Today is the tenth anniversary of the death of Ed Koch, who served as mayor of New York City from 1978 until 1989. Best known for his role in bringing the city out of its crime-ridden and near-bankrupt nadir of the 1970s, Koch was rarely soft-spoken about anything, and certainly not about being Jewish. Tevi Troy surveys the career of this “happy warrior.”

When Koch died in February 2013, he asked that the words of the murdered journalist Daniel Pearl be put on his tombstone: “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.” This might have surprised many people who thought of him both as an entirely ethnic and an entirely unreligious figure, but Koch’s Jewishness was a key factor in determining many of his primary targets—people who did things or said things that were either offensive to Jews or damaging to Israel or both.

This became clear during the 1977 Democratic primary for the mayoralty, which pitted Koch against Bella Abzug, a Communist with “outrageous hats and more outrageous positions,” as Troy puts it.

She and Koch had served together in the House of Representatives, and she was one of Koch’s first notable enemies. Both were Jewish, but Koch expressed his Jewishness in the form of staunch support for Israel, whereas Abzug saw progressivism (she had led several Stalinist front groups) as the manifestation of her Jewishness. In 1976, Abzug signed a congressional letter opposing the sale of U.S. jets to Israel. Koch pounced, putting both his supportive letter as well as Abzug’s opposing one in the Congressional Record. He also bragged in his autobiography that he had his congressional office mail both to “every Jewish group I knew.” In doing so, Koch was hurting a political rival and a critic of Israel, a double bonus for him.

Almost as bitter was his feud with Jimmy Carter, in which Koch’s Jewishness again played a role. Even though Koch was largely aligned with Carter on domestic policy, they strongly disagreed on Israel, and Koch was not shy about pointing out their differences. Carter was particularly irked when Koch referred to five senior Carter-administration officials . . . as an anti-Israel “gang of five.” . . . At a fundraiser in 1980, Carter grabbed Koch and said to him, “You have done me more damage than any man in America.”

Troy observes that in the feud with Carter, much like a later one with Jesse Jackson, Koch demonstrated his ability to identify the failings of other public figures well before they were apparent to most.

Established in 2012 and maintaining branches in Europe, North America, and Iran, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Network claims its goal is merely to show “solidarity” for imprisoned Palestinians. The organization’s leader, however, has admitted to being a representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a notorious terrorist group whose most recent accomplishments include murdering a seventeen-year-old girl. As Arsen Ostrovsky and Patricia Teitelbaum point out, Samidoun is just one example of how the European Union allows Iran-backed terrorists to operate in its midst:

The PFLP is a proxy of the Iranian regime, which provides the terror group with money, training, and weapons. Samidoun . . . has a branch in Tehran. It has even held events there, under the pretext of “cultural activity,” to elicit support for operations in Europe. Its leader, Khaled Barakat, is a regular on Iran’s state [channel] PressTV, calling for violence and lauding Iran’s involvement in the region. It is utterly incomprehensible, therefore, that the EU has not yet designated Samidoun a terror group.

According to the Council of the European Union, groups and/or individuals can be added to the EU terror list on the basis of “proposals submitted by member states based on a decision by a competent authority of a member state or a third country.” In this regard, there is already a standing designation by Israel of Samidoun as a terror group and a decision of a German court finding Barakat to be a senior PFLP operative.

Given the irrefutable axis-of-terror between Samidoun, PFLP, and the Iranian regime, the EU has a duty to put Samidoun and senior Samidoun leaders on the EU terror list. It should do this not as some favor to Israel, but because otherwise it continues to turn a blind eye to a group that presents a clear and present security threat to the European Union and EU citizens.