Oversimplify and Vilify
12th December 2024
Is there anything left to say about Ta-Nehisi Coates and his ten-day reporting trip to Israel last year? The Message—now in its eighth week on the New York Times bestseller list—has been widely celebrated on the Left for its truth-to-power indictment of the Jewish state on multiple counts of apartheid, genocide, and white supremacy. But his account has also been thoroughly vivisected by critics, who have sliced their way through the text, correcting errors, supplying missing context, and making the case for Israel that Coates impatiently dismisses as disinformation force-fed to gullible innocents like him for years.
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But never mind. Coates believes that morality trumps facts, and he derides invocations of “complexity” by Israel’s defenders. “I would sooner hear a defense of cannibalism,” he declares, “than I would hear any brief for what I saw with my own eyes in Hebron.” Try to explain the whys and wherefores of Israeli policies to Coates and you’re no better than Chico Marx’s con-man in Duck Soup: “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Coates the reporter claims that his powers of observation are all he needs to achieve moral clarity. And on that basis, he need not consider the views of his opponents because no context or explanation of Israeli conduct could possibly be exculpatory.