On Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Need for Context

“There are things in this world that I see that I just don’t want to hear the justification for.”

- Ta-Nehisi Coates on The Ezra Klein Show (Oct 11, 2024)

What if everything they’re saying about Israel is true? Occupation, apartheid, genocide… all of it. 

What if?

Does it mean that Jews don’t deserve to have a homeland?

Did South Africa dismantle and dissolve itself post-apartheid? What about Germany after the fall of the Third Reich? Or the United States of America after the Trail of Tears or the Jim Crow Era?

Why is this a punishment reserved exclusively for the Jewish state?

Do the supposed crimes of a foreign government mean that Jews all over the world deserve to be harassed on college campuses, assaulted in the streets, and murdered in their homes?

Unlike what Coates would have you believe, how we got here matters. The motives of Palestinian leadership matter. The tactics employed in the name of “freeing Palestine” matter.

Yes, where we’re at also matters. Jews and Israelis on all sides of the political aisle agree that the current status quo is unsustainable. Something has got to give. 

But, as we were so painfully told on October 7 last year and every day since, context matters too. Unlike in apartheid South Africa or the segregated south, Hamas is not simply fighting for equal rights for Palestinians under Israeli governance. They are fighting for Israel’s complete and utter destruction.

And that’s where Coates’s Western-centric view of the conflict breaks down. Israel is not America. Hamas is not the Black Panthers. Our histories are different. Our realities are different. Our context is different.

What a shame that Jews still aren’t important enough to warrant context.