Koch Warns Against Jackson Becoming U.N. Ambassador

Mayor Edward Koch of New York warned here Wednesday night against the possibility of the Rev. Jesse Jackson becoming the next American ambassador to the United Nations.

“Let’s say Jackson wants to be U.N. ambassador,” Koch said. “That’s a possibility. You can’t take him lightly, millions voted for him.”

Koch warned that naming Jackson as America’s chief representative to the United Nations might cause Israel a great deal of harm.

The mayor recalled what Jackson said in 1980, that “Zionism is a poisonous weed, choking Judaism,” and that the black presidential candidate has never repudiated this statement.

Koch said, however, that he thinks Jackson will do “a good job” as secretary of education in a Dukakis administration, if indeed Michael Dukakis, the Democratic front-runner, is elected president.

Koch was addressing the annual meeting of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York at the Grand Hyatt Hotel here.

The 63-year-old Koch, in response to a question, said he does not think Jackson is an anti-Semite.

“But his positions are certainly hostile to the State of Israel,” the mayor claimed, noting that Jackson opposes Zionism, “the nationhood movement of the Jews,” and supports the PLO and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

When a woman in the audience compared Jackson to Hitler, Koch said, “I think it is unfair to compare him to Hitler. It is unfair to refer to him as an anti-Semite.”

Koch said that what Jews have to worry about is that in seven states, the Democratic platforms called for the establishment of a Palestinian homeland, a move that was led by Jackson, the mayor said.

The national Democratic Party, however, eliminated that statement from its platform.