Loved these reviews. Will read Haber, about whom I’ve always been curious. Relieved by the Coates one, I thought it was going to annoy me! But in fact your arg is very good and sensible
Devoured both reviews (outstanding reads in their own right) as soon as I got your newsletter, I now have to make room for the Haber once I make a dent in my current reading queue.
The Coates review was actually much fairer and less withering than I expected it to be, and I preferred it to the New Yorker review (even though I do enjoy Jay’s perspectives generally). I agree with both of you that it’s become very hard to talk about Ta-Nehisi these days and successfully get past the long shadow of his celebrity as a public intellectual, and (more broadly) the way many highly touted books get publicity through viral interviews and soundbites.
I don't even know where to begin with the Coates review. It's pretty incredible that you so casually brush aside the ideological and political implications of what he writes about Israel. To take just one little example, this is the very first sentence of the essay: "On the last day of my trip to Palestine, I visited Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center." If Coates truly believes that Yad Vashem is located in "Palestine", it has, objectively, immense implications for not just his political outlook, but also for everything that follows in the essay. And this is just the opening sentence. At the very least, this sentence alone either implicates an extremely radical political position that any review would have to reckon with, or a level of imprecision and laziness on the basic descriptive level that would disqualify the author's opinions on the matter entirely.
I'm sure we do! But my point here is not to argue about opinions re: Israel and Palestine. My point is that Coates' descriptions of Israel and Israeli society are a) riddled with falsehoods (such as claiming that "Israelis regularly tour Al-Aqsa, while Palestinians are barred from the Western Wall” when it's exactly the other way around) and b) full of extreme implications such as the opening line of the essay, which cannot be interpreted in any other way than Coates believing Israel should cease to exist. Regardless to each person's opinions about Palestine and/or Israel, I find it hard to understand how you can just brush all these falsehoods and extreme claims/implications aside as unimportant in your review (which, to be sure, is otherwise, as per usual, very good and well-argued!)
unfortunately i can’t really get into this issue publicly without risking my job. (i’m classified by the post as a “journalist”—whether critics are journalists is an open question, but i must submit to the designation—and as such i’m not allowed to express political opinions except within the context of a piece…..)
but one thing i can say, because it’s rooted in my interpretation of the text at hand, is that i do not think that the line in question implies that coates believes israel should not exist
Fully respect your predicament here, no worries. Regarding the opening line of Coates' essay there are two options: 1) He believes - as he explicitly writes - that Yad Vashem is in Palestine. Yad Vashem is, of course, in the state of Israel, so the implication must be that Coates thinks Israel ought to be - is in fact - Palestine. 2) The writing is so unbelievably sloppy - I mean, we are after all talking about the opening sentence of the essay! - that it should merit severe criticism in and of itself. 2 would be a very kind reading, and I suppose one could say that it then falls under the general criticisms of the author's language that you flesh out elsewhere in your review. 1 does, however, fall in line with many of the falsehoods in his essay where he as a rule conflates Israelis with Jews in order to paint his picture of Jim Crow-like segregation in Israel. He claims that Israeli citizenship laws are different for “Jewish Israelis” and non-Jewish ones – but they are not, they apply equally to all Israeli citizens, whether they be Muslim, Arab, Christian, Jewish or Palestinian. He writes that "Jewish Israelis in Jerusalem are citizens of the state; Palestinians in the city are merely 'permanent residents,' a kind of sub-citizenship with a reduced set of rights and privileges." This is, again, not true. Palestinian citizens of Israel have the exact same rights as Jewish Israelis, and they are free to roam Jerusalem as they please. He writes that "The roads and highways we traveled were marked off for license plates of different colors—yellow, used mostly by those who are Jewish, and white with green lettering, used almost entirely by those who are not." This is, once more, not true. Israeli license plates are yellow, regardless to whether the owner of the vehicle is Jewish or Muslim or Palestinian. All the issues he mentions are questions of citizenship, not of ethnicity. But that fact would of course complicate his Jim Crow-thesis. And that leads me to my main gripe with the book (or, the last essay, rather): It is yet another example of rank American cultural imperialism where some American dude goes to the other end of the world for 10 days and concludes that this place is, in fact, structurally completely similar to America, after which he commences to force upon it American historical parallels and squeeze it into an American culture war paradigm. In the book's other essays he at least somewhat manages to stay in his lane.
Without getting into details, I agree with you that this is not the most novel or careful reporting on Palestine and Israel. I think the other two books I mention in the review do a much better job!
Loved these reviews. Will read Haber, about whom I’ve always been curious. Relieved by the Coates one, I thought it was going to annoy me! But in fact your arg is very good and sensible
Devoured both reviews (outstanding reads in their own right) as soon as I got your newsletter, I now have to make room for the Haber once I make a dent in my current reading queue.
The Coates review was actually much fairer and less withering than I expected it to be, and I preferred it to the New Yorker review (even though I do enjoy Jay’s perspectives generally). I agree with both of you that it’s become very hard to talk about Ta-Nehisi these days and successfully get past the long shadow of his celebrity as a public intellectual, and (more broadly) the way many highly touted books get publicity through viral interviews and soundbites.
Enjoyed the Haber review, he’s definitely on my radar now
hope you’ll read him! he deserves to be loved by everyone!!!!
What a pleasure your Haber review was to read. Quickly ordered it once I was finished.
i’m so glad! it’s great!
I don't even know where to begin with the Coates review. It's pretty incredible that you so casually brush aside the ideological and political implications of what he writes about Israel. To take just one little example, this is the very first sentence of the essay: "On the last day of my trip to Palestine, I visited Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center." If Coates truly believes that Yad Vashem is located in "Palestine", it has, objectively, immense implications for not just his political outlook, but also for everything that follows in the essay. And this is just the opening sentence. At the very least, this sentence alone either implicates an extremely radical political position that any review would have to reckon with, or a level of imprecision and laziness on the basic descriptive level that would disqualify the author's opinions on the matter entirely.
We probably disagree about a lot re Palestine and Israel!
I'm sure we do! But my point here is not to argue about opinions re: Israel and Palestine. My point is that Coates' descriptions of Israel and Israeli society are a) riddled with falsehoods (such as claiming that "Israelis regularly tour Al-Aqsa, while Palestinians are barred from the Western Wall” when it's exactly the other way around) and b) full of extreme implications such as the opening line of the essay, which cannot be interpreted in any other way than Coates believing Israel should cease to exist. Regardless to each person's opinions about Palestine and/or Israel, I find it hard to understand how you can just brush all these falsehoods and extreme claims/implications aside as unimportant in your review (which, to be sure, is otherwise, as per usual, very good and well-argued!)
unfortunately i can’t really get into this issue publicly without risking my job. (i’m classified by the post as a “journalist”—whether critics are journalists is an open question, but i must submit to the designation—and as such i’m not allowed to express political opinions except within the context of a piece…..)
but one thing i can say, because it’s rooted in my interpretation of the text at hand, is that i do not think that the line in question implies that coates believes israel should not exist
Fully respect your predicament here, no worries. Regarding the opening line of Coates' essay there are two options: 1) He believes - as he explicitly writes - that Yad Vashem is in Palestine. Yad Vashem is, of course, in the state of Israel, so the implication must be that Coates thinks Israel ought to be - is in fact - Palestine. 2) The writing is so unbelievably sloppy - I mean, we are after all talking about the opening sentence of the essay! - that it should merit severe criticism in and of itself. 2 would be a very kind reading, and I suppose one could say that it then falls under the general criticisms of the author's language that you flesh out elsewhere in your review. 1 does, however, fall in line with many of the falsehoods in his essay where he as a rule conflates Israelis with Jews in order to paint his picture of Jim Crow-like segregation in Israel. He claims that Israeli citizenship laws are different for “Jewish Israelis” and non-Jewish ones – but they are not, they apply equally to all Israeli citizens, whether they be Muslim, Arab, Christian, Jewish or Palestinian. He writes that "Jewish Israelis in Jerusalem are citizens of the state; Palestinians in the city are merely 'permanent residents,' a kind of sub-citizenship with a reduced set of rights and privileges." This is, again, not true. Palestinian citizens of Israel have the exact same rights as Jewish Israelis, and they are free to roam Jerusalem as they please. He writes that "The roads and highways we traveled were marked off for license plates of different colors—yellow, used mostly by those who are Jewish, and white with green lettering, used almost entirely by those who are not." This is, once more, not true. Israeli license plates are yellow, regardless to whether the owner of the vehicle is Jewish or Muslim or Palestinian. All the issues he mentions are questions of citizenship, not of ethnicity. But that fact would of course complicate his Jim Crow-thesis. And that leads me to my main gripe with the book (or, the last essay, rather): It is yet another example of rank American cultural imperialism where some American dude goes to the other end of the world for 10 days and concludes that this place is, in fact, structurally completely similar to America, after which he commences to force upon it American historical parallels and squeeze it into an American culture war paradigm. In the book's other essays he at least somewhat manages to stay in his lane.
Without getting into details, I agree with you that this is not the most novel or careful reporting on Palestine and Israel. I think the other two books I mention in the review do a much better job!