Ta-Nehisi Coates On Israeli ‘Apartheid’

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a smiling simpleton, comically unaware of the foolish figure he cuts. He recently returned from a 10-day trip to Israel and the West Bank, and decided he knew so much about the truth of the Israel-Arab dispute that he simply had to write it up in book form. And voilà, The Message was written and published, and now Coates is on a whirlwind tour, flogging his book. He wants the world to know that Israel practices “apartheid,” though he provides not a shred of evidence for that. More on Ta-Nehisi Coates and his anti-Israel animus can be found here: “Ta-Nehisi Coates Compares Israeli Policies Toward Palestinians to American Jim Crow Laws at Campus Event,” by Corey Walker, Algemeiner, December 5, 2024:

In his latest salvo against the Jewish state, acclaimed [by whom? the same people who acclaim Amanda Gorman as a poet] American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates dismissed concerns about terrorism as an Israeli excuse to enact a so-called “apartheid” regime and compared the plight of Palestinians to black Americans living in the segregated South during the Jim Crow era.

Yes, those “concerns of terrorism” are according to Coates just an excuse. There is no reason to worry about being blown up in a bus or at a pizzeria with the kids, no worry about dozens of schoolchildren being killed as happened in Ma’alot, or the other dozens of eldery Israelis at a Passover seder. The Israelis have never not known terrorism; they have been the victims of Arab terrorists since the beginning of the state. More than a thousand Israelis were murdered by terrorists during the Second Intifada alone. But Ta-Nehisi Coates pooh-poohs all that terrorism.

Coates sat with anti-Israel scholar Noura Erakat at Rutgers University on Monday night to discuss his frustrations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the ongoing war in Gaza, and the “false notion” that Israel is a moral state. While describing his 10-day trip to Israel and the West Bank last year, Coates expressed disillusionment over the Jewish state’s policies in the Palestinian territories.

What Israeli policies is he talking about? In Gaza, before the war started in October 2023, not a single Israeli had been in the Strip since 2005. There could not have been any “apartheid” in Gaza. In Israel itself, despite Ta-Nehisi Coates’ claim, there has never been any apartheid. Arabs have the same political, civil, and social rights as Jews. Arabs serve in the Knesset, sit on the Supreme Court, go abroad as ambassadors for the Jewish state. Arabs and Jews work in the same offices and factories, play on the same sports teams and in the same orchestras, are healed by the same medical personnel in the same hospitals. Arab judges have taken part in the trials of an Israeli prime minister (Ehud Olmert) and an Israeli president (Moshe Katsav). The only difference in treatment is that Jews must, while Arabs may, serve in the military. Israel is not an “apartheid” state.

In the West Bank, which Israel has not annexed, the situation is more complicated. The Arabs here are not juridically the same as the Israeli Arabs. They are not citizens of Israel, and unlike Israeli Arabs, cannot claim the rights of such citizenship. We do not give the same rights to Canadians living in our country as we do to fellow Americans, but that different treatment would not be called “apartheid.” In the same way, the laws that apply to the Arabs in the West Bank cannot be called “apartheid.” They are treated differently not because they are Arabs, but because they are not Israelis.

Coates urged journalists to stop relying on “a list of facts” when discussing Israel and instead indulge their “sense of morality.” He argued that members of the media need to display “wisdom” by embracing the Palestinian cause instead of acknowledging the historical complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Facts, facts, who needs them? Not Ta-Nehisi Coates. Consider only your “sense of morality.” How could you not sympathize with the Palestinians, who want only to destroy Israel and replace it, from the river to the sea, with a 23rd Arab state? Forget about facts and “historical complexities,” things like the 3500-year history of Jews in the Land of Israel, and the Mandate for Palestine, and the four wars — in 1948, 1967, 1973, and today — that the Israelis have had to fight for the very survival of their tiny state. No, according to Coates, we mustn’t pay any attention to “a list of facts.” Think only of a Palestinian mother in Gaza cradling a wounded child, and forget about all else — Hamas’ practice of embedding itself among civilians, Hamas’ record of terrorism, the IDF’s massive effort to minimize civilian casualties by warning Gazans away from sites about to be targeted. And don’t think about the Israelis who were raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered on October 7, 2023. We’ve had quite enough of such “facts” that only create sympathy for Israel; our sympathy must be reserved for the Palestinians and the brave “resistance” to Israel that they demonstrated on that very day.

The writer also attempted to draw a parallel between the modern Jewish state and the legacy of racism in the United States, asserting that Israeli concerns about Palestinian terrorism “are no different” than anti-black arguments during the height of slavery. He argued that Israeli concerns about the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which launched the Gaza war with its invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7, are “just the language of apartheid” and accused the Jewish state of creating a fictional “narrative” to justify “holding half a population at a level below yourself.”

So Israeli fears of Palestinian terrorism, especially of the kind that erupted on October 7, are just like defenses of slavery in the antebellum south? How is that? I don’t quite know what to make of such an absurdity. Defenses of slavery were based on arguments about black inferiority. Worry about terrorism is not an “excuse” nor a “fictional narrative”; ask any Israeli about the terrorism they have endured for the entire life of their nation, most recently on October 7, 2023, and the need to fight back, as Israel is now doing with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Apartheid has nothing to do with Israel’s war of self-defense against Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. If anyone is making claims of superiority, it is not the Jews, but rather, the Palestinians, who, like all Muslims, are taught in the Qur’an that they are “the best of peoples” (3:110), while non-Muslims are “the most vile of created beings” (98:6). I doubt that Ta-Nehisi Coates has an inkling of this deep Muslim belief in their own superiority. He doesn’t like facts. He likes feelings. Especially his own feelings.