Re: your post about the Ezra Klein, Coates interview, and specifically the analogy you drew about civil rights; I’m kind of confused about how you came to the conclusion that the Palestinians haven’t tried doing nonviolence. Did the march of return not count? Furthermore, moral sobriety did not convince the American public that black people weren’t inferior. I think you calling Coates a polemicist was incredibly uncharitable and shows apathy to the point that him and Klein both agreed on: that Israel is an apartheid state.
Thanks for the comment. I'll presume your good faith and return the same in this longish answer.
You wrote: "I'm kind of confused about how you came to the conclusion that the Palestinians haven't tried doing nonviolence."
Your confusion may be a result of the fact that I neither said nor implied this. What you're doing here is called a straw man fallacy.[1]
What I did say was that Civil Rights activists led by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Congress of Racial Equality were utterly committed to nonviolence. You can tell this is true by how they never committed acts of terrorism.
You wrote: "Furthermore, moral sobriety did not convince the American public that black people weren't inferior."
I don't know what "moral sobriety" is. I don't know what moral inebriation would be, either.
I certainly didn't claim that moral sobriety accomplished anything and this is another straw man.[1]
What I did claim was that the principled nonviolence of the Civil Rights Movement impacted public opinion sufficiently to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed.
This is from the transcript of the Coates/Klein conversation[2]:
TA-NEHISI COATES: I can’t accept that your interest in a true democracy was destroyed by violence from your partner. I just can’t accept that. First of all, I think even in this rendering that we have here, I suspect that there are reasons for why that suicide bombing even happened.
'You' here refers to Israel. Coates is saying that Israelis must not be committed to peace because violence from Hamas derailed Israeli public support for a peace process. If this is true, why is it not also true for the Palestinians? This seems to me like both a double standard and terrorism apologetics.
You wrote: "...I think you calling Coates a polemicist was incredibly uncharitable…"
Coates himself acknowledges this. Here's a long excerpt from the transcript [2], keeping his comments in context:
EZRA KLEIN: Did you go around with anybody who would say, no, we’re doing the right thing here. Or even we’re not doing enough here.
TA-NEHISI COATES: No.
EZRA KLEIN: Why?
TA-NEHISI COATES: There are things in this world that I see that I just don’t want to hear the justification for. I just don’t think can be justified. I don’t want to hear — I don’t know what I can glean from a justification for — and I’m talking about in an American context — segregation.
I don’t know what necessarily I can glean from a justification for enslavement by hearing somebody like interviewing somebody and say, tell me why this is legal. Some things come down to, for me, just a moral decision. And I actually think journalists do this all the time. I think we all draw a line somewhere about what we feel is out of bounds and what we feel is beyond.
For me, I was willing to entertain probably a debate from people who were anti-occupation, but maybe not necessarily anti-Zionist. Maybe it would be classified as liberal Zionists even. All the way over to people who thought Zionism was a terrible idea and the worst thing that had ever happened. The justification for settlements was outside of my frame.
EZRA KLEIN: But that does wipe out all of Israeli society almost, right?
TA-NEHISI COATES: I was concerned with what I don’t know. And what I haven’t heard. And for me, Palestinian voices have been pushed so far out of the frame. Like that is the thing that is hard to access. And I think this is open for critique. But I made a conscious decision, frankly, in the language, you know what I mean?
Later in the interview, Coates returns to Klein's criticism:
COATES:... this was just a decision I made. OK, who am I not hearing from? Who have I not heard from?
And so that necessarily means marginalizing a portion of it.
Coates openly acknowledges that he decided consciously, deliberately, to ignore the parts he didn't want to hear in order to protect the narrative he wanted to focus on. He states that this is open for critique…which is what I'm offering. I haven't been uncharitable in any way.
You wrote: "...and shows apathy to the point that him and Klein both agreed on: that Israel is an apartheid state."
That's a third straw man[1]. Look again. How did my post start?
I agree with Coates and Klein both that the circumstances for Palestinians in the West Bank can be compared to apartheid. Israel within the green line can't be described that way, but the West Bank, in my opinion, can be described that way.
I think the West Bank settlements are indefensible. They are shameful and wrong. Israel could have protected its security without building settlements clearly meant to eventually annex the land into Israel. I have nothing but contempt and condemnation for them.
Coates and Klein, however, also agreed about what would happen if Israel unilaterally pulled out of the West Bank as they did in Gaza in 2005. Again, here's the transcript:
KLEIN:...If we ever pull back, if we do what we did in Gaza, and allow this to be self-governed, an army will be raised, and what happened on 10/7 will be a small preview of what will be coming for us eventually.
That doesn’t make anything happening in the West Bank right. It doesn’t have any effect on the morality of it whatsoever. But it is the politics of Israel that somebody is going to have to deal with at some point or not. And then we’re just here. I’m not here to tell you I’ve come up with some answer. It’s just one of the things that has to sit in the pot.
TA-NEHISI COATES: Yeah, I don’t disagree with that at all. I don’t disagree with that at all.
Given this agreement between Coates and Klein that Israel pulling out of the West Bank unilaterally without enforceable security guarantees would result in disaster, what would you have Israel do? If it was up to me, I'd start with making water distribution fair in area C of the West Bank.
Now that I have defended my reasonable and supported criticisms of Coates from three straw man comments, I need to mention that the same category of error Coates gives us had a mirror image this weekend in Bill Maher.
BONUS GRIPE: Bill Maher does the same kind of thing as Coates, but in a mirror
Did you see this?
Set aside for a minute that Maher condescending to Chappell Roan and Roan's audience won't change any minds and set aside that Maher continues to be a living avatar for Peak Boomer Asshole Behavior - and what we're left with is a narrative about Israel/Palestine which is made to seem reasonable only by consciously, deliberately, dishonestly choosing to leave out utterly essential information. They're both writing for confirmation biases. There are only two differences between what Coates did and what Maher did:
1. Maher leaves out essential information about the Palestinian concerns and Palestinian realities while ignoring or downplaying Israeli failures…while Coates leaves out essential information about Israeli concerns and Israeli realities while ignoring or downplaying Palestinian failures.
2. Coates at least ADMITS, when pressed, that he's doing this. Maher, smug prick that he is, does not.
They're both wrong. It's assholes running the Israeli government, assholes running Hamas, assholes running the Palestinian Authority, and assholes running the Iranian government- and NONE of these parties has honestly sought peace for at least a couple decades. (Iran and Hamas have never sought peace.)
And with their deeply dishonest determination to serve their narratives by leaving out half the story, neither Coates nor Maher are helping elevate the conversation and fumble towards truth or resolution nearly as much as Ezra Klein does with consistent intellectual honesty.
[1] https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman
[2]https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/11/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-ta-nehisi-coates.html
