Ta-Nehisi Coates Spent Ten Days in Israel and Became an Expert

The well-pleased pleaser Ta-Nehisi Coates spent ten days in Israel and became an expert on the country. He is, you see, a quick study. Coates displayed his “expertise” in his book The Message, which has been harshly criticized by knowledgeable reviewers, including the tireless Elder of Ziyon. More on Coates’ discussion of Jerusalem’s Old City, and his baseless outrage about access to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, can be found here: “Ta-Nehisi Coates book betrays his utter ignorance of what he is writing about on the Temple Mount,” Elder of Ziyon, February 16, 2025:

Plenty of people have already reviewed and savaged Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book “The Message” section on Israel. I have not read the whole thing but I was looking at Benny Morris’ scathing review and saw him mention something that prompted me to check out its context.

Coates describes his visit to the Temple Mount. Actually, he doesn’t: he only describes waiting in line.

On my first full day in Jerusalem, I walked with a group of fellow writers, editors, and artists into the Old City of Jerusalem. …There were about a dozen of us total, pulled from all over the world—South Africa, Kashmir, the U.K., and America—at the invitation of the Palestine Festival of Literature. ….Our group of companions walked to the brink of the Lion’s Gate, where we met the custodian of one of Islam’s holiest sites: the Haram al-Sharif complex, which includes the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. This was the object of our visit, but it was made difficult by the phalanx of soldiers who examined our passports and then, for no discernible reason, made us wait.

The land of the Haram al-Sharif complex is holy to both Muslims and Jews…..The Old City is in East Jerusalem, and, for the moment, a Jordanian-funded Waqf exercises nominal control of Al-Aqsa. But the real control belongs to the occupying power, with predictable results: Israelis regularly tour Al-Aqsa, while Palestinians are barred from the Western Wall. 

Israelis do not “regularly tour Al-Aqsa.” They can visit the Mosque Compound, but are forbidden from entering the mosque itself. They take care to stay well away from the mosque when they circumambulate the Temple Mount itself. Muslims, on the other hand, are allowed to walk over every square inch of the Temple Mount. It is Jews who are subject to restrictions on the Mount. They may not pray, not even by silently moving their lips, nor carry prayerbooks or other religious material up to the Mount. If they do, Israeli guards will confiscate those prayer books, and if they have been praying, they are warned to stop. If they continue, they are promptly escorted off the Temple Mount.

Here is Ta-Nehisi Coates again:

We stood at the Lion’s Gate [sic] for the next forty-five minutes or so, talking amongst ourselves, unsure of what was happening or why we had been stopped. Was it that we had cameras? Was it that our guide was Jordanian? No justifications were given, no questions asked, no instructions offered. The soldiers just stood there with their enormous guns, blocking the way. I leaned against a nearby wall and watched as groups of tourists streamed in and out of the Gate, unmolested and unquestioned. But no one visibly Muslim passed through the Lion’s Gate in all the time we were made to wait. I could not quite put words to what I was seeing, but watching those soldiers stand there and steal our time, the sun glinting off their shades like Georgia sheriffs, I could feel the lens of my mind curving to refract the blur of new and strange events.

None of this makes any sense – until you realize that Coates is not describing Lion’s Gate but the Mughrabi (Moroccan) Gate. The Mughrabi Gate is the only gate to the Temple Mount that the Waqf allows non-Muslims to use for visiting the Temple Mount complex. (They hold the keys to all other gates.)…

Ta-Nehisi Coates saw Jews going through a gate that led to the Temple Mount. The only gate that Jews, or other non-Muslims, are allowed to use to access the Temple Mount is the Mughrabi Gate, and it is also the only gate that is off-limits to Muslims. There are a total of twelve gates to the Old City that are open only to Muslim visitors — six at present provide access to the Temple Mount. Coates, not realizing this, mistakenly thought he was standing by the Lions’ Gate. It’s clear he understood nothing about which gate was which, and how many were used by Muslims and how many used by Jews. All he saw was a gate — it is the only gate where this obtains — that Jews, but no Muslims, were using. Coates must have inwardly proclaimed, or perhaps shared his view with the other dozen visitors in his party, that this was a case of the Jews behaving toward the Palestinians just the way white southerners behaved toward blacks during the days of Jim Crow. But the gate he was standing closest to was the Mughrabi Gate, the only one to be used by non-Muslims. That’s why he saw no Muslims, but only Jews, using the gate and concluded that Muslims were being discriminated against. He didn’t realize all the other gates to the Old City are for the exclusive use of Muslims. Coates didn’t realize at the time of his visit, and didn’t bother to find out since, when he was writing his book, that it is the Jews who are mistreated, for they can use only one gate, while the Muslims have the exclusive use of eleven gates to access the Old City and the Temple Mount.

A Google Street View image, for example, of the entrance to the Temple Mount from the Cotton Merchants’ Gate shows no barriers, no turnstiles, no obvious metal detectors.

The guards at Mughrabi Gate are there to protect the tourists who have very limited hours that they can visit [Jews can visit the Temple Mount only three hours a day, five days a week]. They are there to block Jews and Christians from bringing in religious or political objects like prayerbooks or flags. They protect the Mount itself from fanatics like Denis Michael Rohan, the Christian who set part of the mosque on fire in 1969.

Those scary guards are there to make it difficult for non-Muslims, not Muslims….

In other words, the guards present at the entry to the Mughrabi Gate are doing the very opposite of what Ta-Nehisi Coates assumed they were there for. He assumed they were there to prevent Muslims, by force if necessary, from using what he assumed was the Lions’ Gate. It was in fact the Mughrabi Gate, the only one used by non-Muslims, and the police were there to prevent both Jews and Christians from bringing with them up to the Temple Mount prayerbooks, or flags, that would offend Muslim sensibilities, possibly leading to violence by Muslims. They were also there to make sure no Jewish or Christian madmen had access to the Temple Mount to create havoc, the way Denis Michael Rohan, an Australian Christian lunatic, did when he set fire to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969.