Author Ta-Nehisi Coates admitted he doesn’t know if he would have been “strong enough” to not take part in the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack last year.
“I haven’t said this out loud, but I think about it a lot. Were I 20 years old, born into Gaza, which is a giant open-air jail, and what I mean by that is if my father is a fisherman and he goes too far out into the sea, he might be shot. Yeah. By somebody off, you know, the side of Israeli boats,” Coates began on Trevor Noah’s “What Now?” podcast Wednesday.
He continued, “If my mother picks the olive trees and she gets too close to the wall, she might be shot. If my little sister has cancer and she needs treatment because there are no facilities to do that in Gaza and I don’t get the right permit, she might die.”
“And I grow up under that oppression and that poverty and the wall comes down. Am I also strong enough or even constructed in such a way where I say this is too far? I don’t know that I am,” Coates concluded.
Ta-Nehisi Coates was asked about his anti-Israel views on “CBS Mornings.” (CBS News/Screenshot)
Coates acknowledged the sentiment was “human history” and “not unique to Palestine,” comparing it to slavery in the United States.
“The example I think about all the time is like Nat Turner, right? Like Nat Turner launches his rebellion in 1830. This man slaughters babies in their cribs. You know what I mean? Like, and I’ve done this thought experience experiment for myself over and over. Does the degradation and dehumanization of slavery make it so that you can look past something like that?” Coates asked.
He continued, “And I try to imagine and I think I can accurately imagine as much as possible that there were enslaved people, no matter how dehumanized, that said, ‘This is too far. I can’t do that.’ Now, here’s the flip side of it.”
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Coates suggested he may have taken part in the Oct. 7 terror attack if he were in the Gazans’ place. (Photo by Carol Lee Rose/Getty Images for Decolonizing Wealth Project)
Coates mostly addressed the viral CBS News interview with anchor Tony Dokoupil, admitting he was expecting a “fight” on the issue at some point.
“Like I was like, you’ve been, you know, like shadowboxing and waiting for a fight, and you see somebody throw the left that you’ve seen your sparring partner throw like a thousand times by that. And I figured at some point it was going to be a fight. You know, I didn’t know it was going to be right then, but I figured at some point it was going to be a fight,” Coates said.
Last week, “CBS Mornings” anchor Tony Dokoupil confronted him about his anti-Israel sentiment.
“I have to say, when I read the book, I imagine if I took your name out of it, took away the awards, the acclaim, took the cover off the book, publishing house goes away, the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist,” Dokoupil said.
“So then I found myself wondering, why does Ta-Nehisi Coates, who I’ve known for a long time, read his work for a long time, very talented, smart guy, leave out so much? Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it? Why not detail anything of the first and the second Intifada, the café bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits. Is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?” the CBS anchor continued.
Tony Dokoupil, “CBS Mornings” host, was criticized by CBS News leadership for his interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates. (Getty Images; Screenshot/CBS News)
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The Free Press later reported the network held a staff meeting Monday to address staff members offended by Dokoupil’s questions, concluding that they did not meet “editorial standards.”