Open Teddy Kollek Thread

On some of the lesser and lower blogs, the memory of Teddy Kollek, who died this week, is being roundly denounced, using language you won't ever hear me use about another human being. I don't know enough about the man to launch a defense, and in truth, perhaps he doesn't deserve it. Perhaps he was the "most anti-Frum Mayor in Israeli History" as one fine blog put it. I don't know. But I would like to find out.

Your thoughts in the comments, please. The best ones will be added to the post.

An aside: I take a lot of heats for the comments on this blog. Recently, my friend MoChassid dedicated two whole posts to the subject. My reply, always, is that I don't moderate comments, and, therefore, I can't be responsible for the horrible things some of my readers occasionaly say.

But what about blogs that do moderate comments? Both Yeshiva World and Cross Currents moderate comments, and both blogs frequently publish the very worst sort of anti-Semitic comments, the drivel on Yeshiva World's current Teddy Kollek thread being a prime example. Shouldn't the owners of those blogs be taken to task? Unlike me, they take active responsibility for their comments. They refuse to publish comments they don't like. Doesn't the appearence of anti-Semtic remarks on their threads strongly suggest that the blog owner shares those sentiments? So where's the reprobation?

Around the horn
- Cosmic X is negative without being ugly. He has a fair and good summary of Kollek's warts.
- I see he was also a friend to Bringham Young University, the Mormon YU. (Hmm. Was Kollek responsible for putting the LDS Temple on Mount Olives, the one that made Mordechai Ben David so famously unhappy?
- Jim Davila says "Watch for imbeciles to claim that he was finally done in by their pulsa di-nura curse, which they put on him more than twenty-five years ago."
- Ted Gross calls him a "Giant among men"
- AKS says "It's official, Shimon Peres has outlived everyone... that was my first thought."
- And finally, Jill says "I will always remember thinking that he looked like a big rolly teddy bear."