Acclaimed author Ta-Nehisi Coates has joined a growing list of public figures calling for an end to the bombardment of the Gaza Strip and justice for the Palestinian people.
After traveling to Palestine and Israel earlier this year, Coates says he had a responsibility to speak out on what he witnessed. “There’s no way for me as an African American to come back and stand before you, to witness segregation and not say anything about it,” Coates told Democracy Now.
Last month, Coates and several other prominent authors and artists signed a letter in the New York Book Review asking the “international community to commit to ending the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza and to finally pursuing a comprehensive and just political solution in Palestine.”
While on Democracy Now, Coates said that he feared speaking out in support of the Palestinians, alluding to the backlash many have faced for sharing pro-Palestinian views. “I wasn’t just nervous. I was afraid,” said Coates, adding. “ I know that, A, because of my upbringing, and I know that, B, because of my vocation as a journalist, you can’t behold evil and then return and not speak on it. And segregation is evil.”
The Howard Professor says that he doesn’t understand how “certain” African American politicians could defend the regime. “I don’t know how anybody who benefits, who stands on the shoulders of our ancestors’ struggle against Jim Crow, against segregation, could see what is happening right now, could see the bombs being dropped, 9,000 people dead, an ungodly number of them children, in service of Jim Crow and segregation, which we have exported, and be OK with that. I don’t — I don’t understand it,” he says.
Coates told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now that he expected to find a morally gray situation when he arrived in the occupied territories, but instead, it was immediately clear what was happening.
“It suddenly dawned on me that I was in a region of the world where some people could vote and some people could not,” he said. “I got to Hebron, and we got out as a group of writers, and we were given a tour by our Palestinian guide. And we got to a certain street, and he said to us, “I can’t walk down this street. If you want to continue, you have to continue without me.” And that was shocking to me.”
Coates went on to address the White House’s actions in Gaza, calling out President Joe Biden for his dismissal of the Palestinian death toll. “At some point, you know, there’s that saying: When people show you who they are, you have to believe them,” he said. “And so, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to do the political calculus on this. And I think at a certain point, we have to just stop and say, “They believe it.” They believe it. They believe bombs should be dropped on children. They just think it’s OK. They think it’s OK, or at the very least, they think it’s the price of doing business.”