Author Ta-Nehisi Coates openly wondered aloud if he would be “strong enough” to resist the kind of violence exhibited by the terrorist organization Hamas in Israel on October 7 were he to grow up as a Palestinian living in Gaza.
Coates, who recently released a book that accused Israel of practicing a form of apartheid, made his thoughts known during an interview on the What Now with Trevor Noah podcast. Coates wondered if perhaps growing up “under that oppression” would make him so radicalized that he would then commit the kind of violence Hamas exhibited on October 7, wherein over 1,200 men, women, and children were indiscriminately and brutally killed with full malicious intent.
“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,” he said, a sentiment that Trevor Noah and his co-host appeared to empathize with.
During another part of the interview, Trevor Noah even said that America’s founding fathers were like terrorists when they revolted against the British Empire.
“If you remove America’s history … then it’s like, yeah, those people who fought against the British, they were terrorists,” Noah said.
Last week, Coates appeared on CBS Mornings to promote his book, The Message, which criticizes Israel for its handlings of the Palestinian conflict in Gaza and the West Bank. The author even said that Israel practices a form of “apartheid” in the territories it captured following the Six-Day War of 1967. While the interview remained cordial, reporter Tony Dokoupil, a convert to Judaism whose ex-wife lives in Israel with their two children, posed some tough questions to Coates.
“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 to Coates.
The reporter then wondered why a “talented, smart” writer would not at least include some of Israel’s perspective.
“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?” asked Dokoupil.
“Is it because you just don’t believe that Israel, in any condition, has a right to exist?” Dokoupil asked.
Coates said that he did not feel the need to include the Israeli narrative, believing it has been given a fair hearing in the U.S. press.
“I wrote a 260-page book,” Coates said. “It is not a treatise on the entirety of the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis.”
Dokoupil then said Coates “delegitimizes the pillars of Israel” in an effort to “topple the whole building of it.”
“What is it that particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state, that is a Jewish safe place and not any of the other states out there?” Dokoupil said.
“There’s nothing that offends me about a Jewish state,” Coates responded. “I am offended by the idea of states built on ethnocracy, no matter where they are.”
The following Monday, CBS News boss Wendy McMahon and Adrienne Roark, the president of content development for the news division, said that the interview questions did not meet editorial standards.
“We will still hold people accountable. But we will do so objectively, which means checking our biases and opinions at the door,” Roark said. “We are here to report news without fear or favor.”
Tony Dokoupil later apologized to his colleagues.
