BOOK REVIEW: The Message

I just finished Ta-Nahisi Coates' controversial book The Message, a Christmas present from one of my kids who said, I know he's kind of a liberal darling, mom, but I think you're going to really like this book. It's an opportune time to read about Coates' experiences in Palestine  because I have friends who are visiting the West Bank as observers of the Zionist occupation. One of them posts to a private blog each day and coincidentally had just read The Message before leaving on their trip. Much of what they report aligns with Coates' descriptions of apartheid and white supremacy in all its ugliness.

As for what Coates made of his experiences, therein lies the controversy.

Coates burst on the scene with a long-form piece in the legacy liberal magazine The Atlantic where he was on staff. "The Case for Reparations" is something most of us probably read years ago when it came out in 2014. If so, did you remember that Coates used the creation of Israel as an historical example of reparations? That he now regrets his hoodwinking by hasbara (Zionist pr) is palpable; he's embarrassed for himself, but not too embarrassed to learn more and to hold himself accountable for his errors.

I had been aware of his fall from grace with the liberal, Democratic Party-aligned media over the book but didn't know the details. Since I never watch CBS Mornings or really any corporate media, I missed it when Israel-aligned journalist Tony Dokoupil attacked Coates for comparing Jim Crow and Israeli apartheid. Astonishingly, Dokoupil told him:

If I took your name out of it, took away the award, and acclaim, took the cover off the book, the publishing house goes away -- the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.

So the Zionist argument is: despite your stature as a prominent Black intellectual, we are going put a pejorative label on you for drawing your own conclusions based on your own recent observations in occupied Palestine. 

Conclusions that prominent Jewish intellectuals Noam Chomsky, Dr. Gabor Maté , Hannah Arendt, and Albert Einstein also reached based on their own observations.

What makes Coates' observations and conclusions so powerful is his broad experience with structural racism and white supremacy in our times. The Message is actually a collection of three essays he wrote for his writing students at Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington DC. One essay reflects on his trip to Senegal to see where the African slave trade that his ancestors suffered through originated. One reflects on his visit to a South Carolina school district that attempted to ban his book Between the World and Me from Advanced Placement English. And both those essays inform what he makes of his experiences in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv.

Coates is nothing if not a researcher, delving into primary sources like Zionist founder Theodor Herzl's early writings to find prescient scheming and plans for dehumanization:

We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it[sic] in the transit countries, while denying it[sic] any employment in our own country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.

As Coates begins to examine why he never interrogated Zionism, his research uncovers some facts that shock him: a study finding that from 1970-2019 fewer than 2% of opinion pieces about Palestine were by Palestinian authors. The dearth of Muslim or Arab journalists with positions in Western corporate media. Myths about Israel being "the only democracy in the Middle East" and the industry devoted to mythologizing archaeological ruins that become theme parks for promoting Zionist tropes.

The role of settlers in pushing Palestinians out of their homes and off their land is a major theme in Coates' essay. According to his research there are now half a million of them.

In case you're wondering, he meets with Israelis, too. They tell him how dangerous it is to speak out against apartheid or to refuse military service. They take him, a Black descendant of enslaved people, on the roads that only Jews may use, bypassing the checkpoints that clog up commerce, education, and familial bonding for Palestinians.

Back stateside, Coates gets together with a group of Palestinian professionals and activists and their friends.

The group spoke about politics in a manner of communal intimacy -- the way my people speak when no white people are around..

Deanna [Othman] told me she taught at a school where most of the kids were Palestinian, and she loved teaching "The Case for Reparations." She said, "The kids always say, Yeah but about the Israel part? And I just say, Well, nobody's perfect."

There's so much more in-depth analysis in The Message than I can convey here. As Israel refused over the weekend to release 600 Palestinian prisoners already on buses, despite the release as promised by Hamas of Israeli hostages in Gaza, and moved tanks into the West Bank for the first time in 20 years, it's time to examine the unvarnished truth about the Zionist project.