Ta-Nehisi Coates on Israel: ‘I Felt Lied To.’

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2024

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In his new book of essays, “The Message,” Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about a trip he took to Israel and the West Bank in May 2023. “I felt lied to,” he told me. “I felt lied to by my craft. I felt lied to by major media organizations.” Coates’s essay is a searing portrait of Palestinian life under Israeli rule. It has also been criticized for leaving much out: Hamas is never mentioned. Nor is Oct. 7. Nor are any of the peace processes. So I asked him on the show to discuss what he saw when he was there and what he chose to leave outside the frame. Mentioned: “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates Book Recommendations: Justice for Some by Noura Erakat Our American Israel by Amy Kaplan The Unspoken Alliance by Sasha Polakow-Suransky Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Efim Shapiro and Isaac Jones, with Aman Sahota. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. Intanasi Coates' new book, The Message, he writes of a trip he took to Israel and the West Bank in May of 2023.
0:30.0	The Message is composed of four different essays.
0:33.0	One is about a trip to Senegal,
0:35.0	one is about a trip to a place where his book was banned.
0:38.0	But it is the essay about Coates' time in the West Bank,
0:42.0	that really anchors a collection.
0:45.0	Coates by virtue of who he is cannot write a book about Israel and the Palestinians
0:49.6	without it becoming a major media and even ideological event. But his own project, as he tells it, was to go to
0:57.1	this place that he had grown up hearing about. This place that he had been told was too complicated
1:02.1	for him to understand, and to figure out what he thought of it, to take seriously what he would see.
1:08.0	And what he saw shocked him.
1:10.0	This book has been criticized for not being a whole picture and it's not a whole picture.
1:15.6	There is much it is left out even on the Palestinian side that I think could be there, should
1:20.6	be there.
1:21.6	We talk about that. At the same time, when I went to the West Bank, what
1:26.0	Coates saw is what I saw too. Compared to other things you can read, I think Coates
1:30.1	is rendering of how Israel and Palestinians got here, I think it leaves a lot out.
1:36.2	But his rendering of where here is, at least for Palestinians living in the places he visited,
1:42.3	is a lot sharper and less clouded than most of what I've seen.
1:47.4	As always, my email, Ezra Klein Show at nytimes.com. dot com.
1:56.0	Tanasi Coates, welcome to the show.
1:58.0	Thanks for having me back, Ezra.
	...

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