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.

Fiscally Responsible Idea Of The Day: Stop Funding #Apartheid

Yet another thing the U.S. taxpayer supports, which is just plain wrong as well as being an inappropriate use of our hard-earned money: Israeli military "justice" for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank.

Then there's the $100 million "911 Center" underground bunker outside Tel Aviv that the U.S. Army is apparently planning to build. It can only be built by workers from certain countries. Doesn't this violate some U.S. laws? 

Also, Israel is the fifth wealthiest country in the world. If it weren't for the influence peddling of groups like AIPAC, and the profits for greedy defense contractors who profit from the "aid" the U.S. taxpayer sends, we might be spending that money on something positive. Like building infrastructure for renewable energy instead of endless fortresses across the globe, fortresses which are about to push us all off the "fiscal cliff."

Bring our war $$ home from Israel, too.

Logo by Dan Ellis, VFP & Maine BOW$H coalition

Might Makes Right For Mittens And Other Apologists For Israel's Apartheid Culture

Back in the distant mists of time -- my childhood -- well-meaning liberals commonly referred to Negroes/Blacks/Afro-Americans as "culturally deprived." This was a nod to the widely held belief that non-white people were generally stupider than white people, prettied up by favoring nurture over nature as the explanation.

Expanded, this point of view allowed people to point out how many black people were on welfare, that "they" destroyed "their" own neighborhoods when "they" rioted, and that buying a flashy big car with any available funds was the act of people barely wiser than children.

Now, in summer 2012, come our two candidates for chief celebrity spokesman for corporate government.

The billionaire presumed nominee of the GOP took it upon himself to comment -- in Jerusalem, no less -- that Palestinian culture is inferior to Israeli culture, and as a result Palestinians are economic failures. Like the last guy from his party to inhabit the Oval Office, we suspect that he is at least ignorant if not downright dumb. Doesn't matter; he knows what to say to keep the massive campaign contributions flowing. That's as smart as you need to be for that sort of job.

Meanwhile the current resident of the White House does backflips for the same rewards. Last spring when I was helping to Occupy AIPAC, the behemoth lobbying organization for Israel's right wing parties calling the shots in Congress, Obama was speaking to them of the U.S. Israel relationship as "sacrosanct" and assuring PM Netanyahu that "I've got your back." You could almost feel Barack's fingers in Bibi's back pocket, where the wallet is.

Israel bulldozing Palestinian olive trees Source: Join Advocacy Initiative http://www.jai-pal.org/content.php?page=60

But what does this really look like on the ground, where generations of Palestinian (and Israeli Arab) children have grown up in a society that institutionalizes racism? Or, as the prominent African American Poet Langston Hughes put it:
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
... Every story is different, here is but one: Murad Amro, 23 year old college graduate, from Hebron in the occupied West Bank, applied for a UN internship in agriculture to further his studies before proceeding to grad school. He was deeply disappointed with the reply he received from the International Fund on Agricultural Development said they could not even consider his application because Palestine is not a member state of the UN.

Not too surprisingly, Murad was extremely discouraged about being denied consideration because of his nationality, wondering aloud about his own personhood. "I AM NOT A HUMAN BEING!!!" "What am I?"  "[is there] no one in this world [who] can hear me and listen to me?" 

Some of the other things Murad could put on his resume, according to Kristin Szremski in an Al Jazeera opinion piece "Romney, Economic realities, and one Palestinian's story":

...non-violent resistance to Israel's occupation with the group Youth Against Settlements. ...efforts to open Shuhada Street, which is closed to Palestinians, ...documenting violence at the hands of Jewish settlers.

Murad's degree is in plant production from Al Quds Open University. And his dreams, apparently, can wither on the vine while ignorant politicians claim he comes from a backward culture that can never thrive economically.

It is the very definition of discrimination, this withholding of assets to a person' based on conditions they were born into and have no control over. It keeps bright leaders like Muran down, stymied and hampered in doing the work they consider important, in Murad's case, food production. Human rights be damned.

Thus the evil empire reigns over its subjects.

Here are some things people used to say publicly about African Americans when the U.S. was heavily segregated in access to education (many would argue it still is).

“[The Negro] has less of what I call ‘abstract intelligence’ than the white man. He functions at a lower level… he is not so able to think in terms of symbols—words, numbers, formulas, diagrams.” Psychologist Henry Edward Garrett, U.S. News & World Report, 1963.

"Sure, we identified with the blacks in Africa...Here were black people, talking of freedom and libration and independence, thousands of miles away...we couldn't even get a hamburger and a Coke at the soda fountain." -- John Lewis, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) put out a fact sheet on Palestinian cultural and economic conditions that covers a lot of ground in concise fashion. From the introduction:

...many critics pointed out that the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, have been under Israeli military occupation for more than 45 years, with Israel tightly controlling and systematically stifling Palestinian economic activity. Moreover, some pointed out that the destructive effects that Israeli policies have had on Palestinian economic development in the occupied territories is just one part of a wider, systematic, decades-old Israeli assault against Palestinian culture and historical memory.

The fact sheet has a brief catalog of lost manuscripts and other cultural treasures. As with the U.S. in Iraq, we see a pattern of deliberate destruction of priceless cultural artifacts.

Source: U.S. Iraq Withdrawal: Antiquities Still Missing by Mike Walter

Absence of evidence helps support claims of  inferiority in a culture you are trying to stamp out. Keeping Muran from even applying to UN programs, and keeping droves of students from traveling abroad, even to accept Fulbright Scholarships.

Oh and did I mention denying freedom of movement within his non-country as well? I'll end with this map of checkpoints in the occupied West Bank.

Tell me, what does apartheid look like?