Interviewer: You’ve also said that Congress is an Israeli occupied territory. Now, what do you mean by that?
Pat Buchanan: I said on the McLaughlin Group in response to a question, Jim, they asked, do you think that the Congress of the United States will resist this demand for further aid? I said, throughout a crack I’d heard. I said, no. The Congress of the United States is Israeli-occupied territory.
Interviewer: What did you mean by that?
Pat Buchanan: What I meant by that is the most powerful lobby in Washington, which Congress can’t stand up to, one of the most powerful, is certainly the pro-Israeli lobby. It has gotten its way in this town year in, year out. And I don’t think the automatic votes of the Congress of the United States for $3,400,000,000 worth of aid to Israel are necessarily in the national interest of the United States, and that comment, which is to ridicule the subservience of the Congress of the United States, is perfectly valid. I do not believe my government should subsidize Israeli socialism, which we have done, and I do not believe we should subsidize a policy on the West Bank of the Jordan River, which denies the Palestinian people rights which I support from Lithuania to Croatia.
Standing Against Powerful Lobbies
But I also believe that Pat Buchanan is entitled to stand up and speak out against any kind of political lobby, whether it’s the Greek lobby, aid for Greece, or whether it’s the pro-Israeli lobby, aid for Israel, without being called vile names.
Interviewer: And you think that’s what’s happened to you?
Pat Buchanan: Let me tell you something, Jim. When this little flap is 18 months old, well, it’s just, I made this crack. I know Buckley’s talking about an 18-month-old column. Let’s forget that. When this broke, I made that Wiseacre crack about the Amen Corner. It was Wiseacre and it was very funny.
Repercussions and Free Speech
You know what happened as a consequence of that? People called my newspapers that carried my column and said drop Buchanan. APAC listed 5 conservative columnists who accepted it. The Jewish, no, the pro-Israeli lobby. Right? Israeli lobby. I went out to speak in the country, and a little girl from the junior leagues said I get these horrible calls from New York about you.
People, there are individuals who are pro-Israeli, go around the country and speak in synagogues and say call CNN and get Pat Buchanan taken off the air. Those kinds of tactics, in my judgment, are un-American. They are done in the name of the First Amendment and they violate the spirit of the First Amendment. You know me. I’ve been in this town for 25, 30 years. I am controversial. I am sometimes insensitive. I am tough, and I am hard, but I think that this type of thing is beyond the pale.