To say that Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new book, The Message, and his subsequent interviews are ruffling feathers would be an understatement. This may be because many Americans have been conditioned to see the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians as too complex to navigate. Like a crew without a captain, lost at sea, they imagine we don’t have the intellectual capacity or experience to find our way to land. However, Coates offers a perspective of moral clarity in a storm of trepidation. In sharing his experiences traveling to Israel and the West Bank, his book has become a lighthouse.
On seeing cisterns holding rainwater on Palestinian roofs, a symbol of their restricted access to what should be a shared resource, Ta-Nehisi Coates noted, “Israel had advanced beyond Jim Crow South and segregated not just the pools and fountains but the water itself.” Of course, in America, Black people have less access to clean water and air than White people. This is a symptom of institutional racism. But his comparison provided lucid insight into the deplorable conditions Palestinians endure. A consequence few have considered. Coates notes that Israelis consumed “nearly four times” the water as “Palestinians living under occupation.”
While Jim Crow era restrictions meant Black people could drink from some water fountains but not others, Palestinians living under Israeli occupation are deprived of sufficient access to water. Even collecting rainwater requires a permit that settlers can reject. His eyewitness testimony provides the perspective that the separation between Israelis and Palestinians in the region is not merely a separate society but a segregated one—a key distinction for Black Americans.
“For as sure as my ancestors were born into a country where none of them was the equal of any white man, Israel was revealing itself to be a country where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person anywhere,” Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote as he reflected upon his experience at a checkpoint, where a soldier blocked their group, and questioned his religious affiliation before allowing him to continue along his path. When confronted with his non-religious upbringing, they asked which religion his grandparents practiced. If they identified as Muslim, he’d be barred from entering.
In the name of security, the rights of Palestinians are regularly sacrificed. Or, as Coates put it, they are treated as sub-citizens with “a reduced set of rights and privileges.” No matter what opinion you hold about the conflict, we should be able to concede, as humans, that this mistreatment is wrong. Looking back, many are willing to acknowledge that a two-tiered society, such as America’s Jim Crow and South Africa’s Apartheid, was unjust. So, why should the identity of the group make a difference in our willingness to condemn this type of system? Of course, his text is not only a critique of Zionists who, after suffering the Holocaust, envisioned a state that could give them the power to protect themselves from persecution. But more so the consequences of creating any ethnostate or any new colony, no matter the initial justification for doing so.
One example that Ta-Nehisi Coates presents is that some Black Americans became colonizers when they fled the country to found Liberia in West Africa. “Much as Jewish Zionists saw themselves bringing the boom of ‘civilization’ to Palestine, Black American colonizers of Africa believed they would do the same. Thus, Lyberia was born — and plagued, for much of its history, by its colonial past.” Of course, like many Black Americans, he is a descendant of those who stayed rather than participate in a colonization project. Perhaps that makes a Black man like Ta-Nehisi Coates the right person to deliver this message: “I want to tell you that your oppression will not save you, that being a victim will not enlighten you, that it can just as easily deceive you.” Here, Coates shared what he learned visiting Haifa, Ramallah, and Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust Museum, considering the pain and anguish experienced by those Jewish victims and their families. And the bitter irony of the Israeli occupation.
In The Message, Coates noted that while Zionists have long rejected the “charge of Israeli apartheid as antithetical to the very nature of a Jewish state infused with the traumas of its people,” this “rhetoric cannot stand against the record.” For instance, in 1948, Israeli military forces forcibly removed seven hundred thousand Palestinians to expand their territory during the war, a tragedy called the Nakba, an Arabic word that means “catastrophic.” Constant efforts to remove Palestinians and replace them with Israeli settlers in the modern era is a slow-moving ethnic cleansing effort, according to Coates and many human rights activists. He described briefly a massacre of Palestinians enacted by Israeli Defense Forces in Lydd, a story that “ran counter to Israel’s noble creation myth.”
More than a book about Coates’ opinions on the conflict and the need to hear from Palestinians directly, his memoir challenges writers, editors, and journalists tasked with reporting this crisis. “Editors and writers like to think they are not part of such systems, as they are independent and objective and arrive at their conclusions solely,” through “their reporting and research. But the Palestine I saw bore so little likeness to the stories I read, and so much resemblance to the systems I’ve known, that I am left believing that at least here, this objectivity is self-delusion.” In attempting to present both sides, many American journalists have elevated “factual complexity over self-evident morality.”
This is not a message that everyone is willing to accept. For so long, Palestinians have been silenced in American media organizations. And the overrepresentation of Israeli perspectives has done a disservice to those trying to understand the conflict from afar. Pro-Palestinian protestors on college campuses were regularly characterized as disruptors, primarily because of the political climate, where the current administration approves of sending military aid to Israel regardless of the high rate of Palestinian casualties. And former president Donald Trump supports sending even more military aid to Israel if he’s elected and sworn in next January. Thus, discussing the persecution of Palestinians is seen as controversial, even within liberal political circles. As Meredith Shiner suggested in The New Republic, “to recognize Palestinians are human has become a flashpoint, a red line to not be crossed in Washington discourse, an invitation to be tagged as an antisemite.”
Former president Barack Obama wrote in an article entitled, Thoughts on Israel and Gaza last October that “thousands of Palestinians have been killed in the bombing of Gaza, many of them children.” “Hundreds of thousands have been forced from their homes,” and the Israeli government “cut off food, water, and electricity to a captive civilian population,” actions which could jeopardize the region’s long-term stability. He also noted that “it is possible for people of goodwill to champion Palestinian rights and oppose certain Israeli government policies in the West Bank and Gaza without being anti-semitic.” However, this is a point many, even within the Democratic party, are unwilling to concede. Thus, there’s been a movement to silence any critique of Israeli policies, even delivered in good faith.
Coates is asking us to look beyond the surface-level discussion of identity to a broader dialogue about justice and equality. If we condemn apartheid as wrong, then shouldn’t it be condemned in all places? Even Israel, a nation of primarily Jewish people, is capable of perpetuating harm against a marginalized group, as we’ve seen with the displacement and systematic mistreatment of Palestinians. We’re “confronted with an incredible truth — that there was no ultimate victim, that victims and victimizers were ever flowing,” Coates offers.
If we take his guidance to heart, we must frequently critically analyze our individual and collective roles in perpetuating harm against other groups of people. This perspective is empowering because it suggests we can foster a society where someone’s identity never becomes a shield from critique. However, some may find it disheartening to learn that even groups who’ve endured oppression are not inoculated from becoming oppressors. Some Black Americans became colonizers in the aftermath of slavery, believing they would never feel welcome or granted birthright citizenship. And in doing so, they participated in a colonial project, Liberia.
Interestingly, Coates notes that “this ethnocratic approach to state-building had deep roots in Zionism, which held that majority status within a strong Jewish state was the only true bulwark against antisemitism.” There’s a fear that if Jewish people are not in the majority in Israel, they cannot safeguard themselves from bigotry. This is a relatable experience of seeking sufficient power to protect themselves. Nevertheless, a state that rejects the rights and dignity of some racial, ethnic, or religious groups inflicts upon them the same exile and subjugation inflicted upon Jewish people during World War II.
Fighting anti-black racism in America, for instance, does not require that Black people obtain their own state that, in an attempt to restore justice, displaces others but that they are granted equal rights even in areas where they are in the minority. This type of demographic anxiety is reminiscent of The Great Replacement Theory in America, which suggests Black people and racial minority immigrants are replacing White Americans. Instead of creating a system that ensures equal treatment regardless of identity, some want to maintain a hierarchy at any cost — a counterproductive endeavor since subjugation is a matter of not just identity but material conditions.
Since publishing the book The Message, Ta-Nehisi Coates, the same writer who brought us The Case for Reparations, has received widespread backlash for presenting the revelations of his travels. But, he anticipated as much. Discussing how oppression can perpetuate oppression may not be a conversation some are ready to have. Especially when they’ve been conditioned to see this conflict as too complicated to navigate, the text suggests we must believe in our collective ability to follow the stars when all else fails. Maybe we’ll find a lighthouse that can guide us back to land. We’re urged not to become blinded by identity. Indeed, we are responsible for considering our privilege relative to others. To unearth and share stories of those unfairly marginalized in the corners of our society. The text leaves us with a question that for some is uncomfortable — if apartheid is wrong, shouldn’t it be condemned throughout all time and within all places?
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Allison Gaines' work on Medium.