinger.

Harry Rosen Suffered

"Ahmadinejad has also revived an old slogan of the Khomeinist movement that had fallen into disuse in the '90s: 'Death to America!' Every meeting he addresses in Iran starts and ends with this cry.

Bollinger should have asked Ahmaninejad about his role in the Iranian hostage taking of American, including Barry in 1981.

Bollinger Didn't Care About Columbia's Jewish Students

All in all, it was a fiasco for America and a blunder by Bollinger, as well as a coup for Ahmadinejad. His goal was not to respond to Bollinger, the Columbia students or Americans seeing him on television. His goal was to talk over their heads to the Islamic world and its terrorists and show how he bearded the Columbia lion in its own den.

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