Is this some sick joke? Ed Koch Backs Obama Re-Election As Polls Show Jewish Support Declining

By Patrick Goodenough
September 28, 2011

President Obama shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during their meeting at the U.N. in New York on Wednesday, Sept., 21, 2011. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

(CNSNews.com) – Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch says President Obama’s recent actions, including his speech at the U.N. General Assembly last week, have satisfied him that the president is a firm supporter of Israel. As a result, the Jewish Democrat says he will now back Obama’s re-election bid.

Koch’s remarks Tuesday in an email to supporters came two weeks after he was credited for contributing to a Republican special election victory in a historically Democratic New York congressional district by endorsing GOP candidate Bob Turner. The veteran Democrat said he was doing so in a bid to “cause President Obama to change his hostile position on the State of Israel and to re-establish the special relationship presidents before him had supported.”

Now, Citing Obama’s words of support for Israel in his U.N. address, his recent intervention with Egypt’s military authorities over the overrunning of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, and reports that the administration supplied Israel with bunker buster bombs in 2009, Koch wrote that he was “now on board the Obama Reelection Express.”

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, a Jewish Democrat, is backing President Obama’s re-election amid polls showing that American Jews’ support for Obama has declined over his handling of relations with Israel and the economy. (AP Photo)

Koch’s change of heart came as a new poll commissioned by the non-partisan American Jewish Committee found that American Jews’ support for Obama has declined over his handling of relations with Israel and the economy.

“For the first time during Obama’s presidency, disapproval among Jewish voters exceeded approval of his performance,” AJC reported in its annual survey of U.S. Jewish opinion. “Jewish approval of Obama’s handling of his job as president declined to 45 percent, with another 48 percent disapproving.”

The AJC’s last poll, one year ago, found 51 percent approval and 44 percent disapproval for the president’s performance.