Sen. Fritz Hollings (D. S.C.) told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations today that the Reagan Administration had made “fundamental errors” which have “dissipated the advantage gained by the signing of an Egyptian Israeli peace treaty.”
In the first of a series of Presidents Conference forums with Presidential candidates, Hollings charged that United States policy in “refusing” to activate the United States-Israel agreement on strategic cooperation, its resistance to establishing necessary liaison between United States and Israeli forces in Lebanon, and withholding delivery of long-promised F-16 fighter planes had sent “the wrong signals” to the Arab world and the Soviet Union.
“I have warned for many years against the danger of giving even the merest impression of wavering in our commitment to Israel’s security, and have said repeatedly that if Israel were allowed to appear weak in the eyes of the world, grave consequences would ensue, ” Hollings said.
The Senator, in answer to a question following his talk, said he had supported for the past five years the moving of the United States Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem . “Our country should treat Israel not as a client state but as a sovereign nation,” Hollings declared.
DISTURBED BY SOVIET ANTI-ZIONIST COMMITTEE
He said he was “disturbed” by the formation of an “Anti-Zionist Committee” in the Soviet Union and said he had written repeatedly to Soviet leaders — including the late President Leonid Brezhnev, his successor Yuri Andropov and Constantin Zotov, whom he described as director of immigration in Moscow — supporting Jewish refuseniks and Prisoners of Conscience and protesting their “harassment and punishment” by the Kremlin.
In response to a question on public funds for parochial schools, Hollings said it was “bad public policy” for government to do anything but leave the private schools alone and give public funds for public schools. Anything else, he said, was “excessive entanglement” and harmful both to the cause of religion and to the cause of public education.
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