September 24, 2024 - 8:00pm
Ta-Nehisi Coates developed his reputation as a progressive darling through his wordy essays in The Atlantic, filled with his trademark saccharine prose that centred on race in America. These essays proved to be hugely influential on the discourse around Black Lives Matter and the 1619 Project, earning him a rather awkward anointment as the heir to James Baldwin by Toni Morrison. Over the past year, after a period in self-imposed exile writing comic books and a novel, he has found his new “obsession”: Palestine.
“I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” Coates divulged to New York magazine during a profile of him for his forthcoming book, The Message. In it, he relayed his experience of travelling to the occupied West Bank last year as the typical ignorant yet curious American writer, only to be horrified at the fact that the Palestinian Arabs under Israel’s dominion in the West Bank are treated as “unpeople” with no rights. Immediately, these scenes brought to his mind images of the Jim Crow South, with imposing IDF soldiers echoing the belligerent racist sheriffs of Georgia.
The origins of Coates’s advocacy for Palestine lie in his infamous essay “The Case for Reparations”, in which he used the reparations Germany awarded to Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust as a positive precedent for a potential reparations programme for black Americans. He recalled how he was challenged by an activist at a public discussion for using this example, because it erased the tragedy of the Palestinians whose dispossession and partial expulsion during the 1948 war necessarily facilitated the creation of Israel.
Coates is open that his newfound affinity with the Palestinians stems from a “warmth of solidarity of ‘conquered peoples’” that is connected “across the chasm of oceans and experience”. The irony is that before the Seventies, black American writers, activists & intellectuals such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Bayard Rustin and Paul Robeson would have said the same thing, but about the Zionist cause. Many black nationalists, from Edward Wilmot Blyden to Marcus Garvey, made analogies between the Zionist project to “return” the Jews to Zion and their own “back to Africa” schemes.
They, too, felt a deep and authentic affinity with the Zionist cause, out of a warm solidarity between conquered peoples. Ever since, Western Leftists and black radicals have had a guilty conscience for not initially “seeing” the Palestinian struggle. This is the guilt that is fuelling Coates, which also fuels the smug presumption that Israel’s iniquities in the occupied territories are “covered up” and he is the one who will enlighten the ignorant American public on the apartheid that their taxes are sponsoring.
While Coates repeatedly insists that the moral dimensions of the Israel-Palestine conflict are rather simple, contrary to the frequent invocation of its “complexity”, he isn’t vulgar enough to skirt over the Jewish tragedy that helps give Israel its moral legitimacy, as his visit to Yad Vashem demonstrates. His chief concern, nevertheless, is with how the Jews became the conqueror, or as he put it, how “the Jewish people had taken its place among The Strong”. In other words, through Israel, the Jews are no longer part of the fraternity of the subalterns but assimilated into white Western power.
Those who have long had some knowledge of this conflict know that progress isn’t waiting on a pronouncement from Coates. His plea for respect for Palestinian rights may be a revelation to the elite American liberal audiences — but to the rest of us, he is stomping on familiar ground.
Ralph Leonard is a British-Nigerian writer on international politics, religion, culture and humanism.
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SubscribeIf Israel is an ‘apartheid’ state, how come:
1. Israeli Arabs have the vote (unlike Black South Africans under Apartheid).
2. The captain of the Israeli national football team is black, and the side includes Arab players. Apartheid South Africa segregated sport on racial lines.
3. The majority of Israelis are descended from immigrants from other Middle Eastern countries whereas White South Africans were descended from European colonialists.
And how come nobody notices that Hizbollah’s rocket attack on a youth football match killed Arab (Druze) Israelis?
If the entirety of the land is Israeli (which it currently is as there’s no country called Palestine) then why can’t those in Gaza and the West Bank elect MP to the Knesset? Why can’t those who live there travel to other parts of Israel?
They could visit Israel ‘proper’ until the advent of terrorism. Palestinians from the West Bank visited the Med beaches. Jewish Israelis visited the markets of Ramallah.
Too busy firing rockets and building tunnels under hospitals and schools.
Whilst I feel the Palestinian people should get a better deal, I would have a lot more sympathy for them if they were not so responsible for their own misfortune. The problem is they don’t want a better deal, they want it all to themselves and they quite simply cannot have it.
Just maybe, 40 years after they stop indoctrinating their young children to kill Jews and become martyrs, all those wonderful opportunities might be open to them.
You might consider stopping believing relentless indoctrination. I realize it’s challenging for several reasons, not least because quality information/context is absent in mainstream media. But the subject is too serious to settle for it. Ultimately you are responsible for going along with indoctrination that leads you to accept such a cruel distortion.
There are so many good quality alternative resources available. As a good primer, you could try Miko Peled’s “The General’s Son: The Journey of an Israeli in Palestine.”
Miko is an extreme outlier, as one can find in any situation. The Pals are 99% responsible for their own situation. Why do none of their Arab brethren want them? They are essentially Jordanians, and yet…. Try learning truth, not some distorted shihte from Miko, who’s a self loathing Jew.
I’ll give you this: Miko Peled is definitely not a herd animal. He was one, though.
Among many other “extreme outliers” who were once right in the core of the herd, whose minds were freed by experience, are former heads of Shin Bet such as Yaakov Peri, Avraham Shalom, Carmi Gilon, and Maj. Gen. Ami Ayalon (also former Commander of the Navy).
Yaakov Peri:
Interview, Maj. Gen. Ami Ayalon:
If you were Palestinian living in the West Bank or Gaza, what would your view be of Israel?
How would you fight? How dirty?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53G_Pkz2wAo&t=1s
Appeal to numbers is all you have. You’re saying, “I”m a herd animal. There are many more of us in the herd than outside, so that makes us right.”
Political fashions change, and he’s following the current fashion. He just lacks the insight to see it. What sort of logic leads to the position that the stronger party is, by definition, always morally inferior to the weaker power? Has he bothered to think this through?
Exactly my thoughts. He is handicapped as many are by being an American commentator forced to view through travel the world outside the USA in a wider context than his insular familiarity. He definitely shows naivety and has not thought it through.
‘Naivety’?. You’re being kind, very kind indeed.
Strange how all these people claiming they are not antisamite, always complain and protest against Israel but not against other genocides and injustices.
What about Kurds in the same region?
Why should not they have a state?
Is situation of Palestinians in the West Bank worse that situation of people in North Korea?
What about Africa? There is not a single functioning country there.
Regarding reparation; it is total joke. African Americans are much better off than 99% of Africans.
People forget that in Russia serfdom was only abolished by Tsar in mid 1860s, so not that different from USA and much later than slavery in British Empire.
Ignorant people like Coates somehow occupy position of intellectual.
Total joke.
To judge if your criticism has merit, one needs to know specifically who “these people” are, not just accepting a vague generalization, and to see at least some evidence that they don’t also complain and protest about other genocides and injustices.
It’s a safe assumption they only advocate for “conquered peoples” when the conquerors, or the group they stereotype as conquerors, are “white.”
Many Muslim movements are utterly merciless towards other religious minorities, from Yazidis to Parsis to Coptic Christians. Not a word of sympathy for them – they’re nearly extinct – but their exterminators aren’t a group one may safety criticize.
So the race card is an easy one to play. African American groups like the Panthers or the Nation of Islam have a rich, vibrant, diverse history of seething anti-semitism, and every neo-Marxist needs his neo-bourgoise. Liberation can’t occur without a struggle, and a struggle requires an opponent. If they’re a successful group, so much the better!
Ta-Nihisi Coates, then (is “Ta-Nihisi” even a real name in a Yoruban or Swahili language?) the Jews are an easy target, just as the white working classes are easy to denigrate, for any Marx-Mao-Marcuse style “progressive.”
Sometimes I envy people who allow themselves vague generalizations and clichés and misreadings to support their opinions. To actually believe that one’s opinion obtains substance from them!
You complain that “they” hypocritically advocate only for “the group they stereotype,” while your own scornful commentary indulges in, and depends on stereotyping a group, in this case “progressives.”
But who, specifically, are “they,” who have “not a word of sympathy” for those groups?
Who, specifically, do you have in mind as a “Marx-Mao-Marcuse-style ‘progressive'”? Where have they denigrated white working classes? If they exist, what is the extent of their representation among progressives as a whole?
I have not heard or read progressives that I am acquainted with denigrating white working classes. Of course there are confused people and bad actors in every camp. I’m sure there are people who believe they are progressives yet denigrate white working classes for some reason. But it does no good to be so imprecise, to throw around vague inferences.
You claim that to “Ta-Nihisi Coates… the Jews are an easy target.” But nowhere in the article is it stated or even implied that he is talking about “the Jews.” It is clearly stated that he is talking about the actions of the state of Israel. This misreading makes Coates seem like an anti-Semite, though nothing in the article supports that conclusion.
The aside about the legitimacy of his name gives you away. Why so petty, so bitter? What happened? It will have nothing to do with progressives or Ta-Nihisi Coates.
Oh, please. Race obsessed progressives, many of whom despise Israel but venerate midwitted hucksters like Coates, see working people as troglodytes.
Everyone knows this. Progressive journalists and writers say as much in the NY Times, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, etc. Progressive politicians pass laws that harm the middle and working classes with higher food and energy prices. Progressive voters see themselves as morally and intellectually superior to those who didn’t get pricey liberal arts degrees (though few progressives are classically educated, most are profoundly ignorant).
Nuclear families, tightly knit communities in small towns, traditional morality, and religious belief – the things that the working classes cherish – are seen by progressives as retrograde, declasse, and useless.
They tell us these things all the time. You’d need to be deaf and blind not to notice.
Perhaps you have not heard of the Unicause. Your demand for specific citations appears to me to be disingenuous. Progressive groups turn in unison to the flavor of the week, whatever its lack of connection to what they say is their focus. And it is always dressed in claims of the highest degree of morality. Curiously, their highest morality rarely impels activity focused on like cases. In my opinion, the majority of organizations self-identified as Progressive are characterized more by arrogance than principle.
Still just vague generalizations from both of you. What supposedly progressive politicians, journalists, writers? The media named is liberal mainstream media, dominated by a liberal perspective.
What groups “turn in unison to the flavor of the week”, and so on? If you had specifics rather than pronouncements, surely you would have said by now. A reader could take your opinion seriously then, and understand how you came about it. If the examples are so plentiful and so easy, why hesitate to clarify what has influenced these blanket assertions?
“Toxic masculinity”
“Basket of Deplorables”
“Right wing extremists”
“We believe in science”
“Israel is committing genocide”
Are any of these things that progressives regularly say?
One of those things progressives say regularly is describing the Israeli attack on Gaza as genocide, but then orthodox rabbis say this regularly too, as do former Zionists. The reason for this range is because to fail or refuse to recognize genocide, for any reason, denies our own humanity.
Including Hilary Clinton’s infamous ugly comment as if it was uttered by a progressive is risible. It only showcases ignorance. If you can’t distinguish a neoliberal from a progressive your opinions just can’t be taken seriously.
Equally important as the ability to distinguish broad ideological orientations from each other is the ability to distinguish rigorous thinkers from sloppy ones within each persuasion. I think this is the most important quality to develop. I’ve learned much by attending to perceptive sources from diverse camps. There are always going to be lots of doltish takes, progressive or otherwise. Maybe the majority of them. Poor quality of thought is common, hardly limited to progressives. Lumping all progressives into a single deplorable basket is no better than lumping all conservatives into the same. People do this for reflexive, emotional reasons, not for thoughtful ones. It’s tribal. We have to overcome this.
The victimhood fraternity must be an exciting project. I wonder if he includes the murder and kidnapping gangs of Oct 7 in his group?
No. According to one review I read, the name “Hamas” is entirely absent from the four essays that make up his newest book “The Message.”
Ignoring what you don’t want to see kinda invalidates your message.
Another gaslighting grift job. Yawn.
He encapsulates everything about the pro Palestinians and anti Zionists, whether it be politicians, students, academia or writers; they’re all opportunists for their own individual reasons. When the time is right they’ll abandon the cause just as quickly as they took it up.
Coincidental that Kendi is, “oh, so over now,” that Coates re-appears again to take up his position as a prophet?
Anyway his views are wholly predictable without the need for reading them. Another American who thinks that there is no foreign conflict or culture so complex or different that analogizing it to the United States history cannot immediately provide him with the answers.
“I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” says Coates. Israel being one of the racially most diverse countries in the world, all that this declaration tells you is that Coates never really visited Israel, even as he visited Yad Vashem.
Wait…what? Ta-Nehisi Coates said something stupid? Imagine that.
Coates is just another race hustler
Just another race baiting grifter looking for ways to make money off the latest source of Liberal stooges “White guilt”.
Ugly character.
A nonsensical effort based on conflating disparate propositions. There may be a zionist ’cause’, which remains undefined, but seems to me to be the forcible removal of the habitual residents of Palestine in order to make room for Europe’s unwanted Jews. As observers on the side lines, what we need to decide is whether or not we agree with that cause.
There may have been a Jewish tragedy but I have no idea what that has to do with the Palestinians. Woke people going overboard in expressing sympathy for zionists is a sorry sight. They are not unlike those who wish to exonerate a murderer on the ground that he/she had a difficult childhood. Now, I am not without some sympathy for anyone in that position, but I draw the line at blaming the victims for the killer’s growing pains and requiring them to indemnify him.
Thanks for demonstrating that anti-zionism is the new “acceptable” face of age old anti-antisemitism.
There are many Jews who reject Zionism, including Orthodox rabbis. By your logic, they are all antisemitic. If enough people swallow this, it makes criticism of Zionism impossible. It’s the rhetoric of authoritarianism, intended to stifle dissent.
You are wrong. Let me explain. Jews have lived for 1900 years everywhere as minorities at the mercy of the non-Jewish majorities. Zionism is the restoration of political independence of the Jews in one location, in their ancestral land. If a Jew thinks, for religious or ideological reasons, that to remain powerless is the proper fate of Jews, one can debate the wisdom of such a position, but it is not antisemitism. However it is very different if a non-Jew thinks that Jews should forever and everywhere be at the mercy of the non-Jews. That some Jews agree to remain at your mercy does not mean that you can demand of all Jews to remain at your mercy. This is why a non-Jew who opposes Zionism is by definition an antisemite.
Half the world’s Jews, roughly, live in Israel, and half of them live in the US.
Those two nations are the only ones that haven’t tried to obliterate them, and the US, though certainly less dangerous than Europe, has a far from perfect record.
Israel is seen as a provocation to the world’s most fervent Muslims – the Levant (and parts of Arabia) are areas they’re completely unwilling to share, particularly with the first major group to resist their prophet.
Instead, perhaps, we should oppose a movement that’s warlike, merciless, and entirely intolerant of western values, Judeo-Christianity, and really any group who refuses to submit to Islam.
Our opposition to them may from time to time involve our fearsome militaries, which is often a sadly necessary requirement, when we’re in a conflict with militants.
The phrase “at your mercy” reveals the presumption that I am not Jewish. I wonder why you presume that. It is certainly convenient given that I am critical of Zionism and its creation, the apartheid state of Israel.
There are a couple of workarounds to the special rules Zionists impose to shield themselves from criticism. One is the blessing of anonymity. The key requisite of your censorship rationale is knowing someone’s status as Jew or Gentile. So, according to your own bullying logic, if you don’t know a critic’s status, the weaponization of anti-Semitism loses its power to intimidate.
Another workaround to this deterrent is to simply acknowledge that Zionists do not speak for all Jews, and given the fact that many Jews reject the conflation of Zionism with being Jewish or with the Jewish religion, a Gentile is thus under no obligation to accept the Zionist rationale as having universal application. It is therefore not anti-Semitic by definition to criticize Zionism. In fact, a better case can be made that Zionism is anti-Semitic itself, and is responsible for kindling anti-Semitism generally.
To supply a couple of examples of the latter criticism, I’ll play the part of a messenger by quoting a couple of articulate, orthodox New York rabbis. Source: Glenn Greenwald interview, “Orthodox Rabbis on Condemning Israel’s War,” June 18, 2024.
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Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss:
Rabbi Dovid Feldman:
Respect for Palestinian rights begins with Hamas dropping the rabid anti-jewish bits in its constitution. It would mean telling the mullah’s to go hang.
Ignorant or biased opinion parrots this without acknowledging that the charter platform of the Likud party explicitly states there can never be a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River:
This is an open demand for the destruction of Palestine. It’s a safe bet that rationalizations are cued up to say “But it’s different.”
The reference is always and only to the Hamas charter, which until 2006 called for the state of Israel’s destruction. It was created by a minority under conditions of siege in 1988. Hamas’s early ideology is a mirror image of Zionists, who believed that all territrory from the Nile to the Euphrates (Egypt to Iraq) belongs to Jews.
Israel has long wanted Hamas to dominate Palestinian politics, and has even helped organize it. Israelis have been open about the reason, so there’s no excuse not to know. It’s because Israeli leaders fear moderate, secular, nationalist Palestinians since they press for negotiations and diplomatic settlement. That can’t be tolerated.
The history of this approach is longstanding. You can read it in statements by Zionist leader and first President of Israel Chaim Weizmann. He made it plan that the problem is the Arab moderates, not the radicals.
Much later, one saw it in the example at the beginning of the intifada, when Israel sponsored Islamic fundamentalists to run interference, bussing them in to disrupt Palestinian strikes and protests. Or Israel’s protection of Sheikh Yaseen, extremist leader of the fundamentalists who was going around shouting “Kill the Jews.” Same in Lebanon, when Israel backed extremists to frustrate the moderates, greatly contributing to the growth of Hezbollah.
Similar results of this strategy arose in Afghanistan. Bin Laden was an early recruit, who established a funding network, which the CIA was instrumental in helping him develop. The tactic cannot be controlled.
Ami Ayalon, former commander of Israel’s Navy, and head of the Shin Bet:
I’ve no idea who this man is…is he of any consequence? Or just “famous for being famous”…to some at least…
And does he have “any skin” in the Israel/ Palestinian conflict…or just seeking PR by commenting on it?
None of the far-left advocates for Palestinians have a plan for peace and coexistence between Arabs & Jews i n the Holy Land. Many I see regularly advocating for Jews to leave the region with no reference to why many of those Israeli Jews moved from their previous places.
A left-wing writer obsessed with race. Why should any attention be paid to him?
What an odd name, Coates.
Plenty Coates come from or live in Paisley, Scotland.