No one oversimplifies Coates more than Coates. Favorite recent online comment: "
"I was on a 8 hour stop over in Mexico City on my way to Peru. I figured I'd write a book that explains everything there is to know about Mexican society. And after only 8 hours I was a master on all things Mexican." - Ta-Nehisi Coates
My mentor was Oliver Williamson. He focused on institutions. I think it fair to say that in his view they enact a framing of transactions that balance hard nosed calculation with more difficult to grasp ethics and emotions. It’s a delicate balance. Coates has no regard for being hard nosed, it’s all about emotions, his emotions. As an artist, he is entitled to that lack of balance. Even you are entitled to a momentary domination of emotion. But “humanity” is not monopolized by art .Humanity inheres in the balance. I trust your current emotional love affair with Coates, no doubt spurred by hard nosed negative reactions, will revert to a better balance hard nosed analysis and emotion
If the US is complicit in the deaths of Palestinians, it, too is responsible for the Hamas massacre of October 7. Had Obama and Biden not delivered pallets of cash to Iran and dropped sanctions, they would not have been able to fund their proxy armies in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen. Without these funds, there would be no terror tunnels, rockets, drones and paragliders.
At some point these amoral thought exercises have to end. The Palestinians elected Hamas. Hamas waged war against Israel. Israel responded as it had every right to do. People die in war. The end.
Glenn, I was about to buy the book based on your glowing remarks about the writing. I was open to it for that reason. Then I listened to an interview of Ta-Nehisi Coates on Fresh Air and decided not to. My dominant takeaway, from his own description, was that regardless of his writing skill, the book was more a product of his imaginings than an objective, realistic portrayal of his subjects. I hadn't heard him speak before. My first impression was that I liked him but kept thinking he sounded like a young, naive college student.
He described this trip abroad as his first and his description of it left me wondering if it wasn't a bit presumptuous of him to think the experiences supported a serious book. It seemed obvious from his own telling that his conclusions preexisted the trip. He openly said much of them came from his imagination. That makes sense, especially if you consider the short time he spent abroad.
Of Senegal, he mentioned one aspect of a commonly accepted narrative as having been "disproved by scholarship" but he seemed reluctant to accept that. It seemed an understandably emotional construct but a construct nonetheless. Based on his descriptions I took it that here was a man who wrote in a self indulgent way of how a limited experience spurred him to write according to a preexisting substrate of attitudes. Projection rather than observation? Pop culture?
Of Israel and Palestine, he seemed to speak more as if virtue signaling more than of adult, thoughtful, experienced observation. It sounded much like the stuff we've heard before in a variety of contexts, where someone placed themself on a pedestal and condescended to the rest of us. It seemed quite ignorant of the history of the region. It was aspirational. His aspirations. I wonder if part of John's concern about the book is that a great many readers will take it as objective fact. In his own words, it didn't sound at all like that. But I'm sure he'll enjoy the sales.
Fighting back against oppression is human nature. There were slave revolts that killed and maimed women and children. Multiple societies colonized by the British, including the Irish, reacted violently.
It's true. Israel has been under consistent oppression since the partition decision, not the first in a long line of compromises that Arab leaders followed by Palestinian leaders have refused. Imagine knowing that since the birth of your nation, there has been a coalition tirelessly planning for your nation's demise. A mad genocidal fever that has persisted through multiple military defeats and has only accelerated in areas which your nation has unilaterally turned over be it southern Lebanon, Gaza or even the Sinai, through which arms have flowed for the last 15 years. How long is a nation supposed to tolerate a constant threat to attempts not merely to defeat it, but to remove it and all of its people from the map? Israel had no soldiers in Lebanon nor Gaza on Oct 6th last year and yet these are the alleged "slaves" that were revolting? That is utter nonsense.
From the Palestinian point of view, Europeans abused by other Europeans were dropped into the region while their Middle Eastern ancestors were forced out. Who would compromise about giving up land to foreigners?
Read a history book. This sophomoric interpretation essentially has the weight of a talking point, or the college freshman dogmatically spouting off at Thanksgiving about something just studied in History 101.
"Europeans abused by other Europeans were dropped into the region"??! "Europeans"? "Abused"? Hitler wiped out 6 million of the 9 million Jews in Europe because they were seen as not white, not "European." And "dropped into the region" is a funny way to describe a people indigenous to that region. Did the Jews slaughtered in Hebron in 1929 by their Arab neighbors get "dropped in" to the land as well?
The irony is that the same progressive virtue signalling crowd who ignore that the Jews settled in the land of Israel some 4000 years ago, are the first to give "land acknowledgements" to show respect for Native American people on whose ancestral Homeland we now live.
Yes, Palestinians point to the Nakba....and it is a myth. Arab armies initiated a war of extermination against Israel in 1948 and most Palestinians, allies of those armies, were encouraged to leave with the anticipation of a return to a Jew-free territory after the Arab armies won. Of course, that didn't happen and the Palestinians (not even called Palestinians until the 1960s by the USSR) lived under Jordanian rule and were left to languish as refugees.
I am not intending a direct analogy at all, but imagine the Lakota, in revenge for Wounded Knee, slaughter thousands in Sioux Falls and declare that they will continue to do so until every last inhabitant of South Dakota is gone. At what point does a people decide to live side by side with their neighbors in peace?
There were no Palestinian deaths due to actions taken by Zionist forces?
My current hesitation regarding Israel is whether the United States should fully back Israel attack Lebanon, Syria, Iran, etc, risking being pulled into a regional war.
Don't forget that nearly 1 million Jews were forced out of their homes in persecutions/pogroms throughout the Middle East. Many of those Jewish families had been in those lands for centuries.
Judea is the ancestral home of Jews and Judea existed before Emperor Hadrian renamed it "Syria Palestinia" in first century AD. Please correct this if not correct.
Just because history has noted the past occurrences of slave revolts that resulted in the death of innocent women and children, it doesn't excuse the behavior. Human beings in the past have engaged in all sorts of reprehensible behavior, such as enslavement of prisoners of war, rape, murder theft, etc. It doesn't excuse the behavior. It's still wrong. Human nature is not the source of morality. Quite the opposite actually.
And The Ottoman muslim empire, as well as the muslim people throughout the middle east and north africa treated Jewish people as second class citizens (Dhimmi), routinely submitting them to extortion (Jizya), and ethnic cleansing. In fact, Jews were ethnically cleansed from Hebron, and were routinely killed in Haifa, Tiberias and safed for centuries before the Holocaust.
I don’t see where Israel could have done anything differently without putting her own citizens more at risk. (1) Hamas intends to destroy Israel and drive all Jews out of the Middle East. (2) Hamas hides behind Palestinian civilians while conducting attacks on Israel. (3) Hamas will not surrender. Unless one of those three things changes Israel must continue the war to eradicate Hamas, regardless of the civilian casualties. Expressing empathy for the “humanity” of the Palestinian civilians only serves to distract us from these three basic facts.
"Lazy fucking book" - McWhorter hit it right on the head. Will only add Coates is a lazy fucking writer and thinker and a grifter capitalizing on his own self promotion and the exploitation of other people's pain. It's always easier to understand something as simple rather than complex. I mean c'mon, Coates spent 10 days in the West Bank. That's like, almost 2 whole weeks. So more than enough time to research the situation there to include it in the book as it was an active choice to do so by the author. One last thing, move past using the "Black" identity Glenn. There are no "Black" intellectuals. What the hell does that even mean? Are you going to exclusively or predominantly tell me about the sophisticated nuance of jazz? And a bunch of other stereotypes like your experience walking into a gas station with the cashier watching you versus mine? There are just people. Identity politics and "lived experience" are the tools of charlatans. Maybe a metaphor will help clarify the childlike thinking of this. If you walk into the ring with Mike Tyson you are not gonna get knocked the fuck out because of the pigment of your skin.
Glenn has been duped by Coates’ pretentious, flowery rhetoric. Coates’ default response is to find a comparison between blacks and Palestinians in an ongoing plight against the “white man” — the evil colonialist influence on the oppressed POCs.
Glenn has a history of vacillation. It’s one thing to admire Coates’ writing style, but Glenn’s first episode on the topic really made him out to be Coates’ ally, almost offering an apologia for a race hustler.
Remember, Glenn caved into signing a ceasefire petition despite knowing little about the conflict. It’s all too easy to choose the “compassionate” route when it makes you seem like a good person. The whole Leftist agenda is based on exploiting victims for that very reason. And it’s no coincidence BLM, Queers For Palestine, and other Leftwing movements are showing solidarity. Even Greta Thunberg is wearing a keffiyeh. The same reason BLM was anti-capitalist and wanted to dismantle the foundations of society which had nothing to do with black lives mattering. They exploited them in the same way they’re using the next issue — the Palestinians — to subvert the society they want to destroy.
In this episode Glenn said, “I think he wants to give a voice to the Palestinians. He wants to speak not for them, but he wants to speak of them in a way that would make their humanity and the disregard for their humanity apparent. I think he’s trying to achieve a kind of moral clarity.”
A moral clarity? Israel is fighting a defensive war against a cult who’s doctrine is to wipe them out, there’s protests around the world accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid and starvation and the UN and corrupt NGOs and similar constantly condemn Israel who is never allowed to win a war. They can only always fight to a draw.
Why wouldn’t Israel have a security fence and check points around Gaza when they’ve had to live with constant missiles being fired at their civilians and suicide bombers sent after efforts to make peace? I know of one particular anecdote where a Palestinian woman needed to receive medical treatment for her leg and they allowed her to come to Israel to treat it and they found a bomb in her wheelchair. So you think they are just going to let every wheelchair go unchecked? Every little gap in defense means their people could die. But the bleeding hearts make it all about the Palestinians. The death toll is blamed on Israel even when the figures are provided by Hamas and even though Hamas uses their own people as human shields.
Where’s Glenn’s calls to speak for the humanity of the Jews?
Maybe Coates should use his fabulous writing skills to talk about how Hamas and political Islam see their own innocent people as necessary victims to suit their goals for Israel’s annihilation rather than write a half-assed, self-aggrandising book on a conflict he doesn’t know anything about.
My goodness, Glenn! Nat Turner's Revolt is somehow a parallel to Oct. 7th? Gaza has been ruled by Hamas for 20 years. Rather than educating their people and turning Gaza into the Singapore of the Middle East, they starved their people, stole billions in aid to build terror tunnels, taught kids nothing other than Jew hatred and how to be suicide bombers, all while leadership partied at the Four Seasons in Qatar. Do ten minutes of research (which would be ten more than Coates) and you'll find that Hamas supporters believe that religion requires the annihilation of Jews and that nothing is sweeter than their children dying as martyrs.
Raping women to the point of breaking their pelvis, cutting off their breasts, hammering nails into their vaginas and dragging their limp, blood-soaked bodies through the Gaza streets to be spit on by regular civilians, burning babies alive in their cribs, beheading with a shovel......and vowing to repeat this over and over and over until the last Jew is dead, is something you can imagine doing? To a neighbor that just wants to be left alone to live in peace?
If Russia invaded Ukraine, committed this butchery, took thousands of women and babies hostage, buried them in tunnels and placed their rocket launchers in schools and hospitals, and Putin refused to release the hostages, refused to lay down his arms, but rather swore to fight until the last Ukrainian was gone, would you similarly be condemning the Ukranians effort to end the madness?
Should humanitarian concerns have mitigated the Allies' mission of complete victory and German surrender? That is where we are. Hamas does not desire a two state solution. It wants Israel wiped off the map. Israel is fighting for its survival.
The war can end tomorrow if Hamas returns the hostages, agrees to give up power and renounces its desire to wipe Israel off the map. So, the ire should be focused on the leaders of Gaza who started this, who anticipated this response, who are directly and solely responsible for the innocent civilian deaths, and who are shamelessly prolonging the destruction of Gaza. Hamas is reveling in the great PR they are receiving around the world. The more death and destruction, the more they are viewed as the poor indigenous victims with darker skin battling against evil white colonial oppressors -- and the more support they receive from their useful idiots like Coates.
I listened to this follow-up where John tried unsuccessfully to talk Glenn down off the ledge. I don't expect to agree with Glenn on everything but normally I respect his reasoning process. He is amazing at steel-manning arguments of his detractors and then dismantling them.
Here, Glenn clearly had an emotional moment when reading Coates book that was detached from any kind of objectivity and thankfully does not really put up a fight about how weak and baseless his view is. John was being gentle and Glenn really had no clear response. It is clear that the racist identitarians at Brown have gotten to him. It is as simple as that. When one is surrounded on all sides by people only differing in the degree to which they support a genocide of the Jewish people, those only expecting Israelis to merely accept a perpetual threat to their existence seem like the moderates. It is as if one only sees the image of a man in prison and the injustice of it, without asking why he is in prison. For me, it is very similar to racism in that the occupation exists, settlements are wrong, but in 2024, that is not the reason for a complete failure of Palestinians to thrive nor to achieve independence. It is that they will not relent in the goal of ending Israel. Again, much as with racism, they would rather wallow in their limitations rather than to maximize their opportunities. Glenn needs to work on his understanding of antecedent causes, tradeoffs, incentives and outcomes as he does in economics rather than intent.
Coates writing about the conflict between Jews, and Arabs in the middle east is as cringeworthy as a wealthy Irish person flying from Martha’s Vineyard to Guadalajara for a week. hanging around with some Guanatos, and then writing a book about Sinaloa vs Jalisco cartels, using his childhood in the southie projects as a way to understand, and take sides. The narcissism necessary to view the world through this lens is hard for me to fathom. I don’t care if it’s written beautifully, this is fiction presented as reality, with Coates navel gazing the whole way through. Do these people even know the difference between the Ashkenazi, and Mizrahi. Does Coates realize that Mizrahi Jews are in general more conservative than the Ashkenazi “white” ones. That these same Mizrahi Jews were living as second class citizens under Islamic rule, and were ethnically cleansed into Israel. In Coates’s bizarre world view that would give the Mizrahi clear moral high ground to do what they want with their previous Arabs overlords who kept them in dhimmitude for more then a millennium until the creation of Israel. These islamic fascists continue to hold a racist grudge because “lesser” people are flourishing in land they believe should be controlled by Muslims. How is it possible that a fledgling country the size of NJ, built by a bunch of refugees managed to absorb 850,000 Mizrahi Jews. Meanwhile an area roughly the size of the U.S. was incapable of absorbing 700,000 Palestinians, talk about the bigotry of low expectations. Coates mine as well be sympathizing with the confederacy, last I heard a lot them died In the civil war. It pains me that a mind as rational as Glenn’s is swayed by this stuff, but then again many German intellectuals were swayed by the prose in mein kampf. I guess we are all susceptible to the sweet smell of roses regardless of where they are grown, especially when the finger being pricked is not our own.
For anyone who reads this I apologize for all the grammatical errors, and run on sentences. I honestly have no idea what I’m doing and I’m sure it shows haha.
Perhaps Ta-Nehisi Coates has changed? Perhaps he's grown-up? Perhaps he's put away childish biases, and blind racial prejudices...and now, in his enlightenment, speaks to the 'humanity' of all. I have not read, The Message, so I must believe these evolutions possible. But I find the probability of such an awakening dim at best, given what has come before.
He engages, Glenn tells us, in 'deep' self-exploration. But can it truly be that deep given 'the message' he conveys from his 10 days in Israel is essentially exactly what even his most casual reader might expect, prior to such 'Stuart Smalley-like' self-exploration'? As John described it, the 'message' is that "white people have their feet on the necks" of 'people of color'. Is that not the same song with a different verse (and an ahistorical one, at that) that we've been hearing Coates sing for the last 20+ years?
TNC tells us of the 'humanity' of the suffering Gazans....and the 'heinous crimes' committed by the Israelis. (I wonder if he recognizes the inverse and the solemn pledge sworn by such suffering humanity to destroy the Jewish State?)
But isn't such suffering the essence of war? Hasn't it always been ...especially since conflicts no longer have front lines and does not distinguish or separate soldier from civilian...armed camps from home towns? When both sides see the destruction of the enemy as a primary goal which must carry with it collateral non-combatant casualties is not suffering guaranteed? And wouldn't we fully expect the Gazan civilians to suffer given that they allow/enable/embrace the full infiltration of their communities by the armed forces of Hamas? To act with deadly force against the latter is to act with deadly force against the former.
[Let us ask whether TNC recognizes the cruelty & inhumanity of an army which uses civilians as combat shields?]
The question is not 'does war cause suffering' or give rise to 'heinous crimes'. Of course it does. Rather we must ask: "Who's right?' ... "Who do you support?" ... "Which strategic purpose is best served by a triumph of one over the other?".... "Who occupies the moral high ground, if, indeed there is moral high ground?"... "To whom have we pledged our support?"
And once we recognize the 'realpolitik' realities of this or any conflict, then our own choices become clear (or at least clearer).
Yes, the innocent die and suffer in war. And yes, in the here & now, most of that dying and suffering (though far from all of it) lies in Gaza. In 1945, much of it occurred in Germany & Japan. Did we speak of their humanity? Even today we spend far too much time debating whether the killing of 200K in Hiroshima & Nagasaki was a justified or unjustified act when it was (to Glenn's point about context) entirely reasonable in the summer of '45 when 1000 Americans were being killed every day in Okinawa. (Who among us would have made a different decision when the possibility to end the war with two atom bombs was so starkly at hand?)
Even given the impossible 'Clarity' that Glenn seeks....even if we can place ourselves in the skins of the Jihadists and can understand how & why they came to believe that the rape, mutilation, and butchery of young Israeli women was somehow a 'reasonable and justifiable' act.... Even given all that, can we ourselves, in our historical context, given our Judeo-Christian moral compass, given our geo-political commitment to the West.... can we ourselves, in our heart of hearts, ever find ourselves saying (as it seems TNC might imply) that such unthinkable barbarity is righteous and to respond -- as Israel has -- is wrong?
The world is not as simple as Coates must believe it to be; it is not...so Black & White.
The question, why would a person, in this case a Hamas fighter on October 7, commit brutal heinous crimes? The answer must be that he has been brutalized himself. And this, according to Coates, and Glenn, is a good enough reason, a tragedy of course, but then again he’s been pushed to the limit. No, that really isn’t true. The Israeli Palestinian conflict is long and very complicated. The murderous Hamas boys were turned into killers by a false narrative, and a merciless religion stoking their hate. Their resentments, their twisted version of history, with themselves as completely innocent victims, justifies all of their actions. Sanctifies them even since their religion is a big part of their motivation. When outside observers say the Hamas murders of Israelis are understandable it is taking their innocence at face value and giving them a pass. Killing Israelis is a choice and insisting that Israel must be destroyed is a choice and as it turns out, a very bad choice. To say that Coates is not personalizing the Israeli-Palestinian war/relationship is obviously not true. He is. He is letting his abusive father off the hook once again and blaming someone, anyone, else. The ghosts of Nat Turner and Fritz Fanon are hovering. Always. Coates cannot let them go even though in reality they have nothing to do with him or this war, either. Coates is not a man of conscience and not really a deep thinker. He makes it about him, when it isn’t. And he wants to make this war about the United States, and it isn’t.
Glenn, I wish you'd quit doubling down on this. You heap praise on his artistry, then say you don't agree with everything he says but without specifying what you disagree about or what you think he's wrong about. That makes it seem like your reasons both for praising it and refusing to afford it the critique you're capable of are personal and undisclosed. I'm really disappointed at how you keep discussing Coates rather than someone with an informed opinion on the conflict between Israel and the Middle Eastern forces of Islamic supremacy. Come on, man. Coates is such a boring topic. Boo!
Are my ears failing me or did I hear the same John McWcWhorter who doesn't think it's important to hold anyone accountable for the Russiagate fraud perpetrated against Donald Trump and the American people (but knows he wants Trump dead) criticize THC for not educating himself about Israel/Palestine before visiting and reporting his observations on the ground? I'm sure I'm just imagining a double standard . . . .
It’s Coates himself who is guilty of oversimplifying with his dismissal of “complexity” This is the sort of woke nonsense should have run its course by now, whereby logic, complexity , punctuality, maths, etc, etc are dismissed as tools off white supremacy. Ok, maybe he didn’t exactly say that but that’s what he meant. It’s like a broken record.
No one oversimplifies Coates more than Coates. Favorite recent online comment: "
"I was on a 8 hour stop over in Mexico City on my way to Peru. I figured I'd write a book that explains everything there is to know about Mexican society. And after only 8 hours I was a master on all things Mexican." - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Glen,
My mentor was Oliver Williamson. He focused on institutions. I think it fair to say that in his view they enact a framing of transactions that balance hard nosed calculation with more difficult to grasp ethics and emotions. It’s a delicate balance. Coates has no regard for being hard nosed, it’s all about emotions, his emotions. As an artist, he is entitled to that lack of balance. Even you are entitled to a momentary domination of emotion. But “humanity” is not monopolized by art .Humanity inheres in the balance. I trust your current emotional love affair with Coates, no doubt spurred by hard nosed negative reactions, will revert to a better balance hard nosed analysis and emotion
If the US is complicit in the deaths of Palestinians, it, too is responsible for the Hamas massacre of October 7. Had Obama and Biden not delivered pallets of cash to Iran and dropped sanctions, they would not have been able to fund their proxy armies in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen. Without these funds, there would be no terror tunnels, rockets, drones and paragliders.
At some point these amoral thought exercises have to end. The Palestinians elected Hamas. Hamas waged war against Israel. Israel responded as it had every right to do. People die in war. The end.
Glenn, I was about to buy the book based on your glowing remarks about the writing. I was open to it for that reason. Then I listened to an interview of Ta-Nehisi Coates on Fresh Air and decided not to. My dominant takeaway, from his own description, was that regardless of his writing skill, the book was more a product of his imaginings than an objective, realistic portrayal of his subjects. I hadn't heard him speak before. My first impression was that I liked him but kept thinking he sounded like a young, naive college student.
He described this trip abroad as his first and his description of it left me wondering if it wasn't a bit presumptuous of him to think the experiences supported a serious book. It seemed obvious from his own telling that his conclusions preexisted the trip. He openly said much of them came from his imagination. That makes sense, especially if you consider the short time he spent abroad.
Of Senegal, he mentioned one aspect of a commonly accepted narrative as having been "disproved by scholarship" but he seemed reluctant to accept that. It seemed an understandably emotional construct but a construct nonetheless. Based on his descriptions I took it that here was a man who wrote in a self indulgent way of how a limited experience spurred him to write according to a preexisting substrate of attitudes. Projection rather than observation? Pop culture?
Of Israel and Palestine, he seemed to speak more as if virtue signaling more than of adult, thoughtful, experienced observation. It sounded much like the stuff we've heard before in a variety of contexts, where someone placed themself on a pedestal and condescended to the rest of us. It seemed quite ignorant of the history of the region. It was aspirational. His aspirations. I wonder if part of John's concern about the book is that a great many readers will take it as objective fact. In his own words, it didn't sound at all like that. But I'm sure he'll enjoy the sales.
Fighting back against oppression is human nature. There were slave revolts that killed and maimed women and children. Multiple societies colonized by the British, including the Irish, reacted violently.
It's true. Israel has been under consistent oppression since the partition decision, not the first in a long line of compromises that Arab leaders followed by Palestinian leaders have refused. Imagine knowing that since the birth of your nation, there has been a coalition tirelessly planning for your nation's demise. A mad genocidal fever that has persisted through multiple military defeats and has only accelerated in areas which your nation has unilaterally turned over be it southern Lebanon, Gaza or even the Sinai, through which arms have flowed for the last 15 years. How long is a nation supposed to tolerate a constant threat to attempts not merely to defeat it, but to remove it and all of its people from the map? Israel had no soldiers in Lebanon nor Gaza on Oct 6th last year and yet these are the alleged "slaves" that were revolting? That is utter nonsense.
From the Palestinian point of view, Europeans abused by other Europeans were dropped into the region while their Middle Eastern ancestors were forced out. Who would compromise about giving up land to foreigners?
Edited for clarity
Read a history book. This sophomoric interpretation essentially has the weight of a talking point, or the college freshman dogmatically spouting off at Thanksgiving about something just studied in History 101.
"Europeans abused by other Europeans were dropped into the region"??! "Europeans"? "Abused"? Hitler wiped out 6 million of the 9 million Jews in Europe because they were seen as not white, not "European." And "dropped into the region" is a funny way to describe a people indigenous to that region. Did the Jews slaughtered in Hebron in 1929 by their Arab neighbors get "dropped in" to the land as well?
The irony is that the same progressive virtue signalling crowd who ignore that the Jews settled in the land of Israel some 4000 years ago, are the first to give "land acknowledgements" to show respect for Native American people on whose ancestral Homeland we now live.
Jews and Muslims have claim to the land. Palestinians point to Nakba in 1948.
Yes, Palestinians point to the Nakba....and it is a myth. Arab armies initiated a war of extermination against Israel in 1948 and most Palestinians, allies of those armies, were encouraged to leave with the anticipation of a return to a Jew-free territory after the Arab armies won. Of course, that didn't happen and the Palestinians (not even called Palestinians until the 1960s by the USSR) lived under Jordanian rule and were left to languish as refugees.
I am not intending a direct analogy at all, but imagine the Lakota, in revenge for Wounded Knee, slaughter thousands in Sioux Falls and declare that they will continue to do so until every last inhabitant of South Dakota is gone. At what point does a people decide to live side by side with their neighbors in peace?
There were no Palestinian deaths due to actions taken by Zionist forces?
My current hesitation regarding Israel is whether the United States should fully back Israel attack Lebanon, Syria, Iran, etc, risking being pulled into a regional war.
Don't forget that nearly 1 million Jews were forced out of their homes in persecutions/pogroms throughout the Middle East. Many of those Jewish families had been in those lands for centuries.
Judea is the ancestral home of Jews and Judea existed before Emperor Hadrian renamed it "Syria Palestinia" in first century AD. Please correct this if not correct.
The Palestinians were removed in what they call the Nakba
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-nakba-history-b5cea9556e516655c25598d5dbe54192
Both Jews and Muslims claim the land.
Just because history has noted the past occurrences of slave revolts that resulted in the death of innocent women and children, it doesn't excuse the behavior. Human beings in the past have engaged in all sorts of reprehensible behavior, such as enslavement of prisoners of war, rape, murder theft, etc. It doesn't excuse the behavior. It's still wrong. Human nature is not the source of morality. Quite the opposite actually.
Oppressed people will revolt.
You're right. Enough oppression by Iran and it's proxies, and Israel will revolt.
White Europeans abused and tortured European Jews. The United States barred Jews who escaped Europe from docking a ship in a United States port.
And The Ottoman muslim empire, as well as the muslim people throughout the middle east and north africa treated Jewish people as second class citizens (Dhimmi), routinely submitting them to extortion (Jizya), and ethnic cleansing. In fact, Jews were ethnically cleansed from Hebron, and were routinely killed in Haifa, Tiberias and safed for centuries before the Holocaust.
https://www.fondapol.org/en/study/pogroms-in-palestine-before-the-creation-of-the-state-of-israel-1830-1948/
The region’s history is complex. Romans forced Jewish people out of the Holy Land.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews
Later the British and French colonized Muslim countries
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muslims/etc/armstrong.html
Your source is interesting given that there is a claim that Palestine never existed.
I don’t see where Israel could have done anything differently without putting her own citizens more at risk. (1) Hamas intends to destroy Israel and drive all Jews out of the Middle East. (2) Hamas hides behind Palestinian civilians while conducting attacks on Israel. (3) Hamas will not surrender. Unless one of those three things changes Israel must continue the war to eradicate Hamas, regardless of the civilian casualties. Expressing empathy for the “humanity” of the Palestinian civilians only serves to distract us from these three basic facts.
"Lazy fucking book" - McWhorter hit it right on the head. Will only add Coates is a lazy fucking writer and thinker and a grifter capitalizing on his own self promotion and the exploitation of other people's pain. It's always easier to understand something as simple rather than complex. I mean c'mon, Coates spent 10 days in the West Bank. That's like, almost 2 whole weeks. So more than enough time to research the situation there to include it in the book as it was an active choice to do so by the author. One last thing, move past using the "Black" identity Glenn. There are no "Black" intellectuals. What the hell does that even mean? Are you going to exclusively or predominantly tell me about the sophisticated nuance of jazz? And a bunch of other stereotypes like your experience walking into a gas station with the cashier watching you versus mine? There are just people. Identity politics and "lived experience" are the tools of charlatans. Maybe a metaphor will help clarify the childlike thinking of this. If you walk into the ring with Mike Tyson you are not gonna get knocked the fuck out because of the pigment of your skin.
Glenn has been duped by Coates’ pretentious, flowery rhetoric. Coates’ default response is to find a comparison between blacks and Palestinians in an ongoing plight against the “white man” — the evil colonialist influence on the oppressed POCs.
Glenn has a history of vacillation. It’s one thing to admire Coates’ writing style, but Glenn’s first episode on the topic really made him out to be Coates’ ally, almost offering an apologia for a race hustler.
Remember, Glenn caved into signing a ceasefire petition despite knowing little about the conflict. It’s all too easy to choose the “compassionate” route when it makes you seem like a good person. The whole Leftist agenda is based on exploiting victims for that very reason. And it’s no coincidence BLM, Queers For Palestine, and other Leftwing movements are showing solidarity. Even Greta Thunberg is wearing a keffiyeh. The same reason BLM was anti-capitalist and wanted to dismantle the foundations of society which had nothing to do with black lives mattering. They exploited them in the same way they’re using the next issue — the Palestinians — to subvert the society they want to destroy.
In this episode Glenn said, “I think he wants to give a voice to the Palestinians. He wants to speak not for them, but he wants to speak of them in a way that would make their humanity and the disregard for their humanity apparent. I think he’s trying to achieve a kind of moral clarity.”
A moral clarity? Israel is fighting a defensive war against a cult who’s doctrine is to wipe them out, there’s protests around the world accusing Israel of genocide and apartheid and starvation and the UN and corrupt NGOs and similar constantly condemn Israel who is never allowed to win a war. They can only always fight to a draw.
Why wouldn’t Israel have a security fence and check points around Gaza when they’ve had to live with constant missiles being fired at their civilians and suicide bombers sent after efforts to make peace? I know of one particular anecdote where a Palestinian woman needed to receive medical treatment for her leg and they allowed her to come to Israel to treat it and they found a bomb in her wheelchair. So you think they are just going to let every wheelchair go unchecked? Every little gap in defense means their people could die. But the bleeding hearts make it all about the Palestinians. The death toll is blamed on Israel even when the figures are provided by Hamas and even though Hamas uses their own people as human shields.
Where’s Glenn’s calls to speak for the humanity of the Jews?
Maybe Coates should use his fabulous writing skills to talk about how Hamas and political Islam see their own innocent people as necessary victims to suit their goals for Israel’s annihilation rather than write a half-assed, self-aggrandising book on a conflict he doesn’t know anything about.
THIS
My goodness, Glenn! Nat Turner's Revolt is somehow a parallel to Oct. 7th? Gaza has been ruled by Hamas for 20 years. Rather than educating their people and turning Gaza into the Singapore of the Middle East, they starved their people, stole billions in aid to build terror tunnels, taught kids nothing other than Jew hatred and how to be suicide bombers, all while leadership partied at the Four Seasons in Qatar. Do ten minutes of research (which would be ten more than Coates) and you'll find that Hamas supporters believe that religion requires the annihilation of Jews and that nothing is sweeter than their children dying as martyrs.
Raping women to the point of breaking their pelvis, cutting off their breasts, hammering nails into their vaginas and dragging their limp, blood-soaked bodies through the Gaza streets to be spit on by regular civilians, burning babies alive in their cribs, beheading with a shovel......and vowing to repeat this over and over and over until the last Jew is dead, is something you can imagine doing? To a neighbor that just wants to be left alone to live in peace?
If Russia invaded Ukraine, committed this butchery, took thousands of women and babies hostage, buried them in tunnels and placed their rocket launchers in schools and hospitals, and Putin refused to release the hostages, refused to lay down his arms, but rather swore to fight until the last Ukrainian was gone, would you similarly be condemning the Ukranians effort to end the madness?
Should humanitarian concerns have mitigated the Allies' mission of complete victory and German surrender? That is where we are. Hamas does not desire a two state solution. It wants Israel wiped off the map. Israel is fighting for its survival.
The war can end tomorrow if Hamas returns the hostages, agrees to give up power and renounces its desire to wipe Israel off the map. So, the ire should be focused on the leaders of Gaza who started this, who anticipated this response, who are directly and solely responsible for the innocent civilian deaths, and who are shamelessly prolonging the destruction of Gaza. Hamas is reveling in the great PR they are receiving around the world. The more death and destruction, the more they are viewed as the poor indigenous victims with darker skin battling against evil white colonial oppressors -- and the more support they receive from their useful idiots like Coates.
I listened to this follow-up where John tried unsuccessfully to talk Glenn down off the ledge. I don't expect to agree with Glenn on everything but normally I respect his reasoning process. He is amazing at steel-manning arguments of his detractors and then dismantling them.
Here, Glenn clearly had an emotional moment when reading Coates book that was detached from any kind of objectivity and thankfully does not really put up a fight about how weak and baseless his view is. John was being gentle and Glenn really had no clear response. It is clear that the racist identitarians at Brown have gotten to him. It is as simple as that. When one is surrounded on all sides by people only differing in the degree to which they support a genocide of the Jewish people, those only expecting Israelis to merely accept a perpetual threat to their existence seem like the moderates. It is as if one only sees the image of a man in prison and the injustice of it, without asking why he is in prison. For me, it is very similar to racism in that the occupation exists, settlements are wrong, but in 2024, that is not the reason for a complete failure of Palestinians to thrive nor to achieve independence. It is that they will not relent in the goal of ending Israel. Again, much as with racism, they would rather wallow in their limitations rather than to maximize their opportunities. Glenn needs to work on his understanding of antecedent causes, tradeoffs, incentives and outcomes as he does in economics rather than intent.
Coates writing about the conflict between Jews, and Arabs in the middle east is as cringeworthy as a wealthy Irish person flying from Martha’s Vineyard to Guadalajara for a week. hanging around with some Guanatos, and then writing a book about Sinaloa vs Jalisco cartels, using his childhood in the southie projects as a way to understand, and take sides. The narcissism necessary to view the world through this lens is hard for me to fathom. I don’t care if it’s written beautifully, this is fiction presented as reality, with Coates navel gazing the whole way through. Do these people even know the difference between the Ashkenazi, and Mizrahi. Does Coates realize that Mizrahi Jews are in general more conservative than the Ashkenazi “white” ones. That these same Mizrahi Jews were living as second class citizens under Islamic rule, and were ethnically cleansed into Israel. In Coates’s bizarre world view that would give the Mizrahi clear moral high ground to do what they want with their previous Arabs overlords who kept them in dhimmitude for more then a millennium until the creation of Israel. These islamic fascists continue to hold a racist grudge because “lesser” people are flourishing in land they believe should be controlled by Muslims. How is it possible that a fledgling country the size of NJ, built by a bunch of refugees managed to absorb 850,000 Mizrahi Jews. Meanwhile an area roughly the size of the U.S. was incapable of absorbing 700,000 Palestinians, talk about the bigotry of low expectations. Coates mine as well be sympathizing with the confederacy, last I heard a lot them died In the civil war. It pains me that a mind as rational as Glenn’s is swayed by this stuff, but then again many German intellectuals were swayed by the prose in mein kampf. I guess we are all susceptible to the sweet smell of roses regardless of where they are grown, especially when the finger being pricked is not our own.
For anyone who reads this I apologize for all the grammatical errors, and run on sentences. I honestly have no idea what I’m doing and I’m sure it shows haha.
Perhaps Ta-Nehisi Coates has changed? Perhaps he's grown-up? Perhaps he's put away childish biases, and blind racial prejudices...and now, in his enlightenment, speaks to the 'humanity' of all. I have not read, The Message, so I must believe these evolutions possible. But I find the probability of such an awakening dim at best, given what has come before.
He engages, Glenn tells us, in 'deep' self-exploration. But can it truly be that deep given 'the message' he conveys from his 10 days in Israel is essentially exactly what even his most casual reader might expect, prior to such 'Stuart Smalley-like' self-exploration'? As John described it, the 'message' is that "white people have their feet on the necks" of 'people of color'. Is that not the same song with a different verse (and an ahistorical one, at that) that we've been hearing Coates sing for the last 20+ years?
TNC tells us of the 'humanity' of the suffering Gazans....and the 'heinous crimes' committed by the Israelis. (I wonder if he recognizes the inverse and the solemn pledge sworn by such suffering humanity to destroy the Jewish State?)
But isn't such suffering the essence of war? Hasn't it always been ...especially since conflicts no longer have front lines and does not distinguish or separate soldier from civilian...armed camps from home towns? When both sides see the destruction of the enemy as a primary goal which must carry with it collateral non-combatant casualties is not suffering guaranteed? And wouldn't we fully expect the Gazan civilians to suffer given that they allow/enable/embrace the full infiltration of their communities by the armed forces of Hamas? To act with deadly force against the latter is to act with deadly force against the former.
[Let us ask whether TNC recognizes the cruelty & inhumanity of an army which uses civilians as combat shields?]
The question is not 'does war cause suffering' or give rise to 'heinous crimes'. Of course it does. Rather we must ask: "Who's right?' ... "Who do you support?" ... "Which strategic purpose is best served by a triumph of one over the other?".... "Who occupies the moral high ground, if, indeed there is moral high ground?"... "To whom have we pledged our support?"
And once we recognize the 'realpolitik' realities of this or any conflict, then our own choices become clear (or at least clearer).
Yes, the innocent die and suffer in war. And yes, in the here & now, most of that dying and suffering (though far from all of it) lies in Gaza. In 1945, much of it occurred in Germany & Japan. Did we speak of their humanity? Even today we spend far too much time debating whether the killing of 200K in Hiroshima & Nagasaki was a justified or unjustified act when it was (to Glenn's point about context) entirely reasonable in the summer of '45 when 1000 Americans were being killed every day in Okinawa. (Who among us would have made a different decision when the possibility to end the war with two atom bombs was so starkly at hand?)
Even given the impossible 'Clarity' that Glenn seeks....even if we can place ourselves in the skins of the Jihadists and can understand how & why they came to believe that the rape, mutilation, and butchery of young Israeli women was somehow a 'reasonable and justifiable' act.... Even given all that, can we ourselves, in our historical context, given our Judeo-Christian moral compass, given our geo-political commitment to the West.... can we ourselves, in our heart of hearts, ever find ourselves saying (as it seems TNC might imply) that such unthinkable barbarity is righteous and to respond -- as Israel has -- is wrong?
The world is not as simple as Coates must believe it to be; it is not...so Black & White.
The question, why would a person, in this case a Hamas fighter on October 7, commit brutal heinous crimes? The answer must be that he has been brutalized himself. And this, according to Coates, and Glenn, is a good enough reason, a tragedy of course, but then again he’s been pushed to the limit. No, that really isn’t true. The Israeli Palestinian conflict is long and very complicated. The murderous Hamas boys were turned into killers by a false narrative, and a merciless religion stoking their hate. Their resentments, their twisted version of history, with themselves as completely innocent victims, justifies all of their actions. Sanctifies them even since their religion is a big part of their motivation. When outside observers say the Hamas murders of Israelis are understandable it is taking their innocence at face value and giving them a pass. Killing Israelis is a choice and insisting that Israel must be destroyed is a choice and as it turns out, a very bad choice. To say that Coates is not personalizing the Israeli-Palestinian war/relationship is obviously not true. He is. He is letting his abusive father off the hook once again and blaming someone, anyone, else. The ghosts of Nat Turner and Fritz Fanon are hovering. Always. Coates cannot let them go even though in reality they have nothing to do with him or this war, either. Coates is not a man of conscience and not really a deep thinker. He makes it about him, when it isn’t. And he wants to make this war about the United States, and it isn’t.
Glenn, I wish you'd quit doubling down on this. You heap praise on his artistry, then say you don't agree with everything he says but without specifying what you disagree about or what you think he's wrong about. That makes it seem like your reasons both for praising it and refusing to afford it the critique you're capable of are personal and undisclosed. I'm really disappointed at how you keep discussing Coates rather than someone with an informed opinion on the conflict between Israel and the Middle Eastern forces of Islamic supremacy. Come on, man. Coates is such a boring topic. Boo!
It's really sorta weird.
It feels like we're stuck on him as a topic.
Are my ears failing me or did I hear the same John McWcWhorter who doesn't think it's important to hold anyone accountable for the Russiagate fraud perpetrated against Donald Trump and the American people (but knows he wants Trump dead) criticize THC for not educating himself about Israel/Palestine before visiting and reporting his observations on the ground? I'm sure I'm just imagining a double standard . . . .
It’s Coates himself who is guilty of oversimplifying with his dismissal of “complexity” This is the sort of woke nonsense should have run its course by now, whereby logic, complexity , punctuality, maths, etc, etc are dismissed as tools off white supremacy. Ok, maybe he didn’t exactly say that but that’s what he meant. It’s like a broken record.