Ta-Nehisi Coates is a well-known American author, journalist and activist. He is a former national correspondent for The Atlantic, where he wrote about cultural, social and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans and white supremacy.
Coates’ most recent book, “The Message,” is sharply critical of Israel. It portrays Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as a moral crime and paints Israel as the Jim Crow south transplanted to the Middle East. In Coates’ words: “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.”
In a Sept. 30 interview with Coates on CBS Mornings, co-anchor Tony Dokoupil — who is Jewish, and whose ex-wife and two children live in Israel — took issue with Coates’ portrayal of Israel and commented that the book “would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.” Dokoupil pointed out that Coates left out any discussion or description of the environment in which Israel has been struggling to survive.
Dokoupil asked, “Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it? Why not detail anything of the first and the second intifada, the café bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits? And is it because you don’t believe that Israel, in any condition, has a right to exist?”
Dokoupil also asked: “Why is there no agency in this book for the Palestinians? They exist in your narrative merely as the victims of the Israelis, as though they were never offered peace at any juncture.”
Coates responded that there is no shortage of Dokoupil’s perspective “in American media,” and that his book was not intended to be a complete history or analysis of the Jewish state and its conflicts. He said he was focused on “those who don’t have a voice.” He further told Dokoupil that while he isn’t offended by a “Jewish state,” he is offended “by the idea of states built on ethnocracy, no matter where they are.”
The interview segment lasted about seven minutes. It was cordial and respectful, but markedly more intense than the standard banter of most network morning shows. Some within CBS were uncomfortable with the tone of the interview. That prompted a management reprimand of Dokoupil for an interview that didn’t meet CBS’ standards of fairness and impartiality.
But was Dokoupil wrong? We don’t think so. And the correctness of Dokoupil’s challenge to
Coates is made even more clear by Coates’ own words in subsequent interviews he had with Trevor Noah on “Conversations Without Limits” and on “The Ezra Klein Show.”
In the Noah podcast, Coates analogized the Hamas Oct. 7 attack on Israel to a slave rebellion and said that were he a Gazan, he might have participated in the attack. And on the Klein show, Coates refused to accept any criticism of Hamas. When Klein said, “I think Hamas knew what it was about to do to its own people,” Coates replied, “I won’t accept that.”
Coates is entitled to his opinion. But that doesn’t mean anyone needs to accept his doctrinaire views. We applaud Dokoupil’s challenge to Coates’ Israel-bashing. And we won’t apologize for that.
