A year before last September, I spent three weeks in Israel, visiting Tel Aviv for a week and Jerusalem for two weeks. I also got two one-day tours, one to Masada and the Dead Sea for sightseeing, and the other a “security tour” of the defensive environs of Jerusalem given by the head of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). While there, I deliberately looked for signs of apartheid within Israel: signs of Israeli Arabs being treated as inferiors by Israeli Jews. I didn’t see any: Arabs and Jews seemed to mix completely in restaurants, trains, and trams. But of course my visit was short, superficial, and there might have been discrimination that I simply didn’t see. In light of that, all I can say is that “I didn’t see any apartheid, but my visit to Israel was short and superficial.”
Unfortunately, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose visit to Israel and Palestine was much shorter than mine (10 days total) does not refrain from making sweeping pronouncements. And that is because he clearly went to the area (sponsored and guided by anti-Israeli groups) with a preconception: he wanted to show that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is closely analogous to American’s treatment of blacks, even during slavery. His visit was thus tendentious and what he wrote about it (the last of four essays in the book below) is incomplete, misguided, and, to be honest, shameful.
Below is Coates’s new the book of essays; click on it to go to the Amazon site. I read only the last (but most talked-about) essay, “The Gigantic Dream,” 117 pages long. If you know anything about the situation in Israel and Palestine, and the history thereof, you will spot immediately how tendentious, erroneous, and damaging to Israel Coates’s essay is. And some reviewers have called him out for it, though of course the Israel-haters defend him.
Using the four categories of lies that Francis Collins lays out in his own new book The Road to Wisdom, I would say that Coates’s dilations on Israel fall between “delusions” and “bullshit.” That is, he is not intentionally lying, but I think his view is warped by his immersion in American racism, and I believe he knows that there is far more to the story than he’s telling. In fact, he has been corrected by both interviewers and reviewers about his distortions, but he hasn’t changed his mind.
The theme of his book could be summarized by saying, à la Orwell, “Israel bad, Palestine good.” To arrive at this theme, he has to completely neglect anything bad ever done by the Palestinians and anything good ever done by Israel. But I’m getting ahead of myself:
There are the usual accusations of genocide and apartheid on Israel’s part (the apartheid is supposed to occur within Israel, with Jews oppressing Israeli Arabs), but the most obvious omissions are those of Palestinian terrorism and of Israel’s repeated offers of a state to Palestine.
What, for example, do you make of Coates’s repeated beefing about having to wait for long periods at checkpoints, or about Israeli soldiers at those checkpoints glaring at him? Could the plethora of checkpoints have something to do with Palestinian terrorism and an attempt to keep murderers out of Israel? You won’t hear that from Coates. Nor does he mention the First and Second Intifada. Will you hear that Palestine won’t allow a single Jew to live in Gaza or the Palestinian-controlled parts of the West Bank (areas A and B)? Isn’t that apartheid? If not, why not? Remember that fully 20% of Israeli citizens are Arabs, like the one in the first video below.
If you didn’t know about the Palestinian terrorism that’s killed Israelis ever since the seventh century (with two big pogroms in 1929 and 1936), you wouldn’t realize the context of much of Coates’s complaints. But he has a point to make: the treatment of Israel towards Palestinians—or, indeed, of its own Arab citizens—is precisely analogous to Americans’ treatment of slaves and the subsequent Jim Crow laws. But you’d have to squint pretty hard to see Israel doing anything in Israeli that resembles even slightly the purchase and use of slaves, or of forcing Israeli Arabs to bow and kowtow to Israeli Jews.
Coates mentions the two-state solution, floated by one person he met, but he doesn’t mention that such a solution has been offered to the Israelis four or five times, and every time it has been rejected—by the Palestinians. If there is apartheid and genocide to be seen, simply look at the first charter of Hamas, as well as its behavior and the statements of Iran, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and many other Arab groups sworn to extirpate Israel. There is of course no mention of the events of October 7, 2023, but the book came out on October 1, 2024, and perhaps, given that there’s about a year’s lead time on publishing many books, Coates couldn’t fit that event in. But I don’t believe Coates would have mentioned it anyway (not even one inserted footnote?), for the butchery of that day spoils his narrative. Would Coates admit now the truth that Hamas, proud of that day, has sworn to repeat it over and over again? Remember, Coates says not one word about Palestinian terrorism.
Coates dwells heavily on the nakba, or “catastrophe,” originally seen as the humiliation suffered by five Arab armies (and volunteers from two other Arab states) who invaded Israel right after independence but was routed by a lowly army of Jews. The nakba was subsequently reconceived by Arafat to mean the “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israel” after the invasion. Coates implies repeatedly that, without provocation, the Jewish military simply slaughtered Arabs wholesale after their invasion. This is not the case: many Arabs fled because they were frightened, many other because Arab countries ordered them to leave so the Jews could be destroyed before Arabs could return, and some fled because they started trying to kill Jews and were driven out militarily or destroyed.
The Arab invasion of Israel, beginning on its day of independence in 1948, was certainly not a genocide of Palestinians. Coates discusses the “massacre” by Israeli soldiers of the Arab village of Deir Yassin (an event badly distorted by Wikipedia, which repeatedly mentions rapes that never happened), but he doesn’t note that the attack was prompted by the infiltration of the village by Arabs who fired on Israelis. About hundred people died and, unfortunately, some non-combatants were bystanders in the line of fire.
To see another view of this battle (one that Coates, not interested in hearing all sides, neglects), read The Massacre That Never Was: The Myth of Deir Yassin and the Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (and a review of that book in the Middle East Quarterly).
As for Coates’s writing, one petulant reviewer (the reviews are mixed) called Coates a “narcissist”. When I saw that after reading the essay myself, I said, “Precisely right.” Not only is there Coates’s hubris of assessing a messy, complex, and historically convoluted conflict after only a ten-day visit, but his writing is deeply self-absorbed. Coates is far more interested in his own reactions than in talking to people on both sides. A soldier glares at him, and he’s off to the races.
But Coates’s mission is not to talk to Israelis and Palestinians, but to show that Israel’s racism parallels that of America’s. It’s as if he needs to fill in a jigsaw puzzle, and is looking for just the right pieces to unite Israel and American segregationism. I won’t dwell on the folly of such comparisons, except to say that Coates has a bill to sell. He seems to have been prompted in this solipsism by the success of his famous Atlantic article “The Case for Reparations”—a good piece of writing—an article that he brings up repeatedly.
And since Coates is tendentious, let me just give the other side, but in the words of other people. First, how is Israel enacting apartheid against its own people? (I am construing this accusation as one of intra-Israel apartheid, not the endless conflict between Israel and Palestine.) I have tried to find laws in which Arab Israelis are discriminated against by Jewish Israelis. I could find only one discriminatory law, and it discriminates in favor of Arabs: they are not required to serve three years in the IDF unless they want to. There are also laws that discriminate among Jews themselves, with—until recently—Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews being exempt from military service as well, though that is supposed to end in a few years. It is curious that those who level accusations of apartheid against Israel Israeli Arabs never come up with tangible examples.
If you want to dig deeper into the apartheid accusation, here are two videos, one long and one short. In the first short one (ten minutes), an Israeli Arab who served in the IDF fields a number of hard questions about whether he experienced discrimination. The answer was “no”:
. . . and here is the stupendous Natasha Hausdorff discussing the “apartheid” accusation with an American professor Professor Orde Kittrie from Arizona State. Kittrie is a specialist in international and criminal law, and, as I’m presenting this as a palliative to the ignorance of Coates. You will hear Kittrie’s opinion that the apartheid accusation is baseless. (At 31 minutes in, Natasha gives some viewers’ questions—and some of her own—that Kittrie answers.)
Here are the YouTube notes:
Chair: Natasha Hausdorff
A new UN Commission of Inquiry of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is poised to accuse Israel of apartheid.
Professor Kittrie discusses this Inquiry and its mandate, and the potential relationship with prosecutions by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The mandate’s reference to apartheid was apparently inspired by a lengthy report, accusing Israel of committing the crime of apartheid, published by Human Rights Watch (HRW). However this report is based on a definition of “apartheid” which is not found in the ICC’s Statute or the International Convention on Apartheid. Professor Kittrie discusses the different definitions of apartheid, reasons why the apartheid charge is wrong even under HRW’s definition, and options for responding.
Finally, here’s an article from Fathom taking apart Amnesty International’s 2022 accusation that Israel was an “apartheid state.” Click to read:
Read, watch, and judge for yourself. In my view, Coates, while his writings on American racism may be good (I’ve read only the Atlantic article), his piece on Israel and Palestine is reprehensible, misguided, full of distortions, and, in the end, is pretty much racist, if not antisemitic. If you read it, please do so with some knowledge of the politics and history of the region.
h/t: Malgorzata
Here’s a blistering review of “The Message”: https://www.commentary.org/articles/mike-cote/ta-nehisi-coates-charlatan/
I hadn’t read that, but was interested in this bit:
Good review, thx Robert.
D.A.
NYC
He is yet another black pseudo-intellectual elevated by white guilt. I have yet to come across an original thought or perspective from Coates. To be fair, I’ve started many of his works, but can’t get through them because of their over-written vapidness. Kendi brings more to the intellectual table than Coates.
Wow, Rick: Kendi v. Coates at the intellectual table…like throwing darts at mashed potatoes.
+1!
A huge comic book (Black Panther, pretty sure) showed up in my hands one day (don’t ask how) – Ta-Nehisi Coates was the author.
I’d have to get it again, but I’m pretty sure he wrote everything – like the dialogue bubbles and all.
But for background on Coates’ philosophy or work, I thought this adds to it.
I’m not making fun or disparaging – Black Panther is a significant comic book. Comics say something worth noting, is all – could call it cultural.
Yes, PCC(E). Coates is surely not the smartest kid in the class. He is cooool, though, so a lot of people take that from him and decide against Israel.
Black Americans thinking “Palestine” is on their side is terrible. They should go there and find out big time.
D.A.
NYC
I supervised archaeological excavations in Israel for 25 years (1978-2003). I had many Arab and Jewish friends. What is going on now makes me very sad.
Professor John C H Laughlin
Averett Univerrsity, Danville VA
Thanks for the Francis Collins reference. I was not aware of it. Sounds like a good companion to Harold Varmus’ “The Art and Politics of Science”. Just in time for Chanukah…and Coyneeza gifting.
An excellent history lesson, Jerry. Thank you.
My guess is that Coates and so many others obsessed with Israel don’t understand any of the history of the region, yet identify in the Black struggle in America and the Black fight against South African apartheid what they believe to be analogous situations that they do understand.
They are dreadful analogies, but they resonate with readers because so many Americans are versed in (some of) the history of Black oppression. For those who are, Coates included, it’s but a short step to accept that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle is the same struggle. The result is a large plurality of Americans who are primed to accept Coates’s narrative and a plethora of authors—Coates and others—who are more than willing to advance the narrative and enjoy the remunerative benefits.
Well, I read Coates’ first book and it was so bad, it made me angry…same with Kendi…but I felt I needed to read him if I were to properly and honestly critique DEI and CRT and the like. So neither of these clowns will receive any further remuneration from me…fool me once…but don’t fool me twice.
Replying to myself. Strange, I know….
I just finished watching Natasha Hausdorff‘s interview with Professor Kittrie. It was excellent, as expected. Kittrie, being an experienced attorney in international law, focused on how the definition of apartheid requires that there be oppression on the basis of race. Israel does not discriminate on the basis of race, so Israel doesn’t practice apartheid. QED.
That’s true as far as it goes. But neither the public at large, nor the various UN and other bodies attempting to delegitimize Israel, seem to respect that narrow view. They extend the concept of apartheid to include forms of oppression other than race, such as ethnicity—precisely in order to charge apartheid against Israel—even though such an extension has not been codified in international law.
While it may be true that Israel does not practice apartheid, it sadly doesn’t matter, in that the very public charges of apartheid are themselves enough to delegitimize Israel in the minds of many. That’s why moves by the UN and other organizations to charge apartheid or genocide against Israel are so dangerous, even if the charges are never upheld. Israel and Israel’s supporters need to fight the legal charges being levied against Israel and its leaders, of course. But they also must fight the delegitimization of Israel with the public—a much harder endeavor.
I would not go so far as to claim that the agencies of the U.N. are engaged with the International Criminal Court or other international bodies in a conspiracy to delegitimize Israel by every means possible—maybe they all hate Israel independently—but supporters need to fight back as if they are.
That’s it for now; I know The Roolz.
I have some personal experience with Coates. He can’t stand well-informed criticism. I posted some very technical and non-polemic criticisms of his claims. He promptly deleted my comments.
That is very telling.
I expect that Coates is a believer, not necessarily a religious believer but a worldview believer.
Believers are typically so wedded to their beliefs that no amount of factual correction will get past their confirmation bias.
Still it’s worth publishing the facts and rebuttals so that others may be better informed.
The Arab Israeli who fought in the IDF uttered what I see as the key to any possibility for peace in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza or any of the surrounding countries: They (the Arabs) must learn to love themselves as much as they currently hate Israelis. I see little hope untill and unless that occurs.
“I could find only one discriminatory law, and it discriminates in favor of Arabs: they are not required to serve three years in the IDF unless they want to.”
I generally agree with your criticisms of Coates and his tendentious book; but the IDF issue isn’t as straightforward as you present it, because of the substantial benefits in Israel that are conditioned on military service. See https://www.adalah.org/en/law/view/610. One might argue that Arabs could volunteer and receive these benefits, but historically most Arabs (apart from the Bedouin and Druze) were actively discouraged from volunteering, by the government as well as because of peer pressure within their own communities (see this Tablet article – https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/arabs-in-israel-no-service): most Jews did not want Arabs in the army, for reasons that are perhaps obvious. Attitudes to this on both the Jewish and the Arab side seem to be changing, which is surely a good thing – there are a lot more Arabs in the military than there once were, like the young man in the video you link to. But the residual effects of the discouragement of Arabs from serving are still there, and it is one of the things that reinforces their lower economic position in Israeli society.
In general on this question, it is worth looking at the Adalah site, which lists what it calls discriminatory laws against Arabs in Israel (https://www.adalah.org/en/law/index). Adalah is a Palestinian rights organization, and as such has an obvious slant, but as far as I know its list is accurate (corrections welcome!). To my eyes, not all of the laws it lists are genuinely discriminatory – for example, I don’t think it is “discriminatory” against Arabs to pass a law that hospitals should be free of leavened products during Passover (https://www.adalah.org/en/law/view/609), any more than it is antisemitic for governments in Islamic countries to ban alcohol from their hospitals and other public spaces. (You might say both laws would be discriminating against secular people, but that is a different question.) But some of the laws here are genuinely discriminatory, and while they are generally very limited in scope, and certainly do not add up to “apartheid” or anything close to that, it does suggest that Jewish and Arab citizens in Israel are not in all respects treated quite as equally as you suggest.
I see you managed to hit on a well-known Jew-hating Palestinian organization to find your discrimination. Very well, I looked at all of the examples.
First, though, I said that there might be discrimination that I do not know about. Did I suggest that there was NO discrimination of any sort? No, I said if there was, I did not know about it. So you are mischaracterizing what I said.
I looked over the list and do not find the list in general discriminatory against Arab Israelis compared to Jewish Israelis given by the Palestinian site, and dont see anything explicitly discriminatory except for the leavened foodstuff ban in hospitals during Passover. As for the rule that holds parents responsible for their kids throwing stones, that would only discriminate against Palestinians if they are the ones who throw stones more often. That may indeed be the case, but then the argument is about holding parents responsible for their childrens actions (as we do in the US with guns), which is a legal question that is not itself discriminatory.
About the IDF: The fact that Arabs are against their own serving in the IDF cannot be interpreted as a apartheid practiced by Jews!
If not serving in the IDF is seen as a privilege for the Haredim, it can’t be a “discriminatory law” against Arabs. The IDF takes Arabs who enlist voluntarily (obviously after the IDF makes some checks that they are not going to train terrorists). BTW, for Druzes the service is obligatory.
And, as you noted, none of this even comes close to israel being an apartheid state. So do you think it lends credence to Coates, or were you just trying to correct me on something that I never said?
I was not correcting you on the idea that there were no discriminatory laws.
I was correcting you (if you wish to call it that, though I saw it as offering some qualifications rather than an outright correction) on the idea that non-service in the IDF is a straightforward privilege for Arabs.
The reason for querying this is because (a) service in the IDF carries with it a lot of benefits in one’s subsequent career path, through university support and preferential access to careers in certain kinds of high-tech industries, which you did not mention; and (b) there was, at least up until the very recent past, strong pressure from the Jewish authorities to discourage non-Bedouin/Druze Arabs from serving (which you also didn’t mention). The fact that Hareidim don’t serve either, and that is seen as a privilege, is not really relevant, since Hareidim do not go to university, nor do they typically seek jobs in the sectors where non-IDF people have been restricted.
I did separately point to the Adalah site to provide some possible examples of discrimination that you might have been unaware of. And yes, it’s a heavily biased site, but as I said, all of the laws it lists are real ones, and some of them do indeed appear discriminatory, at least to my eyes – e.g. https://www.adalah.org/en/law/view/511, banning family reunifications where one partner is from the Occupied Territories, which necessarily affects only Arabs, since Jewish settlers in those territories are explicitly exempted from the law.
Arabs can join the IDF if they want so long as they do not give indications of becoming dangerous to Israel. So what is the discrimination here? You can get the benefits of being in the IDF if you want.
As for the unifircation law, did you read this part:
By the way, please stop using different names for your different posts, please.
Just to add that Quillette also has this piece on Coates’s book. (Spolier: it isn’t favourable.)
That Muslim IDF soldier is helping restore my faith in humanity.
Coates is of course free to write any BS he wants. What is the real travesty is the many members of the ‘legacy’ media who have turned themselves inside out to fawn over his uniformed opinions with zero critical feedback or questions. For instance, I was astounded that both Ezra Klein and Terri Gross seemed to take everything Coates said at face value with none of the introspective questions we are used to hearing from them with other subjects. I have to say, since those interviews, I’ve stopped listening to their podcasts.
I was assigned to the US Consulate General in Jerusalem 1986-1989 in communications (not “PR” but getting diplomatic message traffic in and out). I lived in Beit Jala for two years. Intifada 1 impeded my ability to get into work, not allowed for communications staff, so had to move to Mevaseret Zion for the last year. During that assignment, though I heard second, or more, -hand of many, I was eyewitness to only a few instances of harassment of Palestinians.
The first instance I remember was at a small grocery store just outside Bethlehem I often stopped at on my way home to Beit Jala from work. One afternoon while I was in the store, a man in Hassadim garb came in and start shouting at and generally harassing Palestinian customers (I don’t know if I was not seen or, as obviously NOT Palestinian, just ignored but I had no interaction with him.) Being a “regular,” I was acquainted with the owner who was manning the checkout. As the Hassadim man went to other aisles in the store, I quietly asked the owner why he didn’t throw that man out. He motioned with his eyes and chin toward the open door, where outside a couple of paces away was an armed IDF soldier, with his rifle held across his chest, apparently “escorting” the Hassadim man from store to store.
The second was in Mevaserat. Like all US Consulates, we had many locals, both Israeli and Palestinian, working in various support jobs. Two Palestinian guys, both well liked by everyone, served as handymen and regularly performed various tasks at the Consulate and our residences. They went to my residence one day for some maintenance task or other. When I got home later, some of my Israeli neighbors went out of their way to point out Palestinian men were at my house. I couldn’t tell if this was a neighborhood watch-type security concern or “racial profiling” but I calmed their nerves, telling them they were Consulate personnel.
I bring them up because both cases were by INDIVIDUALS, as one might see in the US or many other countries. Other than roadblocks and checkpoints after Intifada 1 began, I saw no GOVERNMENT actions toward Palestinians in my three years there.