What’s NOT being talked about is what Coates actually revealed (and by the way I am no fan of his. He is an elegant writer but here, he has a book to sell and he is being (deliberately?) provocative - reparations anyone?). Still, his basic claims are that: Israel is essentially 1. A theocratic state, and 2. An apartheid state. Now, let’s…
What’s NOT being talked about is what Coates actually revealed (and by the way I am no fan of his. He is an elegant writer but here, he has a book to sell and he is being (deliberately?) provocative - reparations anyone?). Still, his basic claims are that: Israel is essentially 1. A theocratic state, and 2. An apartheid state. Now, let’s examine those. In 1948, David Ben Gurion (to keep the peace between religious and secular Jews) allowed the rabbis to control, essentially, what is Israel and who is Jewish. In essence, the theocrats decide. As for apartheid, yes, the Israeli Supreme Court decides on the law with impartiality - but only in Israel, and even then, it discriminates against Palestinians in Jerusalem in property disputes. On the West Bank, it’s open season against the indigenous people vis a vis the ultra orthodox settlers. Israelis - and the Jewish diaspora worldwide - don’t want to talk about this because it means confronting a central conundrum about the Jewish state: is it a theocracy ruled by God (and the self-appointed rabbis and right-wing adherents) or is it the Israel that likes to present itself to the world, a modern, secular technocratic democracy governed by the rule of law? It can’t be both. Coates touched on a raw nerve.
If you listen to him, including today on the Ezra Klein show, he is absolutely uninterested in understanding the causes for the current conditions Palestinians are forced to live under. He says so on several occasions. He sees them as oppressed, akin to blacks in the Jim Crow south, therefore any agency on their behalf is not relevant to the conversation. This is an utterly simplistic argument and had it come from some leftist activist wrapped in a keffiyeh, we would have rightly dismissed it as such. Dokoupil said so much in his interview.
What’s NOT being talked about is what Coates actually revealed (and by the way I am no fan of his. He is an elegant writer but here, he has a book to sell and he is being (deliberately?) provocative - reparations anyone?). Still, his basic claims are that: Israel is essentially 1. A theocratic state, and 2. An apartheid state. Now, let’s examine those. In 1948, David Ben Gurion (to keep the peace between religious and secular Jews) allowed the rabbis to control, essentially, what is Israel and who is Jewish. In essence, the theocrats decide. As for apartheid, yes, the Israeli Supreme Court decides on the law with impartiality - but only in Israel, and even then, it discriminates against Palestinians in Jerusalem in property disputes. On the West Bank, it’s open season against the indigenous people vis a vis the ultra orthodox settlers. Israelis - and the Jewish diaspora worldwide - don’t want to talk about this because it means confronting a central conundrum about the Jewish state: is it a theocracy ruled by God (and the self-appointed rabbis and right-wing adherents) or is it the Israel that likes to present itself to the world, a modern, secular technocratic democracy governed by the rule of law? It can’t be both. Coates touched on a raw nerve.
If you listen to him, including today on the Ezra Klein show, he is absolutely uninterested in understanding the causes for the current conditions Palestinians are forced to live under. He says so on several occasions. He sees them as oppressed, akin to blacks in the Jim Crow south, therefore any agency on their behalf is not relevant to the conversation. This is an utterly simplistic argument and had it come from some leftist activist wrapped in a keffiyeh, we would have rightly dismissed it as such. Dokoupil said so much in his interview.