Ta-Nehisi Coates, a Black writer in the US, says he was too afraid to speak up about Palestine, but after seeing the West Bank and Israel first-hand for 10 days in the summer of 2023 he could no longer remain silent.
“I came back from Palestine, and I just was glass-eyed. I didn’t understand. I had this deep-seated feeling that, in fact, I had been lied to.”
Like Angela Davis, he was shocked to see how much like Jim Crow it was, worse than Jim Crow in fact. Israel was founded in 1948 when Jim Crow in the US was in full swing, when apartheid was just becoming law in South Africa. It was the times! And still is:
At a checkpoint in Hebron on the West Bank:
‘And I was walking to the checkpoint, and an Israeli guard stepped out, probably about the age of my son. And he said to me, “What’s your religion, bro?” And I said, “Well, you know, I’m not really religious.” And he said, “Come on. Stop messing around. What is your religion?” I said, “I’m not playing. I’m not really religious.” And it became clear to me that unless I professed my religion, and the right religion, I wasn’t going to be allowed to walk forward. So, he said, “Well, OK, so what was your parents’ religion?” I said, “Well, they weren’t that religious, either.” He says, “What were your grandparents’ religion?” And I said, “My grandmother was a Christian.” And then he allowed me to pass.’
In the US he kept hearing how “complicated” the whole Palestine thing was. He was shocked to find that he understood it all too well:
“I understood the rage that comes when you have a history of oppression. I understood the anger. I understood the sense of humiliation that comes when people subject you to just manifold oppression, to genocide, and people look away from that. I come from the descendants of 250 years of enslavement. I come from a people who sexual violence and rape is marked in our very bones and in our DNA. And I understand how when you feel that the world has turned its back on you, how you can then turn your back on the ethics of the world. But I also understood how corrupting that can be.”
as for President Biden and his ilk:
‘At some point, you know, there’s that saying: When people show you who they are, you have to believe them. And so, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to do the political calculus on this. And I think at a certain point we have to just stop and say, “They believe it.” They believe it. They believe bombs should be dropped on children. They just think it’s OK.’
In the same vein, Coates supports the current wave of student protests at universities:
“I would have hoped that, if my child was on college campus right now – well, anywhere – in the country that he pledged his allegiance to, was bankrolling a bombing of hospitals, I want them disturbed. I really, really hope that he would be upset about that.”
– Abagond, 2024.
Sources: mainly Democracy Now! (November 2023) and Cascade PBS (May 2024).
See also:
- Ta-Nehisi Coates
- views on Palestine:
- Jim Crow
- “It was the times!”
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