| JUNE 1998 | PUBLISHED BY AMERICANS FOR A SAFE ISRAEL |
Herbert Zweibon
A recent headline in the New York Times announced that Iran is "smiling" over the Clinton administration's latest step to ease its sanctions against Teheran. In Libya, Moammar Qadaffi is surely smiling as well, and for the same reason. Clinton has just granted permission to three British companies to do business with Iran and Libya.
Iran continues to sponsor every anti-American and anti-Israel terrorist group under the sun--yet Clinton is easing up on the sanctions. Libya continues to shelter the terrorists who blew up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland--yet Clinton is ready to let the British do business with Tripoli. Neither Iran nor Libya has made the slightest concession on terrorism or any other issue of concern to the United States, yet they have been rewarded for their intransigence. No doubt other rewards are in the offing, as well.
It's all part of that classic strategy of international relations known as appeasement. Give out rewards to tyrants and terrorists, on the theory that if you're nice to them, they'll be nice to you. Of course it never works that way, yet the appeasers never learn from their mistakes--even when those mistakes cost millions of lives, as in the tragic attempt to appease Hitler in the 1930s.
Iran and Libya are not the only beneficiaries
of Clinton's soft-on-terror policy. Syria, too, is
enjoying plenty of coddling from the Clinton administration.
Syria's previously-unknown role in yet another major
international terrorist attack has just been revealed, but the
reaction of the U.S. has been silence. A senior
defector from the Irish Republican Army, Sean O'Callaghan,
has just written his autobiography. In it, he reveals for
the first time that Syria, which was closely linked to the
IRA through the PLO, Libya, and Soviet military
intelligence, paid the bill for the 1979 assassination of
Lord Mountbatten, the British statesman and uncle of
Prince Philip. Mountbatten, his young grandson, and two
others were murdered when their boat was blown up
by IRA terrorists, but it was the Syrians who paid the $3-
million fee for the hit, O'Callaghan disclosed. It was
just one of numerous anti-Western attacks sponsored
or assisted by the Syrians over the years. Yet the
Clinton administration refuses to acknowledge Syrian
mendacity. Indeed, the latest edition of Patterns of Global
Terrorism, the State Department report on international
terror attacks during the year 1997, places great
emphasis on the claim that Syria "supports the Mideast peace
process." It should come as no surprise to any
thinking person that Syria supports a process which is likely
to produce a PLO state and a surrender of the
Golan Heights to Syria--but from the State Department's
perspective, the most important thing is to stress
Syrian interest in "peace," so that Israelis will be less
reluctant to give up the Golan. Syria's murders of
Americans, such as the U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem, and
its sponsorship of viciously anti-American terrorist
groups, is downplayed or ignored by the Clinton State
Department. For Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross, and Aaron
Miller, the goal is not justice, or even peace--the goal is to
get Israel to surrender, and if that means apologizing
for Damascus, so be it.
The good news, however, is that Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) is now gathering signatures on a letter to Secretary of State Albright, protesting the easing of sanctions on Libya. This is an important first step, which will hopefully mark the beginning of a concerted Congressional effort to reverse the administration's dangerous policy of appeasement.
Herbert Zweibon is chairman of Americans For a Safe Israel.
IN THIS ISSUE:
Zionism's Greatest Achievement ...3
Newt Gingrich and Israel ...4
Clinton and the Arab-Americans ...7
Seeds for Suicide ..12
June 1998 - 1 - Outpost
