Chamblee54

Today is the two year anniversary. I learned about the tragedy from a @JDVance1 tweet: “Praying for our friends in Israel this morning. Just an awful situation.”
As the scope of the tragedy became apparent, I knew two things. One, Israel would exponentially over-retaliate, killing thousands of Palestinians for every Israeli that died. (In my wildest conspiratorial imagination, I would not have thought that Israel would kill hundreds of its own citizens.) Two, there was going to be a tsunami of toxic rhetoric. Israel has known how to play to American public opinion for a long time. This second aspect of this calamity is what today’s post will focus on. Specifically, “Dave Smith vs. Coleman Hughes Debate: Israel and U.S. Foreign Policy.”
Coleman Cruz Hughes supports Israel. Dave No-Middle-Name Smith supports the Palestinians. CCH has been critiqued at chamblee54 before. 010224 030324 In case you have any doubts, I should state upfront that I am on team Dave here. There will be no attempt at being fair. If you want to see pro CCH commentary, look to any x discussion of this event.
The concept of these discussions being a smackdown sport is “part of the problem.” Gotcha mongering takes the place of thoughtful discussion. People make points that appeal to their buddies, and do not address the concerns of those on the “other side.” The rhetoric from CCH displays many of the bad faith tactics that Hasbara is known for. This post will focus on two examples.
I did not listen to very much of the CCH-DS smackdown. My phone was acting up, and switching to other shows without warning. When I returned to CCH-DS, I would skip over large parts of the show. Finally, after the second incident, I grew weary of the entire affair.
The first incident took place early in the show. CCH was discussing the reasons for the 9/11 attack, specifically the fact that Arabs were offended at American troops in the Islamic holy land of Saudi Arabia. CCH mentioned that South Korea was not offended at the presence of US troops in their country … an apples to oranges comparison. This is a tactic of bad faith argument: to make any possible argument you can, never mind that it usually is not relevant to the discussion.
Somehow, this led to a discussion of terrorism. ”DS – There were Irish terrorists. There were Jewish terrorists. Uh, of course, as you know, in the leadup to the creation of the state of Israel. … CCH – Those were local ethnic disputes between the Irish and the British, between the Jewish and the Palestinians. What justifies going abroad, flying planes into buildings thousands of miles away … “
There was Zionist terrorism after the end of World War II, and the creation of the State of Israel. The British governed Palestine at the time. The Zionist terrorism was directed at the British authorities governing Palestine, as well as the Arab population. This was the same time as the Nakba, which was a “local ethnic dispute”. Maybe that is what CCH meant.
This is a bad faith tactic. Flood the playing field with dozens of details. Some of them are going to be either misleading, or outright lies. It is impossible to respond to all the details being raised.
The other incident concerned the role of “the Israel lobby” in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. CCH brought up a book by John J. Mearsheimer. CCH claims to have read the book, and was not persuaded. We have to take CCH’s word on having read the book.
CCH went into a monolog about how much money TIL had actually spent. “During the entire George W. Bush administration, the Israel lobby spent $17 million lobbying Congress. Now, that might sound like a lot to me or you. It is absolute chump change on the scale of uh domestic lobbying. To put it in perspective, the tobacco lobby spent $200 million, so more than 10 times that amount over the same time period. And they couldn’t even stop Congress from passing a federal tax hike on cigarettes in 2009. Now during the Obama era, the Israel lobby spent 30 million and they were outspent by the dentists. The dentist lobby spent 32 million. This is all according to OpenSecrets.org which is usually the standard source people go to for such figures.”
My gut sense is that this is a distraction. There may be other ways to measure the influence of TIL than the amount of money they spend on lobbying congress. Or maybe not. If you google “How much did the Israel lobby spend lobbying congress in 2003?”, you are directed to a chart from OpenSecrets. “$1,500,000 Total Spent on Pro-Israel, 2003” Is this the total, or there is more that we don’t know? I honestly don’t know, but don’t trust the way CCH is throwing this out.
When I heard CCH say that Dentists spent more on lobbyists than Israel, I decided I had heard enough. Technically, on some level CCH may be correct on some of his points. However, I just don’t trust him. I wonder how many minds are going to be changed by this discussion. The initial reaction on x was that CCH “won”. However, in the last day or so I am seeing more people who agree with DS. It will probably boil down to people agreeing with who they agreed with going into the debate.
There was a controversial discussion of the “clean break” strategy, which I missed entirely. DS has released an episode of his own show, Part Of The Problem, that deals with this. I have not listened to this episode of POTP.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in January 1941. “Steelworker at grievance committee meeting. Steelworkers organizing committee office. Aliquippa, Pennsylvania” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah