Actually, what heard them modeling was a lot of deep listening and learning on both sides, without the usual preoccupation with metaphorical power or "surrender." Neither was trying to undermine the other's conscience and both conceded fair points throughout. Such a beautiful example.
...and they do so with humility and appreciation for others, thus a real conversation, however painful such can be. So grateful for TH-cam, Klein, and Coates.
It doesn't work like that . Water isn't a 1.5 mineral water bottle . Why do leftists can't think I'm a border aspects. It's about infrastructure and control of that infrastructure. The Palestinians in the west bank have better resources than their neighbours in Jordan why compare them to their successful European level nation on the west ?
They want them all dead. Ezra = Biden, Biden = Ezra This war is going to cause Trump to win & lead to WW3. Predicted 1500 years ago by Nastradamis. Within 12 years China/Russia will overtake most of the USA. Split it in three, all because Biden was living in the 1950s. The empire bankrupt is over.
@@leonidkrimsky954Not only is it a fact, Palestinians are not allowed to collect rain water because when they did, they started having water autonomy which doesn’t work for the apartheid occupiers. Look it up. Not difficult to find.
@@PleiadesM45652 It's not a left/right issue. Any sensible right-winger should also be opposed to the excesses of a very misguided version of Zionism displayed in front of our eyes every day.
Ya know, if only those slaves took a bit more initiative in their situation. I mean, what were those poor defenceless white people supposed to do? The black folks were about to murder them all, so of course, they had to *protect themselves*. I have to say, I've been following Israel's atrocities against the Palestinians since oepration Cast lead in 2008. And the comments in all these stories really paint a very different picture from previous escalations. This time it's different. Israel has been exposed for what it has always been.
This guy is lying. The Arabs he is talking about arent citizens so of course they dont have the same rights? Can anyone just come into a country and declare they are equal to citizens... But get this... Arab Israelis have all the same rights because they are citizens.
@@ayadi2671 Israeli Arabs sure do. Google Yahyah Mahamid. Arabs even serve in the Israeli military. There is some confusion as to the rights of citizens vs noncitizens. There was even a Supreme judge that was Arab (and he put a Jewish lawmaker in jail)...... You should research this before you post.
@@jilldent5514😂 if you believe this to be true, then perhaps you haven't asked the Palestinians living in Israel if what you state is true. What we witnessed armed Israeli militiamen (aka NYC-born 20 year olds) doing to a 75 year old Palestinian on our visit to Jerusalem is engraved in my heart and mind. How can you be so dead in your heart and convinced in your mind of something that is empirically untrue?? 😢 it beggars belief. May you come to see reality as it is, not as you hope it to be. Then , and only then, can we all work together towards justice and peace
Wild to watch the opportunity for Klein to pause and self interrogate his own racism, but instead pivot in self defense to what did you think of Oct 7th. One hopes Klein did some soul searching after this interview.
@@treeoflife162 There isn't nearly enough evidence to say the OP is guilty of bias based on their statement. Calling anyone who expects to have a balanced dialog biased is the strategy Coates and the OP is pointing out. You can't use Oct 7 as the reason you won't entertain discussions about Israeli response to it.
@@shauncollins6552 Klein was giving context by including Oct 7, which was not even mentioned by Coates. If you are engaging in one sided dialogue don't whine when the other side does as well.
@@treeoflife162 No he wasn't, he was giving justification. The context is already known so why would he need to give it, they are literally talking about his journey in the region. He's not talking to some random person who's ignorant of each sides arguments. I see/hear this so often when people discuss the Israili government by either conflating criticism of the govt with antisemitism or criticism of their response to bias. Coates could have just as easily said "what about...." to any number of Israeli responses that may seem disproportionate or the Palenstinian perspective that they are being occupied, but he didn't he spoke with empathy and used his words with care - apparently that doesn't matter
Ezra, we've been hearing the Israeli side for decades. I don't care if Ta-Nehisi left out what you think he should have included. We've heard it already. This past year, we've SEEN what the Israeli side thinks, says and does. I don't care about the Israeli side anymore.
Its outrageous and hypocritical that we jews should be lectured by Americans that is an occupied Indian country to criticize Israel as occupying land because it was always jewish and will always remain Jewish!!
@@markstein7905 that's debatable. What is not debatable is humane treatment and justice. "That Which Is Hateful to You, Do Not Do to Your Fellow! That is the Whole Torah" Hillel the Elder
It’s a great interview. I have to say I don’t even really understand Ezra’s criticism, though. The perspective he wanted to see is THE predominant perspective. What he wanted to see, apparently, were the exact same justifications we constantly hear, and have constantly heard for decades.
Completely agree; and what is his excuse for not having spoken about what he has seen, experienced in Palestine many years before this interview- including 'planning time' for Palestinians getting from Point A to Point B before this interview?
Klein has always been fervently pro-Israel. He doesn't seem to care about Palestinians whatsoever. At least, he seems to believe that all that has happened is how it had to play out. Israel, in his mind, has done no serious wrong and Palestinians should stop complaining about it. What makes him uncomfortable about Coates' book is that it doesn't justify Israeli Apartheid.
his own editor frequently compliments his courage and competence. Before this he wrote A Case for Reparations which was also something very few people had tried to address head-on at that level. Also, Coates often talks about not having the courage to write about the Bill Cosby rumors back when he was new to prestige journalism because he didn’t want to jeopardize his first cover story assignment, and how much he regrets it. So learning moral courage has been a large part of his experience coming up in journalism.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is incredible. The throughfulness of his morality had me questioning my own lapses, reinforced by some of Ezra Klein's more unsettling insights. The irritation in so many of the recent interviews with Coates continues to be that he had the nerve to want to center a Palestinian narrative around Palestinians. It almost beggars belief. The interview just sank from the weight of Klein's ever increasing monologues that pushed Coates voice almost completely off the show. Klein bounced from insight to insight on Israel, just reinforcing that whether it's positive or negative the focus must always be on Israel. The rawness of that fact has alluded me, until now
43:00 in Coates does his thing where he dredges the covert racism and lets it hang in the open, and that's effectively the end of any real conversation. There are a lot of other moments where he politely allows Klein to walk back racist framing, but Klein was absolutely cornered here. Klein consistently argues as if the Israelis are capable of nuanced reasoning while Palestinians are not. No matter how he might disapprove of Israeli action post 10/7, he sees Palestinians as lesser.
A black jew hater, very common for today's America. A fool with his own problems applied to a different part of the world. But if we applied leftist logic to the middle east, we end up with The endigenous jewish minority surrounded by Islamic majority who are trying to opress and colonize the jews.
What this author has done is next to suicidal.... Career and living wise..Because of the present troubles in these countries he is getting attention...Certainly his sentiments are not new when everyone already knew the bad stuff about these regions of the world...Being a fba I am smart enough to know that the author has created serious deadly enemies 😊😊
I think it's interesting how Coates is focused on what OUGHT to be and Klein focuses on what IS. Because Klein sees no realistic solution, there's no reason to be outraged. Coates sees the injustice and can't imagine not being outraged.
@@vatzjrit doesn’t. Just a failure of imagination, or historical analysis. The solution is 1 democratic state, reparations, right to return for Palestinians, accountability for geno, etc- that’s the *only* solution that has been proven to work.
@@xx133 agreed in principle. One could argue that two-state may be more realistic given the immense history between the two peoples. Regardless though, an end to the oppression is what’s needed. And I think both scenarios would address that.
Coates “I was concerned with what I don’t know and what I haven’t heard. Palestinian voices have been pushed so far out of the frame. That is the thing that is hard to access.”
@@EarlyRiser71 Do you write “their support of Hamas has made their voices irrelevant” having considered hamas is not in power outside of Gaza. 2.7 million live in the West Bank but their Palestinian voices are still combined with hamas. In Gaza, When was hamas last election? When you wrote your comment, had you considered it was back in 2006. So, how do you quantify the people “support Hamas”? Power doesn’t mean support. Trump was the power in America with most of the voters NOT voting for him. Does that now mean now most Americans supported trump and he is americas voice? It would be wildly ignorant of someone not in America to think that. The same applies to the Palestinians in Gaza. Not even counting the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and those in the West Bank. The fact that you think Palestinians support Hamas is the prime example that Palestinians voices are excluded from this conversation. The media is always using hamas voice as the Palestinian voice and that tricks you into thinking the hamas voice is the Palestinian voice. The worst part is most Americans are woefully ignorant of these facts while speaking as if they are well versed.
@@bleep957 Yes. Hamas is a dictartor terrorist group. That makes my point. People can't say Palestinians support Hamas or the Palestinians have a voice when their leadership are dictators.
@@EarlyRiser71 What's interesting is Israel before the war began said the war would take a few weeks, a few months at best. They said the war would cause Palestinians to rise up in anger at Hamas and dismantle the group themselves. Here we are a year later, and Israel is nowhere near winning the war, and support for Hamas has risen not only in Gaza but in the West Bank. It's weird that in every batman movie, Bruce Wayne's parents are killed and everyone understands why he becomes Batman, a vigilante outside of the law. But Gaza, an open air prison where Palestinian parents/children/siblings/friends are murdered by the IDF, no one understands why Palestinians would turn to terrorism.
Just heard him being interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR this afternoon andIwas blown awaylIn fact,I sat in my car for 20 minutes to hear the whole thing. What a teacher. What a father. What a human being What an American treasure.
To me he is just riding the hot topics of the day to fame - he is one of the least knowledgeable people on the Middle East. Yes there are aspects of apartheid but that’s not some big revelation
What a Jew hater. Who among us are an expert after 10 days? Only Coates. The man who planned his Baltimore stop to be Jew free by scheduling it on a major Jewish holiday. Judenfrei?
Ezra's question if Ta-Nehisi spent time with the Israeli Right is like asking, why didn't he consider spending time with the KKK and segregationists during Jim Crow.
It’s a fair question for a journalist to ask since journalists SHOULD want to examine all sides to tell a full and fair story. Coates’s answer made it clear why he isn’t approaching this as a journalist or interested in a full story because only half the story is already constantly told. He approached it as a human wrestling with what he’s seeing and whose voice is missing in mass media, which is an excellent humane choice. I think it was a fair question that got us to a powerful and challenging answer to both humanity and to media. They both handled it so well.
What he does need to do is understand who is a citizen and who isnt. He write a book saying Israel is apartheid when Arabs work and live all over Israel and have equal rights. He is talking about NON citizens not being able to use certain roads. He says they are for Jews but this is a lie (or ignorance). The roads are for CITIZENS. Maybe he wants to make one state but that is really not up to him since he would be forcing this on the Arabs. Best not to write a book when you dont understand facts.
@cionarouse6758 agreed! If the aim is to illuminate the uninformed, I think a useful context would be to present the Right/Centerist perceived reality. I think TC pushed back on EK calling it the Israeli Far Right but Hamas Extremists, which is also fair, so why not compare the banality of the realities of BOTH sides to present the situation. Most Americans are only ever presented with the Israeli Idealism vs. Palestian hard-line religious extremism, which inevitably push them to the more measured point of view.
They should be grateful because after their many attempts of genocide toward Jewish population not only they are still alive and multiply but also get water from those “under-humans” they wanted to exterminate (and still do) in the first place. Colonialists are islamists on the land by the way because their mosk is built on top of Jewish temple, not the other way around.
How about Hamas invested in infrastructure instead of tunnels that not one civilian Gazan is allowed to shelter in? Desalination plants instead of weapons to kill Israelis? Healthcare for ALL, not just those affiliated with Hamas.Education for a future instead of brainwashing to do the IRI's dirty work.Billions have gone into Gaza, from Qatar, from the IRI- what have they done for Gazans?????
Sarah “my vagiiiiii na” Silverman. Honestly I always found her to be extremely unfunny. I don’t get why all these Zionists get super fascist about Israel. Like if my home country became that cruel to another ppl I’d want to help fix it instead of shielding and excusing them at every turn like too many Jewish Americans unfortunately now do
a lot of hasbara, bothsidesing and understated racism from Klein but in very a nice, inoffensive, liberal way. I think Coates caught him out a few times, and I think it underpins the crux of the whole issue. You cannot act, both historically speaking or in the current asymmetrical power dynamic, as if both sides have had the same agency. Klein is a revisionist and he talks nostalgically of an Israel of yesterday, as if it was any less racist or violent which then allows the underlying assumption that Israel was somehow forced into its current state of affairs when in reality it was always violently opposed to the two state solution and has been constantly annexing territory since its inception.
The Palestinians had huge agency throughout history - they were expelled from Jordan after Black September and expelled from Lebanon after the Lebanese Civil War. The consequences they suffer is due to their inability to maintain a state without sabotaging nearby states. Even after Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2006, Gazans have shown they cannot be trusted to govern themselves because they elected Hamas. Israel always being opposed to the 2 state solution is hilariously ahistorical as well. They accepted the UN Partition Plan in 1948 that would have had an independent Palestinian state. Palestinians didn't and waged war against Israel. Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, who waged war against Israel multiple times with the intention of destroying the state. It's only the Palestinians who still haven't been able to accept the existence of Israel - when did Arafat ever agree to any diplomatic two state solutions? Vs how many attempts were there at negotiating a 2 state solution by Israel and the US? And again - constantly annexing. Why did they give back the land they conquered during the 6 Day War? Why did they offer the Golan Heights back to Syria? Why did they only conquer land in the 1948 war when it was being used by Arabs to attack Israel? You have 0 understanding of the basics of the conflict.
what absolute revisionist history crap. 6 ENTIRE Muslim nations invaded Israel the same year it was established and still lost despite outnumbering the Jews 67:1 by population. I don't really care about Israel, but this pseudo-intellectual garbage spamming buzzwords like "asymmetrical power dynamic" is really getting really tired. the absolute insane justification of religious extremism from Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas by "secular progressives" is as ironic as it is disturbing...
Yes! The entire podcast felt like "Israel is racist BUT...". He always says he agrees with him, but he always keeps a backdoor open. Because ultimately it is not only an intelectual question but also an emotional one. Are you actually ready to let go of the zionist project? I have the feeling Klein tries to say all the right things, but deep down he cannot let go of zionism.
@@seethruseethru Palestinians have massive agency. They've been handed a country 5 times and rejected it every time. Without even a counter offer. The reason for this is Palestinians want to destroy Israel and murder every Jew in the Middle East. They'll never accept a 2 state solution. Western liberal ideas of racism and multiculturalism are completely irrelevant in this situation when multiculturalism is literally a death sentence. I'm getting bored of progressives that just want to hand wave this inconvenient truth away because it doesn't suit their world view.
nearly 20min in and theyre still talking about how movement restrictions are horrific......... its a bit like discussing how laundry day was a nightmare at dachau. in this sense, its difficult to see the goal. you want the palestinian voice to be about the nuisance aspect of apartheid? these,.... are not the main lie you were told about israel. dachau was not a place were laundry day was a nightmare of waiting for a dryer or not having enough soap powder. the west bank is not a place were arabs are mistreated it is a land being slowly ethnically cleansed as it has been for 70 years in plans drawn up in the 1920's to take the land from the inhabitants and give it to european people. thats the voice not heard. in fact your not hearing it as you speak, we've seen so much deliberate unhearing that its just part of normal. its normal not to mention the atrocity of taking a peoples land to givee to somebody else, lets just never ever face that fact and talk around it like its not really there, until everybody has completely lost touch with the reality.
@@Macumber773 There are military checkpoints since around the 1990’s maybe a bit earlier, that were put there due to the first and then second intifada. Terror attacks coming from the West Bank into Israel became a daily occurrence. In the 1990’s there were a string of suicide bombers blowing themselves on buses killing civilians left right and centre. That’s when the checkpoints became far stricter then ever before. But it’s “not in the scope of this book” as is said throughout this entire interview. The occupation in itself is indeed a shit show (the civilian part), but having checkpoints and limited access to Israel is a security necessity, with all due respect. But this interviewee, his book and this and other interviews are so off base, so skewed, that it’s just unbelievable the praise this guy gets. It is so off the charts, while being over nothing, really. The occupation is one thing, the heavy handed military treatment of Palestinians is another, violent settlers are yet another (they are a minority of the actual group known as settlers, who are not all there due to masianic extremist beliefs) and Israel defending itself from muslim extremism is yet another. While all these happen together at the same time and have some synergies, they are far fffaarrr more nuanced and complex then you will ever learn from this interview or his book. It is a narrative that literally projects black american history and forces itself, not so neatly might I add, onto a completely different conflict, area and peoples. This book is not in service of fighting injustices, it is just muddying the already muddy water even further with unnecessary sentimental observations that are nothing new, and using it to make a case for african americans who believe what this writer believes. That man has been free riding jewish history for quite some time now, as with his reparations piece, and he’a making a name for himself as part of the zeitgeist of talking about anything and everything as if it is a bite sized Tik-Talk. It has become majorly profitable to have no actual credibility or expertise in what one’s writing about. That’s the culture nowadays. The New-York Times is no different and wants a piece of that “superficial” pie. So there you have it.
@@MmmAaaMmmAaa..__.. I appreciate the effort you put into answering my post. Thank you. My question was for "laundry day was a nightmare at dachau" guy and his one sided ta nahisis coates-esque BS. I agree with everything you wrote and would only add that the palestinian leadership, whether it be the pa, hamas, iran... are doing everything they can to ensure that the occupation continues and its grip tightens... and 82% of palestinians in the Judea and Samaria still support hamas and over 70% approve of the 10/7 genocide. So, the question is are those 82% victims of extreme indoctrination, of such low intelligence as not to understand what's happening, or do they support it. I have realistic perspective - they support it. They want the river to the sea AND 10/7 for ALL Js in Israel.
Ezra saying he experienced everything TaNehisi felt when he was in Palestine , but then he turns around and tries to justify this same system when he brings up the suicide bonbers
What is with you people? He's not justifying it. He simply states the reality that it completely shut off any appetite for peace on the Israeli side. And it put Israel on a conveyor belt to an appartheid state. Does it justify it? No. Ultimately it's Israel and Israeli citizens that are responsible for what their state and the society is doing. But just as it's helpful to understand the origins of nazism in Weimar Republic, it's useful to understand the origins of appartheid in Israel. That's all. We don't have to admonish anyone to talk about it.
And then you are going to present to us your wise realistic solution of dealing with suicide-bobmers situation that doesn’t include genocide of Jewish people,, right?
Coates' response there was perfect - if your hope for a deal, if your promise of a democracy was undone by violence, then it was never real - _(and my interpretation of the natural conclusion is that)_ only an imaginary carrot for compliance
Read his book. The audio as his narration is a gift. So are the piles of tears you will shed as he brilliantly pulls all of your humanity out, onto the floor for you to wade into. What a man. I hope he never dies. Wakonda forever!!❤
Yes, absolutely! Everyone needs to buy his books so he can make a shit ton of money!!! It's just amazing that after 10 days in Israel, the man is an expert.
“In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience." -Kwame Ture Violence is harped on, but Palestinians tried nonviolence and were met with death. Kleins insistence on both sidesing this is gross and I'm glad Coates called him on it even if weakly.
@@DITBC The accords you mention as proof on nonviolence happened between 1993 and 2008. Take a look at this list of Palestinian suicide attacks between 1993 and 2008: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_attacks
Ironically, the wise quote you brought only serves to strengthen the position of the Israelis. Palestinian terrorism towards Jews goes back long before occupation and the founding of Israel. If you go back and read the history of the conflict,the Jewish leadership in British mandate of Palestine sought to compromise with the Palestinians. The Arab leadership chose violence time and again towards the Jewish community, literally seeking to eradicate and exterminate them (1948, 1967, 1973, and of course today) The occupation and excess force that Israel uses to defend itself is precisely the result of the other side “not having a conscience” towards it. If Israel lacked the conscience you claim they lack, the Arab Israeli conflict would have been long over - Israel doesn’t lack means. Rather its aims are quite different than its actual genocidal enemies.
@@maxbalata5916lol.. Great March of Return a few yrs ago and Much of the early part of the 1st Intifada was almost entirely peaceful - both met with extreme violence and oppression
Truth? Coates has spent his entire career ignoring inconvenient truths and trading in glib tropes. Truth requires discovery, self reflection, and insight. And what was Coates reflection and discovery? What was his insight? "Duh, this is just like America". Moron.
This whole Interview Ezra just want to find a reason to blame Palestinians for their own oppression, occupation and genocide. He want to find a reason to say”see, it’s at least a little bit justified, Palestinians fought against their colonizers and there for they deserve their suffer at least a little bit.” He doesn’t say it but this is what he implies with his question constantly Why Ta-Nehisi didn’t ask the colonizers why they’re colonizations was justified, when the answer is those people don’t matter, there is no justification.
Must be so easy being a simpleton and having such a distorted naive view of the world. You should read "The protocols of the Elders"! That is the book that will really open your eyes about your ideology. If you want to find the oppressor there is an easy metric, is he jewish. Maybe some of the Nasi literature would also be interesting to you. Mein Kampf and the such would be a great addition to your library.
@@Evan-rm3zmsee how you jump to insult and “ YOU ARE ANTISEMITIC” rhetoric. If you got a point explain it, do not result to insult and empty rhetoric to scare and deter people from conversation.
@@spitezorwow, some nice titles you got there to give people, huh?! How about some real ones -- for example, a US taxpayer stakeholder whose tax money is spent on a senseless Arab-Israeli war because Israel can't do jack shit on their own and have to rely on the hard-earned money of a US taxpayer Coates. Sit down.
A good interview, very glad that Ta-Nehisi Coates is able to speak up for himself and challenge Klein. "You take that as different to Netanyahu?" really just got to the heart of it in that moment.
This! The absolute moral center of the interview. Leading up to this point you could tell Ezra was becoming more verbose in a slightly defensive way as he struggled with the various moral ironies of his unspoken positions, and then boom, suddenly it came to light, explicit and undeniable. And Coates just lets it hang there in the air for all to see.
I've lived in Tel Aviv, as an artist-in-residence for a year. While the people who brought me were very kind, the majority of the culture I can only describe as what I imagine Germany was like in the late 1930s. I've lived in a lot of countries to compare, and I don't believe that it's hyperbolic. I could include many examples, including being strip searched for humiliation. Police on the street demanding I empty my ATM for the man who had just hit me with his car. Forced religious observance, in every daily event. Being screamed at to get out of a man's store, because I dared to make a face about George Bush being on television: "Any man who kills Iraqis is a GOOD man!" Being grilled by strangers on the street, demanding to know my 'motivations' for being in Israel: "Yes, I have a RIGHT to know! This is MY country!" (Spoiler: I was sitting on the porch of the apartment I was renting, having a cup of tea). A giant bomb on display at the shopping-mall, as if an object of worship. Military jets breaking the sound-barrier at all hours, as a show of intimidation. Children with machine-guns on their back and a Hello Kitty phone in their hands. On and on, the most hatefully propagandized culture I have ever seen. And yes, they are racist. I've had many dear Jewish colleagues and close friends in my life - many of whom express the same feelings about Israel - and there is nothing antisemetic in my world view. I live in Germany now, and have spent many years studying the holocaust. From my experiences in Israel, current events, and my study of the holocaust, I am convinced that history is repeating itself, and that israel is now the abuser.
Thank you for sharing your own individual and personal experience, although as someone who has also spent time in Tel Aviv, sorry but I doubt the veracity of your account. Love the "some of my best friends are Jews' BS. Not very original as an excuse though for the biased Jew hate you express. As we all know, we can read ANYTHING on social media. But of course since the Jew hate sentiments you express fit the Jew haters' conformtional bias, they're easy to believe.
@@michal-e2xdo you have a counter argument? I mean, at least trot out the “but there are non-Jewish citizens that can vote” because that makes Americans, especially those with a bit more melanin, laugh. No one is forcing Israel to build settlements. That is clear and unambiguous provocation as much as Poland was.
"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." Why cant Mr.Klien ask that question about the MSM coverage of this conflict. What is it of such paramount concern when Coates presents the other side for a rare change.
Because Ezra Klein, as liberal as he is, comes from the assumption that the Israeli narrative is normative and the Palestinian narrative is exotic and suspect, and with Ta-Nehisi Coates he had to confront the idea of Israeli amorality-- if not immorality. If he were to ask the MSM what they are leaving outside the frame, this conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates would be very different, more like Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks with Ilan Pappe or Norman Finkelstein.
Because by him asking Coates those questions, he's asking what many Americans wonder, and thereby making the conversation accessible to them. It gives more power and depth to Coates perspective.
@@TheDeanelectric Coats knows what his message is and what it isn't. He doesn't" need Ezra to hijack his narrative to include sympathy for an apartheid state. We get that every day from corporate news outlets.
I think Ezra over analyzed, nuanced and and intertspected himself into meaninglessness on Israel. Its like saying. "Well, Hitler did do some decent things for people, and he did face unique adversity, but sure, he's very evil." Like it's true-ish enough to academically discuss, but what's the point of delivering that truth? Sounding smart, but saying nothing. It's like thearpy speaks for politics, and I'm super happy that Coates can hear it and calls it out too.
@@alifarah9that’s lazy and reductive. The two most staunchly antizionist people I know are Jews with ostensibly Jewish names. One started to deprogram after a Birthright trip at 18, the other was straight up raised by kind and honest antizionist parents so he was impervious to the propaganda from the get go. Ezra chooses to remain in his swamp of cognitive dissonance because it’s comfortable and it affords him a certain level of systemic and cultural power.
@@HazelWorldwide Exceptions to a rule don't disprove the rule. Vast majority of Jews both in Israel and United States not only support the war, but in Israel at least, polls showl most don't think sufficient firepower was used. So given these stats I don't think it's completely out there to claim an Ezra Klein harbors genocidal sympathies.
@sn3176 There are a number of tells and moments where Coates has to slow down and formulate a way to push back without offending Klein too much, but this was the biggest one. So many times Klein would put absurd or racist framing forward and Coates would politely allow him to retreat to a safer, defensible position. It's just this time he stumbled too obviously.
@@pblogger9065 Israel has been occupying Gaza before Hamas. Hamas was the result of their occupation. If Klein would just concentrate on the crux of the issue, he would not come off as bad. Instead, he has to point terrorism brought out by an occupied people.
Fascinating interview. Not so much on the big topics that many of us know a fair amount about by now. But moreso the conflict of how things get framed by Ezra that Coates reflexively, morally pushes back on. Not because Ezra is bad faith here, but bc he's fallen victim of having too much *nuance* while losing the big picture. This is the original sin of the entire issue: to nuance it to death at the expense of actual morality and truth, and to ultimately create a permission structure that misled the entire western, US led global apparatus (including the media) where the natural outcome was to co sign a genocide.
I think you're making a false equivocation with South Africa. Why is Palestine so much smaller than it was in 1948? I'll tell you why, the Palestinians started several wars with Israel with the intent of pushing them into the ocean. If you don't believe that, just go look at how the Palestinians put it themselves in the era. The problem for Palestine is they lost those wars they started. And in each defeat, lost land. Then if you want to further appreciated just what kinds of victims the Palestinians are look what they did to poor Jordan in Black September. If that doesn't do it for you the misadventures of Yassier Arafat's PLO will. If you want to make the case that Palestine is done with that kind of activity what the heck was last October about anyway?
@@AndrewTubbiolo You failed to understand the interview and the comment. your comment just seeks to justify settler colonialism and the current genocide. Israel was created through ethnic cleansing, every action that the palestinians have taken since the inception of Israel was to try and take back what was stolen from them, you cannot sit here and try and preach morality to the oppressed and dictate to them how they should fight for their freedoms.
The amount of respect shown during this conversation is a breath of fresh air. Instead of yelling and screaming like most of the media, these two men were able to actually listen to each other. Thank you to you both.
Klein sounds really jaded. Hmmn. I don't know what to think about that. But, Coates resonates with every uneducated fibre of my being. Sometimes, you know what's right and just can't let go. I let go years ago. I won't be doing that again. Not now.
Really 😂 he didn’t spend little to no time in Isreal , doesn’t understand the history and is full of hyperbolic language , does he know what Hamas has done and continues to do , does he understand Islamist ideology … no ! Dont be a useful idiot
@@JohnnyRingo-c5v Here's the thing, Hamas is a terrorist group, Israel is a government. I can't think of any time in history where people wasted time criticizing a terrorist group. Like terrorist groups listen to criticism and change their ways. They are usually delegitimized among the population who know longer require violence to advocate for their interests, they are given the right to voice their opinion for change, and usually they have a lot to lose in civil society to turn to violence. So the terrorist group either disappears as they fail to find recruits or if they are truly interested in helping their people the more moderate of them go into politics like what happened with the IRA in Northern Ireland. But criticizing Hamas, waste of time... you just want a scape goat for why the Israeli government hasn't achieved peace and security for the Israeli people.
Yeah Klein does sound jaded. Like he doesn't see Israel as a democracy, and basically says it won't be a democracy for the foreseeable future. That's a pretty pessimistic view, especially since the Israeli/Palestinian conflict directly affects US credibility and leadership in the world. Surely one can creatively come up with ideas how things could get better, if only for America's sake. I do get that he's Jewish and he's probably seen a lot and lost a lot of hope, but he's also a Jewish American. I don't see why he has to lose hope in America.
In college, I had a roommate whose mother was Israeli when 9/11 happened and the Second Intifada was going on. One memory that always stuck with me was overhearing a conversation he was having with his then girlfriend while watching the news regarding some attack in Israel and I heard him say 'We just need to kill enough of them until it isn't a problem anymore.' That moment has always stuck with me. I'd not before heard such an open and matter-of-fact expression of racial hatred. This man has since gone on to become a consultant at a defense think tank. He advises our government on defense policy. Since Oct 7 I've thought about that remark a lot.
Imagine being born in Israel: you’ve grown up where knife attacks, hit-and-runs, suicide bombings, and rocket strikes happen every year. You’d been lucky not to lose someone close from a radical Arab. Then comes the Intifada (yet another one), with crowds chanting for the death of your people. And on top of that, you witness 9/11 unfold before your eyes. I don’t know your past roommate, and I want to believe he remained a decent man. But if you were that person, with that history, do you think, in that moment of weakness, when the towers fell, you wouldn’t have had a horrid, violent thought?
I am part-Israeli I have a feeling you have massively misunderstood what he was saying over the phone. These people doesnt mean Arabs (20% of 1967 border population) or Palestinians (population has doubled since 2001) he probably meant terrorist Jihadist groups like Hamas.
@@AtomizedMass The towers fell because America has tried to control the world. I was horrified by 9/11. I didn't have confusion about why it happened. The very tragic part is if we had spent all of that money on goodwill, the outcome would have had to have been better.
Coates is an intellectual giant compared to Ezra and that was clear in this conversation. Ezra is really frigging smart but has a lot of emotional ties no doubt to Israel and that clouds his ability to see facts clearly. Telling he won’t use the word “apartheid” for example though basically describing that is what he saw. Also telling he holds Netenyahu in a league different to Hamas and still maintains, contra to all the evidence that Israel does not target civilians (what an utter contradiction too - apartheid itself is targeting civilians, let alone the bombings etc).
highlighted a kind of moral and intellectual distance between him and Ezra. Coates wasn’t interested in dancing around words like “apartheid”-even if he didn’t use the term outright, his descriptions aligned with what many understand that system to be. It’s that refusal to obscure the truth that makes his perspective so compelling. As you noted, Ezra’s emotional ties to Israel seemed to shape his framing. His reluctance to embrace terms like “apartheid” reflects that tension between what he knows intellectually and what he feels emotionally. It’s clear he’s struggling to reconcile Israel’s actions with his own sense of right and wrong-especially when it comes to Netanyahu’s policies and the impact on civilians. I agree with your point about the contradiction in how Ezra distances Israel from civilian targeting, despite overwhelming evidence of harm. This kind of selective framing is part of what Coates seemed to push against throughout the discussion-making sure that moral clarity isn’t lost in the weeds of justification. What did you think of the way Coates handled those moments? Was there anything you felt could have been explored even more deeply?
Respectfully can you share some points about why you think this? I’m trying to see it more clearly. My understanding is that he had settled on Israel being immoral and undemocratic. It seemed like the main argument between them was that as a journalist he felt it important to represent the opposing views to balance historic representation. He even says that because Coates doesn’t do this in his book he’s concerned that people will discredit his ideas, of which it seems the majority Klein agrees with?
@@MuiltiLightRider Yeah, I'm sure there's no actual poeple in those schools, hospitals, orphanages and places of worship. And taking away their access to food, water and medicine won't cause any civilian deaths🙄Targeting "civilian infrastructure" is still a war crime. According to the Institute for Middle East Understanding: "The Dahiya Doctrine is an Israeli military doctrine that calls for the use of massive, disproportionate force and the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure.… While it became official Israeli military doctrine after Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon, Israel’s military has used disproportionate force and targeted Palestinian, Lebanese, and other civilians since Israel was established in 1948 based on the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians, including dozens of massacres to force them to flee for their lives. "
Ezra is trying SO hard to justify WHAT Israel has been doing all the time from b4 it got the statehood. IT'S nonsense WHAT Ezra is trying to do. Israel has NOT CHANGED AT ALL IT HAS IN FACT BECOME WORSE IF THERE IS ANYTHING WORSE THEN WORST... Thank you Ta-Nehisi for being SO HONEST &to the point & standing YOUR ground.
Coates is just as bad but more subtle about it. His sympathy with Palestinians stops as soon as the Palestinians try to defend themselves. His morality is childish. Would he condemn the Jews who fought back against the Nazi regime? Of course he wouldn't. So he's racist too. He accepts and parrots the Israeli propaganda about October 7th. Is he a dumb dupe? Constantly pretending he didn't know and was lied to? Doesn't that get old fast? There's very little between the two of them.
I only knew a fraction of this. Thank you for this enlightening interview. I’m glad it was an hour. The 10m interviews do not give this topic enough depth. Please take our politicians on this “field trip” of Israel and Palestine
They’ll only do that if Trump wins, and will blame leftists for Biden’s inaction. The decades after this war ends won’t allow liberals to get off the hook with their completely unfounded belief that Biden is somehow holding the Israelis back.
They will but it will be more for the fact that they realize that an entire generation sees them as propaganda at this point. They are the last to join the party. Name a war that NYT did not support......exactly. Unfortunate because mainstream media serves an important role but to say that trust has been broken is an understatement
I'm a therapist who works largely with couples or families. Often with clients with abuse trauma. I think we all go into this with our own lenses to help explain it, and this is mine. I keep thinking about the difference between abuse by malignant figures and abuse by those who've been abused. Trauma will create victims and survivors, but we aren't good grappling with the fact that trauma can and will create perpetrators of trauma as well. We want to picture oppressors and abusers as flat power-hungry characters. We forget there can be reason for the reason people become perpetrators. This isn't justification for violent retaliation or using coercive tactics due to real fears. If anything it should be a clarion call toward non-violent methods if one wants lasting peace and security. Each time we as people, nations, or states seek out violence we are creating trauma. And that trauma will help make victims into perpetrators in the long run. We will doom ourselves if our answers are found largely in bullets and bombs. I have no clue what should be done in israel/palestine. Even in my small field, the works I do is slow and complicated and it's by no means formulaic. But I can't see how the current course will lead to anything remotely looking like peace. I would find it hubristic to assume i know, being completely outside this conflict. But my gut says, if peace and safety are truly wanted, a story outside of force and control has to be imagined and believed in by those who are in this mess.
'I can't see how the current course will lead to anything looking like peace' - I think it should be clear to everyone at this point that this is by design. The Israelis subject Palestinians to conditions they are bound to resist. That resistance gets shown in Western press as a pretext for Israel's insane reprisals. The US and Israel helped Hamas take power for a reason. The Israelis ultimately want it all.
i daresay peace & safety are not even tertiary purposes down there - the primary ones are some voice in some flaming bush , some end-of-world dream , honor , justice , pride ... and land and water .
Yes it’s difficult for me sometimes to feel empathy for the colonists but then I recall what I’ve read about the conditions that existed for them in Europe and russia which were the genesis of the Zionist project and even though it doesn’t justify them harming innocent people, it contextualizes it.
Why do interviewers want to act like the book is a history lesson on the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The book is about writing and witnessing. He wrote about things he saw that he always felt he received one sided stories about regarding the sitiation. The "what-about-isms" are the deflections noone needs 🤦🏾♂️
I think that is a naive interpretation. He knows he has a huge platform and that because of that- for uninformed Americans- his is the voice of authority.
@@leslieacoca5876except these news sources have done nothing to educate on the topic. only obfuscate. which is the crux of why coates says to bring more palestinian voices to the forefront. as it is their genocide and resistance being discussed. the west is so deeply in the pocket of the zionist project that somehow a year in they’re just now only considering the possibility of expanding their understanding. after hundreds of thousands have died
This is fascinating, I'm a black South African in my late 30's & these stories are identical to what my parents tell me Apartheid South Africa was like. The everyday stuff, not what happened when Black Africans were confronting the regime. I can only imagine what your everyday Palestinian is going through, not even talking about the current Genocide in Gaza. South Africa has changed a lot since Apartheid fell, especially with regards to people's general freedoms, economically the situation is still harder for most Blacks Africans but no one asks us for documents or says we can use this or that public or state facility. There are white separatist groups who hide behind "culture". There are still white South Africans who want to be "left alone" to practice their brand of "Apartheid" in whatever enclave and what I'm getting from this interview is what should the black response to this ideology be? Do we force everyone to integrate or must we be happy with the fact that we(Democratic and Constitutional South Africa) have 99.9% percent of our country. Is there a justification for racial separation?
but there is a crucial difference: Apartheid South Africa still needed its Black workers. Since having taken in many immigrants from Russia and the Ukraine, Israel, however, no longer needs its Palestinian workers, and thus can now afford to commit a genocide, which South Africa could not do at that time.
There are lots of justifications, all of them based in logic and morality that I find repulsive. Did Balkanization bring peace, though? It’s a serious question for Africa where so many national lines have nothing to do with the people that live there.
White South African here. I'm 55 now and one of the minority of whites who grew up under Apartheid and was bitterly opposed to it from a young age, thanks to my older, very politicized, sister making me aware of its horror at a young age. I'm no hero. I was too much of a coward to refuse when I was conscripted into the Apartheid army, because that meant 6 years of jail, but I did have a crisis of conscience after completing basic training and basically mutinied, so they took away my rifle and just shuffled me around doing makework jobs (unit artist, photocopy clerk) for 2 years, which was surprising. But the Apartheid regime was in its dying days and I think they were treating objectors with kid gloves by then as a PR effort. Anyway, I knew a fair number of Zionist Jewish people growing up. My family is Catholic, but my aunt married into a Jewish family and my extended family had a lot of respect for the Jewish community. My grandparents took me to a holocaust memorial exhibition in my early teens. One of my friends actually went and served in the IDF and another spent a year in a kibbutz. Just like a lot of American Zionists today my Jewish friends and family were liberal-except-for-Palestine, opposing South African Apartheid but seeing nothing wrong with settler-colonialism and Apartheid in Israel. And the narrative I was most exposed to in my younger days was the one Zionists have inculcated into Western Jewish children from a young age for decades, in which Israelis are the victims, Palestinians are responsible for their own oppression because they have refused every reasonable settlement of the conflict that would bring peace and mutual prosperity, and Jews from everywhere in the world have every right to settle Palestine (and violently displace and dispossess Palestinians in the process) because of a claim from antiquity. And that shaped my views on Israel/Palestine at the time and led me to a perspective of both-sidesism and "it's complex". But after Apartheid ended when I was a young adult (20 years old) many of the freed struggle veterans who were my personal heroes exposed me to a far more straightforward point of view, in which the foundation of Israel was a straightforward case of settler-colonialism that involved the violent expulsion of native people from their land, followed by continuous dispossession and oppression for decades that would end up at a state that was indifferentiable from South African Apartheid where it mattered. It also made a big impression on me that Jewish veterans of the anti-Apartheid struggle like Ronnie Kasrils were avowedly anti-Zionist too. I made a bunch of new friends in young adulthood when Apartheid ended too, including American political scientists over here to study the relationship between the Afrikaans banking sector and the Apartheid regime, and left-wing, anti-Zionist Jewish South Africans. And its largely from them that I started learning a much more accurate and relevant history of the region. I've always been a voracious reader and they exposed me to whole books on the history including scholarship going all the way back to antiquity and covering claims about the Jewish connection to the land from thousands of years ago, the claim that Palestinians have no such ancient connection and the claim that most of the ancestors of modern Jews left because they were violently expelled in antiquity. All of which turn out to be false, when you actually read the scholarship and the extensive evidence it draws from. At no point in history ancient or modern were all the Jews living there violently expelled, only significant minorities. Most of the diaspora was from voluntary emigration. There is extensive evidence that most Palestines (along with Druze, southern Syrians and other groups) have ancient Levantine ancestry among the Canaanites, preceding the first Hebrew states and indeed, the Israelite ethnic identity in antiquity. "Arab" as applied to Palestinians is a cultural attribution applied to many people the Arabs conquered starting with the conquests of the 7th c. and does not indicate signficant ancestry in Arabia. Most Palestinians probably have some ancient Jewish ancestors that converted during successive Muslim and Christian conquests, something that early Zionists like Herzl and Ben-Gurion actually believed and stated (we know this thanks to the work of Israel's so-called "new historians"). The UN partition plan was not even in the ballpark of a fair offer and Palestinians had every reason and right to reject it. Ben Gurion deliberately used the 1948 war as an excuse to engage in ethnic cleansing and territorial expansion and thats why he didn't want the Arabs to accept the plan, as contemporary historians have exposed. As for claims of Zionists prior to 1948 "legally buying" large tracts of land under the British mandate, it was widespread practice to buy large tracts of land from rich Arab and Turkish landlords then kick out all of the Palestinian's living there to make way for exclusively Jewish settlements. Since most Palestinians at the time were landless fellahin its no wonder that they rioted, eventually forcing the British to restrict further ZIonist immigration. If that happened anywhere else and involved any other people we'd call it what it was - settler colonialism and racist segregation. The legality of the purchases is irrelevant. Slavery was legal for centuries. I learned that countless other claims about the history of modern Israel after its founding were false or severe misrepresentations, twisted to serve ethnic nationalist aims. Israel was not a plucky little nation only ever being attacked, never the aggressor. From its foundation it aggresively sought opportunities to violently expand its borders and dispossess ever more Palestinians. One egregious example of massive distortion is how the 1967 six-day war is portrayed as one started by its Arab neighbours. As a matter of unequivocal fact Israel started the 1967 war. It was the aggressor. Of course, those steeped in rationalizing narratives will cry "but the Arabs were building up an invasion force on its borders! It was pre-emptive defence!". And that is false. Nasser announced that the Straits of Tiran, Egyptian territorial waters, would be closed to Israeli shipping, which it actually had the right to do under international law, then moved troops to the border to *defend* Egypt from Israeli attack. Why? Because only a few years earlier, when Egypt did something similar, Israel had invaded Egypt (again, the aggressor). Even communiques from the US intelligence services from the time that were shared with the Israelis, released under FOI requests, show that the Americans did not believe that Nasser intended to attack. The Israeli attack on Egypt triggered a newly signed defense agreement with Jordan so Jordan was forced to attack Israel in support of Egypt. Modern liberal Zionists trot out this same history as if it vindicates Israel's aggressive territorial expansion and oppression when the exact opposite is true. And by the time the second intifida broke out, I'd seen rigorous and detailed analyses by respected jurists of international law showing that Israel's occupation of the Golan heights and the West Bank and its perpetual siege of Gaza, along with the de facto status of Israeli Arabs as second class citzens it terms of both law and administrative discrimination, made Israel uneqivocally an Apartheid state in international law, as defined under the Crime of Apartheid in the Rome Statute, a law which has been ratified by 179 nations globally. When I was young it was Jewish friends and extended family, who themselves had grown up steeped in Zionist myths, who shaped my views on the conflict in a way that cast Zionism in a positive light. So its curious that in the last decade it is overwhelmingly my Jewish friends online that have filled and continue to fill my social media feed with constant unrelenting evidence that what I was exposed to in my youth was self-serving mythology. That the Zionist movement was an ethnic supremacist movement from the very beginning, since from the very beginning it premised its desire to create a home for Jews where they would be free from their centuries-long oppression on the violent displacement, dispossession and oppression of another people. I also came to understand that many people I know who still call themselves "liberal" Zionists in the west and decry people like Netenyahu (as if its not the founding rationale and decades-long violent conquest and oppression that's the problem, just the far-right in Israeli politics today) are not necessarily deliberately deceiving others when they defend Israel, deny settler colonialism and Apartheid, and distort and misrepresent history and contemporary facts on the ground. Rather, as many Jewish commentators have made me aware (for example Yoav Shamir in his documentary Defamation), they are steeped in cogntive dissonance and self-deception because Zionism has so successfully made itself central to mainstream Western Jewish life and conflated support for Israel no matter what and justification of its oppression with being a good Jew in the West. They have been so inured to that perspective from a young age that they cannot help but rationalize it, to the extent of deceiving themselves. So its impressive to me that despite that, and despite the continued uniquivocal support of some of the most powerful western nations, such a large (and growing) minority of right-thinking Jews in the west are bitterly anti-Zionist, even if they are still a minority. And I've come to the view that modern Israel is uneqivocally a ethnic supremacist, settler colonial and now genocidal state which is perpetuating Apartheid. Perhaps even, as some veterans of our own struggle who spent time in the occupied territories and witnessed the oppression first hand have said, worse than South Afican Apartheid.
“…I’ve had everyone from right wing Israeli commentators to actual Hamas apologists”. “…Why is one group right wing advocates, and the other group Hamas apologists?”
I'm glad Klein agrees that what Israel is doing is immoral, but I wish he would have given us a little more in terms of what actions he would support to stop this immorality and what he would not. Doing the whole "I'm just describing what is, not what ought to be; it's complicated, and no one knows what to do about it" often operates as a passive way of defending the status quo. When the status quo is continuing to give weapons and diplomatic support to Israel regardless of human rights violations, you have to wonder what is so "complicated" about opposing at least that.
my thoughts on October 7th is that it was terrible, terrible for the death that occurred, the hostages taken and terrible that the people who did it were and are in a living situation where they felt it was something that had to be done. Young adults in Gaza have spent their WHOLE LIVES at knife point surrounded by suffering and death, that trauma, that hurt colours your whole world view. What should they do? WHAT SHOULD THEY DO! They have tried everything EVERYTHING! No matter what they do violent OR peaceful Israel replies with violence.
I end this debate by yelling at my people "IT WAS THE GERMANS NOT THE ARABS!!!" This entire thing is throwing the blame off white christian fascists onto poor people with dark skin.
I just recently had to educate my aunties on this very thing. They genuinely thought that “the Arabs were behind Hitler” as in financing him because Germany couldn’t afford to pay for it all themselves. I had to pull up documentaries on the history of oil in the Middle East just to break them out of that. It’s a shock to discover you are related to racists who also happen to be very low IQ. Atleast be a clever racist.
Absolutely brilliant point by Coates at 32:45 about Nat Turner's slave rebellion against white people and the use of violence. Follow that thread over a hundred years all the way to Malcolm X and Black Panthers, who were both labelled violent radicals by the same detractors. Their violence was only in resistance to oppression. There is justification for it, it is literally enshrined in international human rights law. All of this applies to what the Native Americans did too: numerous Indian Wars across the centuries, Jamestown massacre, and so forth. It is well understood who is resisting and who is invading. European Jews coming to the Middle East claiming to be from there and entitled to the land is no different from the Christian Crusaders who invaded that _same land with the _*_exact same claim_* 500-700 years earlier.
Of course that ignores the Jews being there for a few thousand years before Islam invaded. It also ignores the fact that most of the returning Jews came from North Africa and the Middle East. Imagine if the Native Americans took back this country.
@@AlanKastrinsky Yes, but what’s never factually parsed out is that the J’s that have been there are middle eastern Arab ppls, just like there are Arab Christians. The ppl taking over are European J’s. Zio is just sanctioned white sup..under a different name.
@@AlanKastrinsky Islam, Judaism and Christianity were all religions that came into the region, and they were preceded by other religions. The *people* there have always been the same: Palestinians became Muslims, Jews and Christians, but they were always _Palestinians_ . For example, Egyptians were always Egyptian, even before Islam: they were the pharaohs and ancient people of the Egypt. They are not Muslims by ethnic identity (there is no such thing, no religion is an ethnic identity). Palestinians are the same. In fact, they were Canaanites before. Jews were one of them. Before Jews adopted Judaism, there were something else: Canaanites and whatever religion they had then. So the Palestinians have been around as long as the Jews have--in fact, in many cases, they are both the same thing. The whole argument is that Palestine was never partitioned as a "Jewish state" and a "Arab State" until 1948, and that itself was the problem. Why did they need to be partitioned when, for millennia, they lived side by side? All of the people peddling Zionism, and all of its leaders---from Theodor Herzl, to Jabotinsky, David Ben-Gurion and nearly all the founders and Prime Ministers of Israel--have been European Jews. Zionism never originated among the middle eastern Jews, the whole movement came from Europe.
When Ezra Klein says that "Hamas knew what it was about to do to their own people" (paraphrasing) and Coates immediately pushed back, I feel like Coates was on the precipice of something he couldn't describe in the moment. The violence from some part of oppressed peoples against their oppressors is as predictable as the sunrise, but who has looked at everything leading up to Oct 7th and said "Israel knows what it is about to do to its own people"? I think that's what Coates is talking about when he says lies like "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East" rest deep in our brains. Klein treats Netanyahu as (for a lack of a better term) more legitimate than Hamas. And while I don't believe in any sense that Klein feels that legitimacy of language justifies anything Netanyahu is doing, that is a function of legitimacy when one does not know the particulars about a situation. I also think that Klein's criticism about the lack of writing about Hamas might be correct with regards to having a more complete story, but the utility he describes is wishful at best. The people who would dismiss the reality of what is happening in the West Bank because a proper accounting of the Hamas atrocities are very likely the same people who would use the inclusion of those atrocities as their justification for the current state of Israel and Palestine. And if Coates attempted to use any nuance regarding Hamas (like explicitly condemning their atrocities but also pointing out that you cannot expect anything less than violence against you when you run a violent colonial project) then that would be an excuse to likewise dismiss his book by those same people. "Hamas sympathizer" is a label that has been branded on others for less. So maybe the broader narrative is incomplete without content on Hamas, but the utility of its inclusion aside from completeness is questionable.
Not all sides are worth listening to. Oppressors will always have a justification for their actions, but it is always, without exception, self-serving lies. Trying to understand those lies does nothing but give them yet another airing and strengthen them.
@@joshuafrank3803 Israel isn't interested in peace. It wants domination and control. Peace implies coexistence, a two state solution. There hate is fueled by fear and always has been.
I could not agree with you more. Replacing the repressive, racist Zionist regime with an Islamic state governed by Hamas and allied with Iran is the best to way to further the cause of democracy and human rights. Expanding Iran's power and influence will make the world happier and safer for everyone.
Ha! Is it an excuse to observe the FACT that the Palestinians started almost every war that they lost their nation in? Where is the Palestinian left? Why is it that the parliament in Palestine doesn't have a faction that was against the October 7 attacks? Why is it that there's no Palestinian parliament? Why is it that HAMAS can shoot back from hospitals? Are you saying that the medical staff are firing back at Israeli solders from their place of work? Is that what's going on? Or is it that the medical staff are allowing HAMAS to operate from their building while they're trying to help people. How come there are not protests of Palestinians out in the streets raising their voice against HAMAS? Where is the peace faction in Palestine? Why don't YOU ask these questions?
@@joshuafrank3803 @Gallaphant as abrasive as Joshua’s response is, he has an iota of a point. How do we expect to attain peace if there is no dialogue amongst both sides? The fundamental problem is disenfranchisement, and the solution cannot be more of that (regardless of the hateful justifications provided by the Zionist side) how can we hope to find a solution if one side is rife with so much hate?
Read nathan thralls book. He is on another tour of usa so he has been interviewed at least 3 times. One at a launch or book festival and the other times on democracy now. His interviews are on this you channel. Mr thrall has been interviewed by Peter beinart on one of Mr beinarts youtube channel. Mr thrall is a jewish american writer journalist living in Jerusalem with hsi family for many years. His book a day in the life of .... has won a pulitzer for non fiction.
This is one of the best interviews I have ever heard! Two of the most brilliant minds…. Although I have seen Coates in a ton of interviews, you both profoundly elevated this conversation in a way that was truly eye opening
Because it's not a genocide. Israel's civilian to combatant ratio is the lowest in history. Hamas wants their citizens to die. If Hamas wanted to protect its' citizens all it has to do is put them in their ridiculously massive tunnel system. It is larger than the metro in the London Underground. They can easily fit their population 3 x over down there, but they don't. Wonder why?
I clicked on the video and immediately hit "pause" because I only want to read the comments. People like Ezra are hypocrites...his views will never change because they're not founded on information or knowledge.
I think that's an unfair reading. He has been actively and openly decrying the actions of Israel and the IDF for the better part of a year. He is not justifying. He opposes it. But he is trying to understand. I personally think he gives to much credence to the Israeli side of the story, and that this credence is unwarranted given Israel's history and actions over the past several decades. But he is entitled to determine for himself which stories he finds credible, which not, and despite my difference in opinion I have always found him to be a good actor who tries his best to make and present information in a compassionate and well-informed manner.
yes Ta’nahasi the multi millionaire due to the white guilt of NYT low info one sided NPCs is speaking "truth to power". You people are the equivalent to the MAGA tards you constantly wail about.
If you respect straight talk, it's no wonder you reject whatever the US calls "left" these days. All the actual concern for the working class is gone, and what you get is... what's left.
@@DrVictorVasconcelos You clearly aren't listening to Trump's statements on Israel, to write that. He's every bit as horrific as the rest of them. On Ukraine, too.
@@rachelkeane331you’re not on the left you’re a zionist lib. you would have been in the SS if you came up in the thirties because you would have bought that it was okay to genocide a whole people
Thank you Mr. Coates. Your book is one more in the mountains of truths about the horrors of the Israeli genocide. By writing this book you expose yourself to rebuke, ostracism and a well known attacks of those for whom the truth is too uncomfortable to hear. Your well earned prestige as an acclaimed author adds weight to the rights of the Palestinian people. You could have stayed silent and rest on your laurels. But you chose to speak. Thank you again and again.
Although the apartheild topic is important. I think another entry point into the Israeli Palestine subject, is simply, does Israel target civilians? I certainly believe they do. What do others think? If one's opinion of the conflict is less simplistic than Coates's, how do you contextualize the deliberate killing of civilians, joirnalists, aid workers etc? If you dont believe Israel deliberately kills civillians, may you make your case for why not? RIP Aysenur Ezgi Ehgi Rachel Corrie Shireen Abu Akleh Hind Rajab
The only way a person can deny that they target civilians is if they get their info from the Israeli government or grew up ingesting western corporate media and have refused to question their biases during this current act.
@@doyouevennaturebro4593 I totally agree with the notion that it's near impossible to in goodfaith conclude that Israel does not target civilians. Do you agree with me that since this is the case, one does not need to know the history or much else, to be in the right protesting or otherwise pressuring Israel to stop doing so? Simple? At least this demand of so called proPalestinian protestors is justifiably uncomplicated, right?
Ta-Nehisi and Ezra thank you for the conversation about a very complex problem affecting all of us who want to live in a just society. Preserving humanity is the responsibility of all
Klein is delusional. If he thinks the IDF and Netanyahu are more moral than Hamas he's a part of the problem. His basic logic is that Hamas' terrorist attack is more egregious than Israel's genocide, because 1,200 Israeli civilians deserve(d) to live more than 40,0000 Palestinian civilians. The moral math doesn't add up Ezra.
Particularly when you consider how many of the 1200 were active military or reservists i.e. trained soldiers of the IDF. The crimes that Hamas soldiers committed on October 7 should be prosecuted in the ICJ under the rules of armed conflict. A prosecution and defence (if any) should be presented. As they should also be presented for Israel's actions in response.
Very good in-depth discussion. 1. There’s actual evidence that Hamas did not “know” what Israel was going to do to the people of Gaza. A hostage reported that one of her captors said don’t worry you’ll only be here a few days. I think Hamas grossly overestimated the value of the hostages to Netanyahu and therefore thought the hostages would provide more protection and negotiating strength than they ultimately did. 2. You started to discuss the role of Palestinian leadership and it got sidetracked. You can research this information. The reason why Palestinians do not have better leadership is because Israel targets arrests and kills all potential Palestinian leaders (similar to Navalny etc). Israel knows it can fall back on - and you said the quote from Ben Givr - the argument that it cannot have a 2 state solution bc it has no governing partner. Well that’s bc you’ve killed and imprisoned all of the good governing partners. The man who could unite Gaza and the West Bank and lead Palestine is currently sitting in Israeli jail.
Could you imagine being stopped my military and asked your religion and if you answered wrong, you could potentially be detained? The whole situation is bizarre. And there more accounts of these encounters.
The people criticising him by claiming he was only there for 10 days or he's not an expert on the subject don't seem to understand the point he's making. There is no justification for treating other human beings like caged animals period.
This was the kind of back and forth that should have happened on that GMA interview. That Coates was attacked right out of the gate in that place and here Ezra was able to get to the same questions and disagreements with grace and respect speaks to the level amateur journalism that was going on with that Tony guy. Well Done.
this is how we must learn to communicate with each other. Such a respectful and learned conversation between two men who understand that through constructive dialog they can learn from each other and hopefully move the world forward. Ty, gentlemen!
I completely enjoy this conversation and would like to share my thoughts, particularly on the discussion between 44:23 to 48:58. It immediately made me think of the Vietnam War and what it took for Americans to truly understand the horrors of war like with the release of the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the government’s lies, and the footage of a Vietnam military officer recording the brutal reality of sending soldiers into battle, knowing many would be killed or captured than killed. He documented these atrocities because he knew they needed to be seen by the American public, who had little understanding of what war really is. As both of you mentioned, the events of October 7th were horrific, but they forced people to pay attention to the ongoing conflict and start educating themselves about Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, and more. Most Millennials and younger generations had no real understanding of the history over there unless it was a specific area of study. Similarly, in America, during the Civil Rights Movement, James Bevel organized the Children’s Crusade in 1963, knowing what Bull Connor would do to those peaceful protesters in Alabama. And sure enough, Connor unleashed fire hoses and police dogs on children, and it was all recorded. Those horrifying images were what finally got certain Americans to see the truth and helped push forward the Civil Rights Act. Your conversation reminded me of this, and I feel deeply about what's happening not just in Palestine since the mid-1940s, but also to Black Americans since the end of the Civil War. If people can’t see the parallels between Gaza and the ghettos in America, now labeled as Housing and Urban Development they’re missing a crucial point. If I’m wrong, please let me know. Tupac once said in an interview, when asked about violence in the Black community: "Every day, I'm standing outside trying to sing my way in: We are hungry, please let us in. After about a week that song is gonna change to: We hungry, we need some food. After two, three weeks, it's like: Give me the food, or I'm breaking down the door. After a year you're just like: I'm picking the lock. Coming through the door blasting." Is his statement really more disturbing than the real-life violence Black Americans have faced and continue to face? The frustrating reality is that Black Americans have always been told to be patient and wait for justice, with the belief that "history will prove us right." But we often forget that history is written by the survivors, and if we don’t act, our voices may never be heard in the way we hope.
You see. Americans had the excuse to ignore all of those atrocities committed on their behalf in the past. Today they don't have any excuse because access to communications technologies including the internet and its real time recording of events around the world. History won't be kind to Americans of this generation. And rightly so because now they seem to be enablers. And that's why Coates and many like him has written his name in history for speaking out.
From the perspective of someone who had a Judeo-Christian & Lib-Zionist upbringing, the most ironic thing about all of this to me: is how Christian it is-- this idea that we can put all our sins unto someone else-- that a whole entire people who were completely blameless for *OUR* sins can just be scapegoated, punished, sacrificed on place of WE European/Western society who perpetrated the crimes of the 1930s and 40s upon our neighbors and our selves. No, we can simply heal and forget without ever really reckoning with any of it, western Christian & Jew-- by putting it all unto someone else who's been powerless for centuries and crucifying THEM for it. Wicked. It's one thing I never liked about Christian theology, the idea of sacrificing someone who is blameless in order to "pay" for your own wicked deeds.. but here we all are doing it.
The sad thing is that as Rene Girard points out, the defining feature of Christianity (at least in comparison to other religions) is the understanding that the sacrificial lamb is innocent. God themselves came down in the form of Jesus and himself became the last sacrifice. Yet all Christians seem to have taken away from Jesus dying on the cross for our sins is that this is how we cleanse our sins.
Dude, this is a huge stretch. It took a moment for me to follow what you were saying and once it did, it only really fit one specific version of christian theology that's sola fide focused. (Which is technically the minority view, as catholics alone out number protestant viewpoints). And even then it feels like a stretch. I'm on the unorthodox end of christianity in beliefs/practice. I have real disagreements with several common orthodox beliefs, including sola fide. But this ain't one of them.
Why atheism is less complicated and less territorial. We don’t kick out 750,000 people, occupy territories for over 75 years nor do we kill 10s of thousands of people for resisting an occupation all based on books of fiction and greed.
he went over into it several times, blaming Hamas for anything going on - especially after Coates compared them to Nat Turner & the slave revolts doing whatever they needed to do to get their freedom & were justified in their actions. Klein just ignored any sense of morality and went "both sides bad, this means the status quo must remain" & the status quo is a somewhat slower genocide - but genocide nonetheless. Meanwhile, 'Israel' is bombing Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and whomever else they feel like clearly showing they are a rogue state & genocide in Palestine isn't their end goal, they will not stop their evil until they are stopped by an outside force. All Klein's calls for "Democracy" like 80% of 'Israel' isn't super fine with the genocide shows just how out of touch he is, as if voting is going to stop what 'Israel' exists to do.
Great conversation I really enjoyed this. But Ezra getting caught up on what is missing from the book is precisely why I think Ta-Nehisi wrote the book. Those voices that Ezra feels are missing from Ta-Nehisi's book are literally everywhere else. You can just turn on any new organization or read the pages of the NYT and there are tons of just every day Jewish people or Israeli's who are relatively a-political, who want the war to end. That voice is purposely not included in this work of essays because we already hear them, on top of all of whatever zionist message we might hear
I’m sorry but this is a completely ignorant statement: if you have been following this conflict at all, then this argument Coates makes is straight out of a terrorists grievance letter from the second intifada. The only thing missing is the suicide bombing-which Coates completely avoids. I want the war to end but the Palestinians need to have a real leader step up for peace. The Palestinians need to come to grips with the fact that yes there will be security concessions on their side. They have to renounce violence. Imagine what would happen if an MLK like figure came out of Ramallah. They completely disavowed violence and stated peace was what was wanted. Israel would come to the table. This will not happen until the Palestinians move on from believing that armed resistance is worth it. Until then, they just keep giving Israel more and more opportunities to grab more of area c. Continuing the war is only benefits one side. The delusion that Palestinians can fight their war to a peace is a fallacy that needs to be treated the same way of the axis powers after World War Two with the Martial plan.
@@shanajones2456 it might be a little cynical, but I think Ezra was saying that including the other perspective was to make the book less likely to be dismissed, even if that perspective is already everywhere.
i enjoyed this conversation. i do think they talked past each other for large stretches over a point that i felt was pretty simple. ta-nehisi essentially had the scales from his eyes lifted during his trip to israel. his point was that most americans have those same scales on their eyes, and he was trying to determine why this was the case. additionally, he gave (from his perspective) the reality of the situation there. there was a katt williams bit years ago about the war on terror where he mentioned how we call the dead people we killed 'insurgents.' ta-nehisi makes similar points about language...'settler' has a connotation of being unofficial or unsanctioned...but the reality is those settlers are subsidized. americans understand 'democracy' as essentially what america, canada, and a lot of western europe has...but israel literally has segregation, which on the whole, americans haven't accepted as part of democracy in decades. since he read the book, idk why it took ezra so long to understand the point ta-nehisi was making (maybe he was just trying to get more out of him for the podcast), but yea. pretty clear points from ta-nehisi, which, importantly, didn't need the perspective of netanyahu supporters, etc. although, i will say that maybe hearing those ppl speak with clarity about what they actually want over there would have been eye-opening for some americans who think they are actually fighting for a democracy, etc...if that was ezra's point, then ok, but it didn't feel that way.
Great conversation. I think many are trying to dismiss Coates because his work is not a treatise on the conflict. The truth he speaks and the moral clarity understanding how wrong this is is unimpeachable.
What an enlightening and refreshing conversation, there is no pretense that Israel is somehow morally superior to Palestinians. In US media this conversation is so very rare! We need to hear more of it! We need to hear that Israel is not the "only democracy in the Middle East" and reflects US values. Israel reflects our values..... of Jim Crow!
Also of Manifest Destiny, just like America thinks it has the God given right to expand across the continent, most of the people in power in Israel right now similarly think God has promised them the region of "Greater Israel" and the right to displace anyone else in it. Israel is truly a warped mirror image of America in so many ways
@@natedogg890 Jesus Christ stop with your projection, Western imperial relationist world view, and ahistorical bullshit. One Jewish state is a problem but the entire Middle East and a great chunk of Africa is Muslim today because of Arab slavery and conquest.
Lol Palestine refused a two state solution in 1948 and has been an aggressor to which Israel has had to protect itself. The Jewish people who were nearly annihilated and have been expelled from lands through their history are not about to play with an aggressor. Palestinians in the region have been an aggressor or destabilizer not only to Israel but to other countries in the ME as well.
Thank you both for having the courage to speak honestly to each other. Both provided insights essential to extricating these parties from this catastrophe. What we are witnessing in this war is a microcosm of the entire history of the world in which the cruellest slaughter of ones enemies was done with tribal, national and empiric pride, abetted by religious narratives. The difference today is that we have a better understanding of the “other” with whom we share this planet and with whom we can communicate through modern technology . These ancient, indeed biological impulses can be curbed given our increasing understanding of human nature. But more cogently, awareness of the destructive power of these modern weapons (ultimately nuclear) must be the last barrier to global annihilation.
Klein always came off as a pompous brat but parts of this interview indicate that he actually may be an apologist who believes racist agenda and utters right wing talking points. It's a real shame.
As the ostensibly liberal paper-of-record, the NYT is particularly responsible for this profound distortion of the truth
That definitely felt pointed by Coates
NYT trying to atone for running cover for Hitler by now running cover for Netanyahu?
It’s liberal only in the sense that it’s to the left of Fox News and similar.
In Europe it would probably be considered soft right wing.
💯
Chomsky found out it gave him bruxism
"...if you lose sight of the value of individual human life you have lost something."
Yes.
Tell that to islam
Bye Hasbara 😂
Hasbara Crying Because they Got Exposed Through 🙄🤮😏
No
We can all ban together.All who hold the belief that individual human life is sacred , above all else,We can try to prevent another meat grinder……
Race baiter using skin color for lifting own status in society. Priceless 😅
Respect to Ta-Nehisi for holding Ezra's framing to account.
All these Zionist who interview him want to gotcha questions!
all the while, both still clearly respect each other enough to listen, push back and be open minded while sticking to their perspectives
Actually, what heard them modeling was a lot of deep listening and learning on both sides, without the usual preoccupation with metaphorical power or "surrender." Neither was trying to undermine the other's conscience and both conceded fair points throughout. Such a beautiful example.
"You're not going to like my answer". "I want to hear it." That was like poetry in our polarized world.
...and they do so with humility and appreciation for others, thus a real conversation, however painful such can be. So grateful for TH-cam, Klein, and Coates.
What security purpose is there for Palestinians being denied the same amount of water that Israelis get?
It doesn't work like that . Water isn't a 1.5 mineral water bottle .
Why do leftists can't think I'm a border aspects.
It's about infrastructure and control of that infrastructure.
The Palestinians in the west bank have better resources than their neighbours in Jordan why compare them to their successful European level nation on the west ?
@@leonidkrimsky954 fact doesn't matter
They want them all dead.
Ezra = Biden, Biden = Ezra
This war is going to cause Trump to win & lead to WW3.
Predicted 1500 years ago by Nastradamis.
Within 12 years China/Russia will overtake most of the USA. Split it in three, all because Biden was living in the 1950s.
The empire bankrupt is over.
@@leonidkrimsky954Not only is it a fact, Palestinians are not allowed to collect rain water because when they did, they started having water autonomy which doesn’t work for the apartheid occupiers. Look it up. Not difficult to find.
@@leonidkrimsky954 it's a fact. Do you also deny that the Holocaust happened? We've see it with our own eyes, you can't gaslight us.
"Mimimimimi but you didn't interview the assassins, only the victims, that's not fair" Ezra Klein.
It doesn't matter how we got "here" when "here" is a crime against humanity.
Looks like you’ve transcended beyond humanity.
@@allenmoldovan nope. Very much human with a fervent love of humanity.
It matters a great deal how
@@s11entscope no, it doesn’t. Nothing warrants apartheid. Nothing warrants genocide.
Why doesn't it matter? To find a workable solution to move forward you need to understand how we got here, no?
Oh Ezra, gave the game away when you spoke of 'agency'. How much 'agency' is there when a boot is on one's neck?
I love bow you people all just regurgitate the same leftist slogans.
@@PleiadesM45652 It's not a left/right issue. Any sensible right-winger should also be opposed to the excesses of a very misguided version of Zionism displayed in front of our eyes every day.
Ya know, if only those slaves took a bit more initiative in their situation. I mean, what were those poor defenceless white people supposed to do? The black folks were about to murder them all, so of course, they had to *protect themselves*.
I have to say, I've been following Israel's atrocities against the Palestinians since oepration Cast lead in 2008. And the comments in all these stories really paint a very different picture from previous escalations. This time it's different. Israel has been exposed for what it has always been.
@@PleiadesM45652says one group of people regurgitate the same talking points while regurgitating a cliche nothing-sentence. Refuses to elaborate.
@@PleiadesM45652who's "you people"? Are we supposed to write anti apartite sonnets to gain your approval? Will you stop simping for oppression then?
Guys, i loved this convo. My views on Israel and Palestinians has done a 180 in the last year, and your thoughtful discussion was super helpful
This guy is lying. The Arabs he is talking about arent citizens so of course they dont have the same rights? Can anyone just come into a country and declare they are equal to citizens... But get this... Arab Israelis have all the same rights because they are citizens.
@@jilldent5514 Hasbara is dead. Folks have wisened the f... up!
@@jilldent5514 non Jews certainly don’t have the same rights. People are no longer ignorant to this fact.
@@ayadi2671 Israeli Arabs sure do. Google Yahyah Mahamid. Arabs even serve in the Israeli military. There is some confusion as to the rights of citizens vs noncitizens. There was even a Supreme judge that was Arab (and he put a Jewish lawmaker in jail)...... You should research this before you post.
@@jilldent5514😂 if you believe this to be true, then perhaps you haven't asked the Palestinians living in Israel if what you state is true. What we witnessed armed Israeli militiamen (aka NYC-born 20 year olds) doing to a 75 year old Palestinian
on our visit to Jerusalem is engraved in my heart and mind. How can you be so dead in your heart and convinced in your mind of something that is empirically untrue?? 😢 it beggars belief. May you come to see reality as it is, not as you hope it to be. Then , and only then, can we all work together towards justice and peace
I am so fundamentally thankful to Coates for having articulated exactly what is so difficult for some to understand about this movement
All he articulated was how he feels. No journalism detected.
What movement? Democracy?
@@SebastianBux-f4p I think he wrote a book about it
Yes, he wrote a book on how he feels bad. @@BigU512
@@SebastianBux-f4p What do you think journalism is? Seriously, provide an example and compare it to what Coates wrote.
Wild to watch the opportunity for Klein to pause and self interrogate his own racism, but instead pivot in self defense to what did you think of Oct 7th. One hopes Klein did some soul searching after this interview.
So youre guilty of the same bias. Ignoring the massacre of human beings because it creates a murky picture of your "side"
@@treeoflife162 There isn't nearly enough evidence to say the OP is guilty of bias based on their statement. Calling anyone who expects to have a balanced dialog biased is the strategy Coates and the OP is pointing out. You can't use Oct 7 as the reason you won't entertain discussions about Israeli response to it.
@@shauncollins6552 Klein was giving context by including Oct 7, which was not even mentioned by Coates. If you are engaging in one sided dialogue don't whine when the other side does as well.
@@treeoflife162 No he wasn't, he was giving justification. The context is already known so why would he need to give it, they are literally talking about his journey in the region. He's not talking to some random person who's ignorant of each sides arguments. I see/hear this so often when people discuss the Israili government by either conflating criticism of the govt with antisemitism or criticism of their response to bias. Coates could have just as easily said "what about...." to any number of Israeli responses that may seem disproportionate or the Palenstinian perspective that they are being occupied, but he didn't he spoke with empathy and used his words with care - apparently that doesn't matter
@@shauncollins6552 dude everyday i see news reports of the death toll in Gaza. Frankly I think people forgot about October 7
Ezra, we've been hearing the Israeli side for decades. I don't care if Ta-Nehisi left out what you think he should have included. We've heard it already. This past year, we've SEEN what the Israeli side thinks, says and does. I don't care about the Israeli side anymore.
They’ve had every chance to make their case and have failed.
It’s time to hear from the defense, not just the prosecution.
Its outrageous and hypocritical that we jews should be lectured by Americans that is an occupied Indian country to criticize Israel as occupying land because it was always jewish and will always remain Jewish!!
@@markstein7905 that's debatable. What is not debatable is humane treatment and justice. "That Which Is Hateful to You, Do Not Do to Your Fellow! That is the Whole Torah" Hillel the Elder
It’s a great interview. I have to say I don’t even really understand Ezra’s criticism, though. The perspective he wanted to see is THE predominant perspective. What he wanted to see, apparently, were the exact same justifications we constantly hear, and have constantly heard for decades.
Completely agree; and what is his excuse for not having spoken about what he has seen, experienced in Palestine many years before this interview- including 'planning time' for Palestinians getting from Point A to Point B before this interview?
Exactly. What's up with these people, we never hear them jump on the one-sided reporting for the Israeli side to criticize it.
I didn't see it as criticism. But expectation setting for the audience. By giving Coates the opportunity to explain his journalistic decisions.
Yes, basically the prevailing narrative expects you to blame the Palestinians for the way they are treated under this regime.
Klein has always been fervently pro-Israel. He doesn't seem to care about Palestinians whatsoever. At least, he seems to believe that all that has happened is how it had to play out. Israel, in his mind, has done no serious wrong and Palestinians should stop complaining about it. What makes him uncomfortable about Coates' book is that it doesn't justify Israeli Apartheid.
I’m so grateful for Coates’ courage - both before and including this topic/discussion.
Courage? He's the most revered journalist & author in the anglosphere; what does he have to fear?
his own editor frequently compliments his courage and competence. Before this he wrote A Case for Reparations which was also something very few people had tried to address head-on at that level.
Also, Coates often talks about not having the courage to write about the Bill Cosby rumors back when he was new to prestige journalism because he didn’t want to jeopardize his first cover story assignment, and how much he regrets it. So learning moral courage has been a large part of his experience coming up in journalism.
@@landline00forgot to tag you in my response
Ta-Nehisi Coates is incredible. The throughfulness of his morality had me questioning my own lapses, reinforced by some of Ezra Klein's more unsettling insights. The irritation in so many of the recent interviews with Coates continues to be that he had the nerve to want to center a Palestinian narrative around Palestinians. It almost beggars belief. The interview just sank from the weight of Klein's ever increasing monologues that pushed Coates voice almost completely off the show. Klein bounced from insight to insight on Israel, just reinforcing that whether it's positive or negative the focus must always be on Israel. The rawness of that fact has alluded me, until now
43:00 in Coates does his thing where he dredges the covert racism and lets it hang in the open, and that's effectively the end of any real conversation. There are a lot of other moments where he politely allows Klein to walk back racist framing, but Klein was absolutely cornered here.
Klein consistently argues as if the Israelis are capable of nuanced reasoning while Palestinians are not. No matter how he might disapprove of Israeli action post 10/7, he sees Palestinians as lesser.
He has the spine of a cup of pudding
That's exactly what we originally meant with woke.
Coates is like most Leftists, intellectually degenerates
A black jew hater, very common for today's America. A fool with his own problems applied to a different part of the world.
But if we applied leftist logic to the middle east, we end up with
The endigenous jewish minority surrounded by Islamic majority who are trying to opress and colonize the jews.
So glad to hear Coates call out Ezra for the apologists vs proponents language he used.
I love TaNehesi's responses/push back to Ezra. I ❤️ it, "make it plain," TaNehesi, yes!!
What this author has done is next to suicidal.... Career and living wise..Because of the present troubles in these countries he is getting attention...Certainly his sentiments are not new when everyone already knew the bad stuff about these regions of the world...Being a fba I am smart enough to know that the author has created serious deadly enemies 😊😊
@MichaelSimpson-t1x My guess is that you are not very familiar with his work prior this?
I think it's interesting how Coates is focused on what OUGHT to be and Klein focuses on what IS. Because Klein sees no realistic solution, there's no reason to be outraged. Coates sees the injustice and can't imagine not being outraged.
What it is, is what ought to be by some people years ago. Its been deliberate process all along.
lmao you made Coates sound like a dumbass
What you wrote cuts deep.
@@vatzjrit doesn’t. Just a failure of imagination, or historical analysis. The solution is 1 democratic state, reparations, right to return for Palestinians, accountability for geno, etc- that’s the *only* solution that has been proven to work.
@@xx133 agreed in principle. One could argue that two-state may be more realistic given the immense history between the two peoples. Regardless though, an end to the oppression is what’s needed. And I think both scenarios would address that.
I enjoyed this dialogue and Coates firm stance that more Palestinian stories and journalists need to be heard is righteous.
By the end of this Ta-Nehisi Coates is interviewing Ezra Klein
Coates “I was concerned with what I don’t know and what I haven’t heard. Palestinian voices have been pushed so far out of the frame. That is the thing that is hard to access.”
@@coachwalk7485 their support of Hamas has made their voices irrelevant.
@@EarlyRiser71 Do you write “their support of Hamas has made their voices irrelevant” having considered hamas is not in power outside of Gaza. 2.7 million live in the West Bank but their Palestinian voices are still combined with hamas. In Gaza, When was hamas last election? When you wrote your comment, had you considered it was back in 2006. So, how do you quantify the people “support Hamas”? Power doesn’t mean support. Trump was the power in America with most of the voters NOT voting for him. Does that now mean now most Americans supported trump and he is americas voice? It would be wildly ignorant of someone not in America to think that. The same applies to the Palestinians in Gaza. Not even counting the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and those in the West Bank. The fact that you think Palestinians support Hamas is the prime example that Palestinians voices are excluded from this conversation. The media is always using hamas voice as the Palestinian voice and that tricks you into thinking the hamas voice is the Palestinian voice. The worst part is most Americans are woefully ignorant of these facts while speaking as if they are well versed.
Thats because Hamas is a dictatorship.
@@bleep957 Yes. Hamas is a dictartor terrorist group. That makes my point. People can't say Palestinians support Hamas or the Palestinians have a voice when their leadership are dictators.
@@EarlyRiser71 What's interesting is Israel before the war began said the war would take a few weeks, a few months at best. They said the war would cause Palestinians to rise up in anger at Hamas and dismantle the group themselves. Here we are a year later, and Israel is nowhere near winning the war, and support for Hamas has risen not only in Gaza but in the West Bank.
It's weird that in every batman movie, Bruce Wayne's parents are killed and everyone understands why he becomes Batman, a vigilante outside of the law. But Gaza, an open air prison where Palestinian parents/children/siblings/friends are murdered by the IDF, no one understands why Palestinians would turn to terrorism.
Just heard him being interviewed by Terry Gross on
NPR this afternoon andIwas blown awaylIn fact,I
sat in my car for 20 minutes to hear the whole thing.
What a teacher. What a father. What a human being
What an American treasure.
110%
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Indeed.
To me he is just riding the hot topics of the day to fame - he is one of the least knowledgeable people on the Middle East. Yes there are aspects of apartheid but that’s not some big revelation
What a Jew hater. Who among us are an expert after 10 days? Only Coates. The man who planned his Baltimore stop to be Jew free by scheduling it on a major Jewish holiday. Judenfrei?
Ezra's question if Ta-Nehisi spent time with the Israeli Right is like asking, why didn't he consider spending time with the KKK and segregationists during Jim Crow.
It’s a fair question for a journalist to ask since journalists SHOULD want to examine all sides to tell a full and fair story. Coates’s answer made it clear why he isn’t approaching this as a journalist or interested in a full story because only half the story is already constantly told. He approached it as a human wrestling with what he’s seeing and whose voice is missing in mass media, which is an excellent humane choice. I think it was a fair question that got us to a powerful and challenging answer to both humanity and to media. They both handled it so well.
💯!!
What he does need to do is understand who is a citizen and who isnt. He write a book saying Israel is apartheid when Arabs work and live all over Israel and have equal rights. He is talking about NON citizens not being able to use certain roads. He says they are for Jews but this is a lie (or ignorance). The roads are for CITIZENS. Maybe he wants to make one state but that is really not up to him since he would be forcing this on the Arabs. Best not to write a book when you dont understand facts.
@cionarouse6758 agreed! If the aim is to illuminate the uninformed, I think a useful context would be to present the Right/Centerist perceived reality. I think TC pushed back on EK calling it the Israeli Far Right but Hamas Extremists, which is also fair, so why not compare the banality of the realities of BOTH sides to present the situation. Most Americans are only ever presented with the Israeli Idealism vs. Palestian hard-line religious extremism, which inevitably push them to the more measured point of view.
@@jilldent5514Stop occupying the west bank. It does not belong to Israel and the is no excuse for apartheid Zionist.
Sarah Silvermen posted that Palestinians should be grateful for water the occupiers 'give' them. Typical superior colonial mentality.
They should be grateful because after their many attempts of genocide toward Jewish population not only they are still alive and multiply but also get water from those “under-humans” they wanted to exterminate (and still do) in the first place. Colonialists are islamists on the land by the way because their mosk is built on top of Jewish temple, not the other way around.
russia should give me free water and if they don’t they’re racist
@@himurahaibara1459 they are not allowed to save rain water
How about Hamas invested in infrastructure instead of tunnels that not one civilian Gazan is allowed to shelter in? Desalination plants instead of weapons to kill Israelis? Healthcare for ALL, not just those affiliated with Hamas.Education for a future instead of brainwashing to do the IRI's dirty work.Billions have gone into Gaza, from Qatar, from the IRI- what have they done for Gazans?????
Sarah “my vagiiiiii na” Silverman. Honestly I always found her to be extremely unfunny. I don’t get why all these Zionists get super fascist about Israel. Like if my home country became that cruel to another ppl I’d want to help fix it instead of shielding and excusing them at every turn like too many Jewish Americans unfortunately now do
a lot of hasbara, bothsidesing and understated racism from Klein but in very a nice, inoffensive, liberal way. I think Coates caught him out a few times, and I think it underpins the crux of the whole issue. You cannot act, both historically speaking or in the current asymmetrical power dynamic, as if both sides have had the same agency. Klein is a revisionist and he talks nostalgically of an Israel of yesterday, as if it was any less racist or violent which then allows the underlying assumption that Israel was somehow forced into its current state of affairs when in reality it was always violently opposed to the two state solution and has been constantly annexing territory since its inception.
LOL. The projecting your doing is so on point.
The Palestinians had huge agency throughout history - they were expelled from Jordan after Black September and expelled from Lebanon after the Lebanese Civil War. The consequences they suffer is due to their inability to maintain a state without sabotaging nearby states. Even after Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2006, Gazans have shown they cannot be trusted to govern themselves because they elected Hamas.
Israel always being opposed to the 2 state solution is hilariously ahistorical as well. They accepted the UN Partition Plan in 1948 that would have had an independent Palestinian state. Palestinians didn't and waged war against Israel. Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, who waged war against Israel multiple times with the intention of destroying the state. It's only the Palestinians who still haven't been able to accept the existence of Israel - when did Arafat ever agree to any diplomatic two state solutions? Vs how many attempts were there at negotiating a 2 state solution by Israel and the US?
And again - constantly annexing. Why did they give back the land they conquered during the 6 Day War? Why did they offer the Golan Heights back to Syria? Why did they only conquer land in the 1948 war when it was being used by Arabs to attack Israel? You have 0 understanding of the basics of the conflict.
what absolute revisionist history crap. 6 ENTIRE Muslim nations invaded Israel the same year it was established and still lost despite outnumbering the Jews 67:1 by population. I don't really care about Israel, but this pseudo-intellectual garbage spamming buzzwords like "asymmetrical power dynamic" is really getting really tired. the absolute insane justification of religious extremism from Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas by "secular progressives" is as ironic as it is disturbing...
Yes! The entire podcast felt like "Israel is racist BUT...". He always says he agrees with him, but he always keeps a backdoor open. Because ultimately it is not only an intelectual question but also an emotional one. Are you actually ready to let go of the zionist project? I have the feeling Klein tries to say all the right things, but deep down he cannot let go of zionism.
@@seethruseethru Palestinians have massive agency. They've been handed a country 5 times and rejected it every time. Without even a counter offer. The reason for this is Palestinians want to destroy Israel and murder every Jew in the Middle East. They'll never accept a 2 state solution. Western liberal ideas of racism and multiculturalism are completely irrelevant in this situation when multiculturalism is literally a death sentence. I'm getting bored of progressives that just want to hand wave this inconvenient truth away because it doesn't suit their world view.
I wish this recording could be edited to only include Ta-Nehisi. It would be much more succinct, powerful and frankly equally valuable.
8:30
Coats “The justification for settlements was out of my frame.”
Klein “That eliminates all of Israeli society.”
….. Then they’re wrong.
nearly 20min in and theyre still talking about how movement restrictions are horrific......... its a bit like discussing how laundry day was a nightmare at dachau. in this sense, its difficult to see the goal. you want the palestinian voice to be about the nuisance aspect of apartheid? these,.... are not the main lie you were told about israel. dachau was not a place were laundry day was a nightmare of waiting for a dryer or not having enough soap powder. the west bank is not a place were arabs are mistreated it is a land being slowly ethnically cleansed as it has been for 70 years in plans drawn up in the 1920's to take the land from the inhabitants and give it to european people. thats the voice not heard. in fact your not hearing it as you speak, we've seen so much deliberate unhearing that its just part of normal. its normal not to mention the atrocity of taking a peoples land to givee to somebody else, lets just never ever face that fact and talk around it like its not really there, until everybody has completely lost touch with the reality.
@@TheMadmacs Very well said, indeed.
@@TheMadmacs Why are there movement restrictions?
@@Macumber773 There are military checkpoints since around the 1990’s maybe a bit earlier, that were put there due to the first and then second intifada. Terror attacks coming from the West Bank into Israel became a daily occurrence. In the 1990’s there were a string of suicide bombers blowing themselves on buses killing civilians left right and centre. That’s when the checkpoints became far stricter then ever before. But it’s “not in the scope of this book” as is said throughout this entire interview. The occupation in itself is indeed a shit show (the civilian part), but having checkpoints and limited access to Israel is a security necessity, with all due respect. But this interviewee, his book and this and other interviews are so off base, so skewed, that it’s just unbelievable the praise this guy gets. It is so off the charts, while being over nothing, really.
The occupation is one thing, the heavy handed military treatment of Palestinians is another, violent settlers are yet another (they are a minority of the actual group known as settlers, who are not all there due to masianic extremist beliefs) and Israel defending itself from muslim extremism is yet another. While all these happen together at the same time and have some synergies, they are far fffaarrr more nuanced and complex then you will ever learn from this interview or his book. It is a narrative that literally projects black american history and forces itself, not so neatly might I add, onto a completely different conflict, area and peoples. This book is not in service of fighting injustices, it is just muddying the already muddy water even further with unnecessary sentimental observations that are nothing new, and using it to make a case for african americans who believe what this writer believes. That man has been free riding jewish history for quite some time now, as with his reparations piece, and he’a making a name for himself as part of the zeitgeist of talking about anything and everything as if it is a bite sized Tik-Talk.
It has become majorly profitable to have no actual credibility or expertise in what one’s writing about. That’s the culture nowadays. The New-York Times is no different and wants a piece of that “superficial” pie. So there you have it.
@@MmmAaaMmmAaa..__.. I appreciate the effort you put into answering my post. Thank you. My question was for "laundry day was a nightmare at dachau" guy and his one sided ta nahisis coates-esque BS. I agree with everything you wrote and would only add that the palestinian leadership, whether it be the pa, hamas, iran... are doing everything they can to ensure that the occupation continues and its grip tightens... and 82% of palestinians in the Judea and Samaria still support hamas and over 70% approve of the 10/7 genocide. So, the question is are those 82% victims of extreme indoctrination, of such low intelligence as not to understand what's happening, or do they support it. I have realistic perspective - they support it. They want the river to the sea AND 10/7 for ALL Js in Israel.
Ezra saying he experienced everything TaNehisi felt when he was in Palestine , but then he turns around and tries to justify this same system when he brings up the suicide bonbers
What is with you people? He's not justifying it. He simply states the reality that it completely shut off any appetite for peace on the Israeli side. And it put Israel on a conveyor belt to an appartheid state. Does it justify it? No. Ultimately it's Israel and Israeli citizens that are responsible for what their state and the society is doing. But just as it's helpful to understand the origins of nazism in Weimar Republic, it's useful to understand the origins of appartheid in Israel. That's all. We don't have to admonish anyone to talk about it.
And then you are going to present to us your wise realistic solution of dealing with suicide-bobmers situation that doesn’t include genocide of Jewish people,, right?
Coates' response there was perfect - if your hope for a deal, if your promise of a democracy was undone by violence, then it was never real - _(and my interpretation of the natural conclusion is that)_ only an imaginary carrot for compliance
@@lawrencetchen I love that Coates stood his ground against these questions
So agree with you, I felt the same. Couldn’t brash of that «Yes, but..” He also talks more when Coates.
Read his book. The audio as his narration is a gift. So are the piles of tears you will shed as he brilliantly pulls all of your humanity out, onto the floor for you to wade into. What a man. I hope he never dies. Wakonda forever!!❤
Wait? He narrates the audio book? I have the book but have only read the first section.
Is this on amazon or an audio book somewhere?
@@joeb134
I have listened to one of his other books on tape.
It is a blessing to hear him read his own words.
@@mikeoveli1028 Im probably gonna get the audio book and read along.
Yes, absolutely! Everyone needs to buy his books so he can make a shit ton of money!!! It's just amazing that after 10 days in Israel, the man is an expert.
“In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience." -Kwame Ture
Violence is harped on, but Palestinians tried nonviolence and were met with death. Kleins insistence on both sidesing this is gross and I'm glad Coates called him on it even if weakly.
When did Palestinian leadership try nonviolence?
@@maxbalata5916Oslo, Wye, Camp David, The march of return.
@@DITBC The accords you mention as proof on nonviolence happened between 1993 and 2008. Take a look at this list of Palestinian suicide attacks between 1993 and 2008: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_attacks
Ironically, the wise quote you brought only serves to strengthen the position of the Israelis. Palestinian terrorism towards Jews goes back long before occupation and the founding of Israel. If you go back and read the history of the conflict,the Jewish leadership in British mandate of Palestine sought to compromise with the Palestinians. The Arab leadership chose violence time and again towards the Jewish community, literally seeking to eradicate and exterminate them (1948, 1967, 1973, and of course today)
The occupation and excess force that Israel uses to defend itself is precisely the result of the other side “not having a conscience” towards it.
If Israel lacked the conscience you claim they lack, the Arab Israeli conflict would have been long over - Israel doesn’t lack means. Rather its aims are quite different than its actual genocidal enemies.
@@maxbalata5916lol.. Great March of Return a few yrs ago and Much of the early part of the 1st Intifada was almost entirely peaceful - both met with extreme violence and oppression
Coates shines a light on a horrible, ongoing injustice.
Nonsense. He smears his ignorance on a complex subject and allows others to feel comfortable in similar ignorance.
In your head lol.
By ignoring decades of Palestinian terrorism against civilians?
@@Fenristripplex stay mad zioscum
Glad to see Coates is still out there speaking truth to the world.
Massive respect ✊🏽
How do you know it’s the truth, may be it’s falsehoods or nonsense.
Truth? Coates has spent his entire career ignoring inconvenient truths and trading in glib tropes. Truth requires discovery, self reflection, and insight. And what was Coates reflection and discovery? What was his insight? "Duh, this is just like America". Moron.
@@adtastic1533 the truth is he went, he saw, he engaged which is far more than most have done or even considered doing.
He handles himself well in interviews. Reminds me of Hitchens a little bit.
But it's not the truth. He even said so himself.
This whole Interview Ezra just want to find a reason to blame Palestinians for their own oppression, occupation and genocide. He want to find a reason to say”see, it’s at least a little bit justified, Palestinians fought against their colonizers and there for they deserve their suffer at least a little bit.” He doesn’t say it but this is what he implies with his question constantly Why Ta-Nehisi didn’t ask the colonizers why they’re colonizations was justified, when the answer is those people don’t matter, there is no justification.
Must be so easy being a simpleton and having such a distorted naive view of the world. You should read "The protocols of the Elders"! That is the book that will really open your eyes about your ideology. If you want to find the oppressor there is an easy metric, is he jewish. Maybe some of the Nasi literature would also be interesting to you. Mein Kampf and the such would be a great addition to your library.
@@Evan-rm3zmsee how you jump to insult and “ YOU ARE ANTISEMITIC” rhetoric. If you got a point explain it, do not result to insult and empty rhetoric to scare and deter people from conversation.
@@Evan-rm3zmNot helpful
What's with the quotes? Couldn't find, timestamps if I'm wrong.
@@m.a.b.4104 the quotes are not in the vid im quoting what Evan is implying in his comments
Ezra could do the bold thing and start platforming more Palestinian voices… wonder if he will…
He could also do the baseline normal thing and not have a black rights/black supremacist author offer opinions on the *Arab*-*Israeli* war.
@@spitezor that's an extreme statement right there
He's had Salam Fayyad, Amaney Jamal, Amjad Iraqi, and more...all great episodes
Norman finkelstein, Noura Erakat, Mouin Roubani, Illan Pappe.
@@spitezorwow, some nice titles you got there to give people, huh?! How about some real ones -- for example, a US taxpayer stakeholder whose tax money is spent on a senseless Arab-Israeli war because Israel can't do jack shit on their own and have to rely on the hard-earned money of a US taxpayer Coates. Sit down.
A good interview, very glad that Ta-Nehisi Coates is able to speak up for himself and challenge Klein.
"You take that as different to Netanyahu?" really just got to the heart of it in that moment.
This! The absolute moral center of the interview. Leading up to this point you could tell Ezra was becoming more verbose in a slightly defensive way as he struggled with the various moral ironies of his unspoken positions, and then boom, suddenly it came to light, explicit and undeniable. And Coates just lets it hang there in the air for all to see.
I've lived in Tel Aviv, as an artist-in-residence for a year. While the people who brought me were very kind, the majority of the culture I can only describe as what I imagine Germany was like in the late 1930s. I've lived in a lot of countries to compare, and I don't believe that it's hyperbolic. I could include many examples, including being strip searched for humiliation. Police on the street demanding I empty my ATM for the man who had just hit me with his car. Forced religious observance, in every daily event. Being screamed at to get out of a man's store, because I dared to make a face about George Bush being on television: "Any man who kills Iraqis is a GOOD man!" Being grilled by strangers on the street, demanding to know my 'motivations' for being in Israel: "Yes, I have a RIGHT to know! This is MY country!" (Spoiler: I was sitting on the porch of the apartment I was renting, having a cup of tea). A giant bomb on display at the shopping-mall, as if an object of worship. Military jets breaking the sound-barrier at all hours, as a show of intimidation. Children with machine-guns on their back and a Hello Kitty phone in their hands. On and on, the most hatefully propagandized culture I have ever seen. And yes, they are racist. I've had many dear Jewish colleagues and close friends in my life - many of whom express the same feelings about Israel - and there is nothing antisemetic in my world view. I live in Germany now, and have spent many years studying the holocaust. From my experiences in Israel, current events, and my study of the holocaust, I am convinced that history is repeating itself, and that israel is now the abuser.
How horrible. I feel quite nauseous just from reading this.
Thank you for sharing your own individual and personal experience, although as someone who has also spent time in Tel Aviv, sorry but I doubt the veracity of your account.
Love the "some of my best friends are Jews' BS. Not very original as an excuse though for the biased Jew hate you express.
As we all know, we can read ANYTHING on social media.
But of course since the Jew hate sentiments you express fit the Jew haters' conformtional bias, they're easy to believe.
@@elephantintheroom5678 Do you always believe everything you read?!
@@michal-e2xdo you have a counter argument?
I mean, at least trot out the “but there are non-Jewish citizens that can vote” because that makes Americans, especially those with a bit more melanin, laugh.
No one is forcing Israel to build settlements. That is clear and unambiguous provocation as much as Poland was.
@@michal-e2x Do you always cherry-pick, out of the mountain of evidence, everything you believe?
Don't worry guys, Ezra said in another interview that he doesn't read the comments from us peasants, so his point of view is not at risk of changing
"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." Why cant Mr.Klien ask that question about the MSM coverage of this conflict. What is it of such paramount concern when Coates presents the other side for a rare change.
Because Ezra Klein, as liberal as he is, comes from the assumption that the Israeli narrative is normative and the Palestinian narrative is exotic and suspect, and with Ta-Nehisi Coates he had to confront the idea of Israeli amorality-- if not immorality. If he were to ask the MSM what they are leaving outside the frame, this conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates would be very different, more like Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks with Ilan Pappe or Norman Finkelstein.
@@eduardohope4909 The Progressive left is all in for the Palestinians. Please.
Because by him asking Coates those questions, he's asking what many Americans wonder, and thereby making the conversation accessible to them. It gives more power and depth to Coates perspective.
Right? Like what has NYT "left outside of the frame"?
@@TheDeanelectric Coats knows what his message is and what it isn't. He doesn't" need Ezra to hijack his narrative to include sympathy for an apartheid state. We get that every day from corporate news outlets.
I think Ezra over analyzed, nuanced and and intertspected himself into meaninglessness on Israel. Its like saying. "Well, Hitler did do some decent things for people, and he did face unique adversity, but sure, he's very evil." Like it's true-ish enough to academically discuss, but what's the point of delivering that truth? Sounding smart, but saying nothing. It's like thearpy speaks for politics, and I'm super happy that Coates can hear it and calls it out too.
His name is Ezra Klein not John Howard.
@@alifarah9that’s lazy and reductive. The two most staunchly antizionist people I know are Jews with ostensibly Jewish names. One started to deprogram after a Birthright trip at 18, the other was straight up raised by kind and honest antizionist parents so he was impervious to the propaganda from the get go. Ezra chooses to remain in his swamp of cognitive dissonance because it’s comfortable and it affords him a certain level of systemic and cultural power.
@@HazelWorldwide Exceptions to a rule don't disprove the rule. Vast majority of Jews both in Israel and United States not only support the war, but in Israel at least, polls showl most don't think sufficient firepower was used. So given these stats I don't think it's completely out there to claim an Ezra Klein harbors genocidal sympathies.
What did Ezra say that wasn't true? Give an example.
"Yea, Israel is a monster but have you considered the Palestinians deserve it?"
At the 44:00 mark, Klein outs himself as racist. He’s more forgiving of Netanyahu’s terrorist acts of genocide than Hamas’ acts of violence.
100% this.. it’s so glaring and Coates just lets the point hang for a moment
Yes I caught that and luckily so did Coates. And you could see Klein stumble as he realised his truer self had been exposed.
That doesn't make him a racist. He's pointing two different kinds of violence and different kinds of acts. Maybe you're a racist for forgiving Hamas.
@sn3176 There are a number of tells and moments where Coates has to slow down and formulate a way to push back without offending Klein too much, but this was the biggest one. So many times Klein would put absurd or racist framing forward and Coates would politely allow him to retreat to a safer, defensible position. It's just this time he stumbled too obviously.
@@pblogger9065 Israel has been occupying Gaza before Hamas. Hamas was the result of their occupation. If Klein would just concentrate on the crux of the issue, he would not come off as bad. Instead, he has to point terrorism brought out by an occupied people.
Fascinating interview. Not so much on the big topics that many of us know a fair amount about by now. But moreso the conflict of how things get framed by Ezra that Coates reflexively, morally pushes back on. Not because Ezra is bad faith here, but bc he's fallen victim of having too much *nuance* while losing the big picture. This is the original sin of the entire issue: to nuance it to death at the expense of actual morality and truth, and to ultimately create a permission structure that misled the entire western, US led global apparatus (including the media) where the natural outcome was to co sign a genocide.
Beautifully said.
I think you're making a false equivocation with South Africa. Why is Palestine so much smaller than it was in 1948? I'll tell you why, the Palestinians started several wars with Israel with the intent of pushing them into the ocean. If you don't believe that, just go look at how the Palestinians put it themselves in the era. The problem for Palestine is they lost those wars they started. And in each defeat, lost land. Then if you want to further appreciated just what kinds of victims the Palestinians are look what they did to poor Jordan in Black September. If that doesn't do it for you the misadventures of Yassier Arafat's PLO will. If you want to make the case that Palestine is done with that kind of activity what the heck was last October about anyway?
Keeping a screenshot of this bc it says why “both sidesism” is always a tool for the perpetrator/oppressor
Beautifully said. @@AndrewTubbiolo
@@AndrewTubbiolo You failed to understand the interview and the comment. your comment just seeks to justify settler colonialism and the current genocide.
Israel was created through ethnic cleansing, every action that the palestinians have taken since the inception of Israel was to try and take back what was stolen from them, you cannot sit here and try and preach morality to the oppressed and dictate to them how they should fight for their freedoms.
The amount of respect shown during this conversation is a breath of fresh air. Instead of yelling and screaming like most of the media, these two men were able to actually listen to each other. Thank you to you both.
This interaction was enlightening and so respectful… much more agreement than disagreement!
Same here, What got me was the level of mutual respect and actual listening. Rare today.
💯
Yes, Ezra Klein very respectfully excused Israel’s genocide and demonized Palestinian resistance
The late great Michael Brooks is very interesting on Israel.
Rest in Power
Michael Jamal RIP
Sorry, which far-leftist is very interesting on Israel?
@@disdoncableNoam Chomsky, Norm Finkelstein, Aaron Mate, Amy Goodman, Masha Gessen are far leftist Jews who are very interesting on Israel.
Noam Chomsky, Masha Gessen, Norman Finkelstein, Aaron Mate’, Amy Goodman are also interesting on Israel.
Klein sounds really jaded. Hmmn. I don't know what to think about that. But, Coates resonates with every uneducated fibre of my being. Sometimes, you know what's right and just can't let go. I let go years ago. I won't be doing that again. Not now.
@@vatzjr not jaded. Programed. Like telling a German living in the states about what the Nazis were doing to the jews.
Really 😂 he didn’t spend little to no time in Isreal , doesn’t understand the history and is full of hyperbolic language , does he know what Hamas has done and continues to do , does he understand Islamist ideology … no ! Dont be a useful idiot
@@SamSung-nf6tr so does hamas ever get criticism 😂
@@JohnnyRingo-c5v Here's the thing, Hamas is a terrorist group, Israel is a government. I can't think of any time in history where people wasted time criticizing a terrorist group. Like terrorist groups listen to criticism and change their ways. They are usually delegitimized among the population who know longer require violence to advocate for their interests, they are given the right to voice their opinion for change, and usually they have a lot to lose in civil society to turn to violence. So the terrorist group either disappears as they fail to find recruits or if they are truly interested in helping their people the more moderate of them go into politics like what happened with the IRA in Northern Ireland.
But criticizing Hamas, waste of time... you just want a scape goat for why the Israeli government hasn't achieved peace and security for the Israeli people.
Yeah Klein does sound jaded. Like he doesn't see Israel as a democracy, and basically says it won't be a democracy for the foreseeable future. That's a pretty pessimistic view, especially since the Israeli/Palestinian conflict directly affects US credibility and leadership in the world. Surely one can creatively come up with ideas how things could get better, if only for America's sake. I do get that he's Jewish and he's probably seen a lot and lost a lot of hope, but he's also a Jewish American. I don't see why he has to lose hope in America.
In college, I had a roommate whose mother was Israeli when 9/11 happened and the Second Intifada was going on. One memory that always stuck with me was overhearing a conversation he was having with his then girlfriend while watching the news regarding some attack in Israel and I heard him say 'We just need to kill enough of them until it isn't a problem anymore.' That moment has always stuck with me. I'd not before heard such an open and matter-of-fact expression of racial hatred.
This man has since gone on to become a consultant at a defense think tank. He advises our government on defense policy.
Since Oct 7 I've thought about that remark a lot.
@ScottCovertall the Palestinians I know in the US - never heard that.
Imagine being born in Israel: you’ve grown up where knife attacks, hit-and-runs, suicide bombings, and rocket strikes happen every year. You’d been lucky not to lose someone close from a radical Arab. Then comes the Intifada (yet another one), with crowds chanting for the death of your people. And on top of that, you witness 9/11 unfold before your eyes.
I don’t know your past roommate, and I want to believe he remained a decent man. But if you were that person, with that history, do you think, in that moment of weakness, when the towers fell, you wouldn’t have had a horrid, violent thought?
They are indoctrinated to believe they are superior to everyone and they have to annihilate the indigenous Palestinians.
I am part-Israeli I have a feeling you have massively misunderstood what he was saying over the phone. These people doesnt mean Arabs (20% of 1967 border population) or Palestinians (population has doubled since 2001) he probably meant terrorist Jihadist groups like Hamas.
@@AtomizedMass
The towers fell because America has tried to control the world.
I was horrified by 9/11.
I didn't have confusion about why it happened.
The very tragic part is if we had spent all of that money on goodwill, the outcome would have had to have been better.
Coates is an intellectual giant compared to Ezra and that was clear in this conversation. Ezra is really frigging smart but has a lot of emotional ties no doubt to Israel and that clouds his ability to see facts clearly. Telling he won’t use the word “apartheid” for example though basically describing that is what he saw. Also telling he holds Netenyahu in a league different to Hamas and still maintains, contra to all the evidence that Israel does not target civilians (what an utter contradiction too - apartheid itself is targeting civilians, let alone the bombings etc).
highlighted a kind of moral and intellectual distance between him and Ezra. Coates wasn’t interested in dancing around words like “apartheid”-even if he didn’t use the term outright, his descriptions aligned with what many understand that system to be. It’s that refusal to obscure the truth that makes his perspective so compelling.
As you noted, Ezra’s emotional ties to Israel seemed to shape his framing. His reluctance to embrace terms like “apartheid” reflects that tension between what he knows intellectually and what he feels emotionally. It’s clear he’s struggling to reconcile Israel’s actions with his own sense of right and wrong-especially when it comes to Netanyahu’s policies and the impact on civilians.
I agree with your point about the contradiction in how Ezra distances Israel from civilian targeting, despite overwhelming evidence of harm. This kind of selective framing is part of what Coates seemed to push against throughout the discussion-making sure that moral clarity isn’t lost in the weeds of justification.
What did you think of the way Coates handled those moments? Was there anything you felt could have been explored even more deeply?
Klein is brainwashed and doesn't even know it
He’s not he’s just a racist who justifies it!
Just like white people justified Jim Crow
That’s the nature of brainwashing.
Respectfully can you share some points about why you think this? I’m trying to see it more clearly. My understanding is that he had settled on Israel being immoral and undemocratic. It seemed like the main argument between them was that as a journalist he felt it important to represent the opposing views to balance historic representation. He even says that because Coates doesn’t do this in his book he’s concerned that people will discredit his ideas, of which it seems the majority Klein agrees with?
Brainwash ed LOL
He is Jewish hence his loyalty
@@keekee5638 the opposing view is 99% of the media
Oh, Ezra, if you don't think Israel is deliberately targeting civilians, you need to look up the Dahiya Doctrine.
The Dahiya Doctrine is about targeting civilian "infrastructure" which is crucially not the same thing as targeting civilians
Look up “daddy’s home” software
@@MuiltiLightRider Look up “daddy’s home” software
@@MuiltiLightRiderhow can civilians survive without essential civilian infrastructure. No way you can justify this crazy doctrine.
@@MuiltiLightRider Yeah, I'm sure there's no actual poeple in those schools, hospitals, orphanages and places of worship. And taking away their access to food, water and medicine won't cause any civilian deaths🙄Targeting "civilian infrastructure" is still a war crime.
According to the Institute for Middle East Understanding: "The Dahiya Doctrine is an Israeli military doctrine that calls for the use of massive, disproportionate force and the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure.… While it became official Israeli military doctrine after Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon, Israel’s military has used disproportionate force and targeted Palestinian, Lebanese, and other civilians since Israel was established in 1948 based on the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians, including dozens of massacres to force them to flee for their lives. "
This conversation between Coates and Klein had shades of James Baldwin trying to explain the heroism of Nat Turner to Dick Cavett in 1968.
perfect analogy
Ezra is trying SO hard to justify WHAT Israel has been doing all the time from b4 it got the statehood.
IT'S nonsense WHAT Ezra is trying to do. Israel has NOT CHANGED AT ALL IT HAS IN FACT BECOME WORSE IF THERE IS ANYTHING WORSE THEN WORST...
Thank you Ta-Nehisi for being SO HONEST &to the point & standing YOUR ground.
44:00 Ezra true colors
The ‘hmmm’ from Coates is so obvious and lets Ezra’s ridiculous comment hang
Coates is just as bad but more subtle about it. His sympathy with Palestinians stops as soon as the Palestinians try to defend themselves. His morality is childish. Would he condemn the Jews who fought back against the Nazi regime? Of course he wouldn't. So he's racist too. He accepts and parrots the Israeli propaganda about October 7th. Is he a dumb dupe? Constantly pretending he didn't know and was lied to? Doesn't that get old fast? There's very little between the two of them.
What did he say that it isn't true?
@@fafolaw That Hamas is worse than Netanjahus coalition
@@soulsmouls They are, if they had the power that Netanyahu's government has millions would be dead by now.
I only knew a fraction of this. Thank you for this enlightening interview. I’m glad it was an hour. The 10m interviews do not give this topic enough depth. Please take our politicians on this “field trip” of Israel and Palestine
They are all paid by Israeli groups. They go over there to sign the bombs that Israel is dropping.
the politicians already know, it's the public that are kept from info deliberately
They have to sign a doc of support before taking their seats, according to a few who spoke up.
They do to occupied Palestine, they just don't care
These comments are passing the vibe check. Thank goodness. Maybe NYT will get on board with the right side of history.
Thats hoping for a lot. But agree about the comments!
They’ll only do that if Trump wins, and will blame leftists for Biden’s inaction. The decades after this war ends won’t allow liberals to get off the hook with their completely unfounded belief that Biden is somehow holding the Israelis back.
As a far right winger its sooooo funny how detached people are OMG I AM SO SUPRISED THAT MR KLEIN KS PRO ISRAEL😂😂😂😂
It's a start
They will but it will be more for the fact that they realize that an entire generation sees them as propaganda at this point. They are the last to join the party. Name a war that NYT did not support......exactly. Unfortunate because mainstream media serves an important role but to say that trust has been broken is an understatement
I'm a therapist who works largely with couples or families. Often with clients with abuse trauma. I think we all go into this with our own lenses to help explain it, and this is mine. I keep thinking about the difference between abuse by malignant figures and abuse by those who've been abused. Trauma will create victims and survivors, but we aren't good grappling with the fact that trauma can and will create perpetrators of trauma as well. We want to picture oppressors and abusers as flat power-hungry characters. We forget there can be reason for the reason people become perpetrators. This isn't justification for violent retaliation or using coercive tactics due to real fears. If anything it should be a clarion call toward non-violent methods if one wants lasting peace and security. Each time we as people, nations, or states seek out violence we are creating trauma. And that trauma will help make victims into perpetrators in the long run. We will doom ourselves if our answers are found largely in bullets and bombs.
I have no clue what should be done in israel/palestine. Even in my small field, the works I do is slow and complicated and it's by no means formulaic. But I can't see how the current course will lead to anything remotely looking like peace. I would find it hubristic to assume i know, being completely outside this conflict. But my gut says, if peace and safety are truly wanted, a story outside of force and control has to be imagined and believed in by those who are in this mess.
@@bluedreams517 I think your small window is a key to a bigger picture.
'I can't see how the current course will lead to anything looking like peace' - I think it should be clear to everyone at this point that this is by design. The Israelis subject Palestinians to conditions they are bound to resist. That resistance gets shown in Western press as a pretext for Israel's insane reprisals. The US and Israel helped Hamas take power for a reason. The Israelis ultimately want it all.
Thank you for the work you do and for this. You summed up how I've been feeling for a while.
i daresay peace & safety are not even tertiary purposes down there - the primary ones are some voice in some flaming bush , some end-of-world dream , honor , justice , pride ... and land and water .
Yes it’s difficult for me sometimes to feel empathy for the colonists but then I recall what I’ve read about the conditions that existed for them in Europe and russia which were the genesis of the Zionist project and even though it doesn’t justify them harming innocent people, it contextualizes it.
Why do interviewers want to act like the book is a history lesson on the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The book is about writing and witnessing. He wrote about things he saw that he always felt he received one sided stories about regarding the sitiation.
The "what-about-isms" are the deflections noone needs 🤦🏾♂️
Oh, there are people that desperately need those whataboutisms or they’d have to reconsider what they think.
I think that is a naive interpretation. He knows he has a huge platform and that because of that- for uninformed Americans- his is the voice of authority.
@@leslieacoca5876except these news sources have done nothing to educate on the topic. only obfuscate. which is the crux of why coates says to bring more palestinian voices to the forefront. as it is their genocide and resistance being discussed. the west is so deeply in the pocket of the zionist project that somehow a year in they’re just now only considering the possibility of expanding their understanding. after hundreds of thousands have died
@@leslieacoca5876why are they uninformed Leslie? That’s the point of his narrative, filling in the gaps left by a one-sided media narrative
This is fascinating, I'm a black South African in my late 30's & these stories are identical to what my parents tell me Apartheid South Africa was like. The everyday stuff, not what happened when Black Africans were confronting the regime.
I can only imagine what your everyday Palestinian is going through, not even talking about the current Genocide in Gaza.
South Africa has changed a lot since Apartheid fell, especially with regards to people's general freedoms, economically the situation is still harder for most Blacks Africans but no one asks us for documents or says we can use this or that public or state facility.
There are white separatist groups who hide behind "culture". There are still white South Africans who want to be "left alone" to practice their brand of "Apartheid" in whatever enclave and what I'm getting from this interview is what should the black response to this ideology be? Do we force everyone to integrate or must we be happy with the fact that we(Democratic and Constitutional South Africa) have 99.9% percent of our country.
Is there a justification for racial separation?
but there is a crucial difference: Apartheid South Africa still needed its Black workers. Since having taken in many immigrants from Russia and the Ukraine, Israel, however, no longer needs its Palestinian workers, and thus can now afford to commit a genocide, which South Africa could not do at that time.
There are lots of justifications, all of them based in logic and morality that I find repulsive.
Did Balkanization bring peace, though?
It’s a serious question for Africa where so many national lines have nothing to do with the people that live there.
South Africa is such a shithole now under black Africans😂😂
@@joostvanloon4518Indiers doen nu het werk pik die handjevol Russische Joden en Oekraïners gaan geen werk doen
White South African here. I'm 55 now and one of the minority of whites who grew up under Apartheid and was bitterly opposed to it from a young age, thanks to my older, very politicized, sister making me aware of its horror at a young age. I'm no hero. I was too much of a coward to refuse when I was conscripted into the Apartheid army, because that meant 6 years of jail, but I did have a crisis of conscience after completing basic training and basically mutinied, so they took away my rifle and just shuffled me around doing makework jobs (unit artist, photocopy clerk) for 2 years, which was surprising. But the Apartheid regime was in its dying days and I think they were treating objectors with kid gloves by then as a PR effort.
Anyway, I knew a fair number of Zionist Jewish people growing up. My family is Catholic, but my aunt married into a Jewish family and my extended family had a lot of respect for the Jewish community. My grandparents took me to a holocaust memorial exhibition in my early teens. One of my friends actually went and served in the IDF and another spent a year in a kibbutz. Just like a lot of American Zionists today my Jewish friends and family were liberal-except-for-Palestine, opposing South African Apartheid but seeing nothing wrong with settler-colonialism and Apartheid in Israel. And the narrative I was most exposed to in my younger days was the one Zionists have inculcated into Western Jewish children from a young age for decades, in which Israelis are the victims, Palestinians are responsible for their own oppression because they have refused every reasonable settlement of the conflict that would bring peace and mutual prosperity, and Jews from everywhere in the world have every right to settle Palestine (and violently displace and dispossess Palestinians in the process) because of a claim from antiquity. And that shaped my views on Israel/Palestine at the time and led me to a perspective of both-sidesism and "it's complex".
But after Apartheid ended when I was a young adult (20 years old) many of the freed struggle veterans who were my personal heroes exposed me to a far more straightforward point of view, in which the foundation of Israel was a straightforward case of settler-colonialism that involved the violent expulsion of native people from their land, followed by continuous dispossession and oppression for decades that would end up at a state that was indifferentiable from South African Apartheid where it mattered. It also made a big impression on me that Jewish veterans of the anti-Apartheid struggle like Ronnie Kasrils were avowedly anti-Zionist too.
I made a bunch of new friends in young adulthood when Apartheid ended too, including American political scientists over here to study the relationship between the Afrikaans banking sector and the Apartheid regime, and left-wing, anti-Zionist Jewish South Africans. And its largely from them that I started learning a much more accurate and relevant history of the region. I've always been a voracious reader and they exposed me to whole books on the history including scholarship going all the way back to antiquity and covering claims about the Jewish connection to the land from thousands of years ago, the claim that Palestinians have no such ancient connection and the claim that most of the ancestors of modern Jews left because they were violently expelled in antiquity.
All of which turn out to be false, when you actually read the scholarship and the extensive evidence it draws from. At no point in history ancient or modern were all the Jews living there violently expelled, only significant minorities. Most of the diaspora was from voluntary emigration. There is extensive evidence that most Palestines (along with Druze, southern Syrians and other groups) have ancient Levantine ancestry among the Canaanites, preceding the first Hebrew states and indeed, the Israelite ethnic identity in antiquity. "Arab" as applied to Palestinians is a cultural attribution applied to many people the Arabs conquered starting with the conquests of the 7th c. and does not indicate signficant ancestry in Arabia. Most Palestinians probably have some ancient Jewish ancestors that converted during successive Muslim and Christian conquests, something that early Zionists like Herzl and Ben-Gurion actually believed and stated (we know this thanks to the work of Israel's so-called "new historians"). The UN partition plan was not even in the ballpark of a fair offer and Palestinians had every reason and right to reject it. Ben Gurion deliberately used the 1948 war as an excuse to engage in ethnic cleansing and territorial expansion and thats why he didn't want the Arabs to accept the plan, as contemporary historians have exposed. As for claims of Zionists prior to 1948 "legally buying" large tracts of land under the British mandate, it was widespread practice to buy large tracts of land from rich Arab and Turkish landlords then kick out all of the Palestinian's living there to make way for exclusively Jewish settlements. Since most Palestinians at the time were landless fellahin its no wonder that they rioted, eventually forcing the British to restrict further ZIonist immigration. If that happened anywhere else and involved any other people we'd call it what it was - settler colonialism and racist segregation. The legality of the purchases is irrelevant. Slavery was legal for centuries.
I learned that countless other claims about the history of modern Israel after its founding were false or severe misrepresentations, twisted to serve ethnic nationalist aims. Israel was not a plucky little nation only ever being attacked, never the aggressor. From its foundation it aggresively sought opportunities to violently expand its borders and dispossess ever more Palestinians. One egregious example of massive distortion is how the 1967 six-day war is portrayed as one started by its Arab neighbours. As a matter of unequivocal fact Israel started the 1967 war. It was the aggressor. Of course, those steeped in rationalizing narratives will cry "but the Arabs were building up an invasion force on its borders! It was pre-emptive defence!". And that is false. Nasser announced that the Straits of Tiran, Egyptian territorial waters, would be closed to Israeli shipping, which it actually had the right to do under international law, then moved troops to the border to *defend* Egypt from Israeli attack. Why? Because only a few years earlier, when Egypt did something similar, Israel had invaded Egypt (again, the aggressor). Even communiques from the US intelligence services from the time that were shared with the Israelis, released under FOI requests, show that the Americans did not believe that Nasser intended to attack. The Israeli attack on Egypt triggered a newly signed defense agreement with Jordan so Jordan was forced to attack Israel in support of Egypt. Modern liberal Zionists trot out this same history as if it vindicates Israel's aggressive territorial expansion and oppression when the exact opposite is true.
And by the time the second intifida broke out, I'd seen rigorous and detailed analyses by respected jurists of international law showing that Israel's occupation of the Golan heights and the West Bank and its perpetual siege of Gaza, along with the de facto status of Israeli Arabs as second class citzens it terms of both law and administrative discrimination, made Israel uneqivocally an Apartheid state in international law, as defined under the Crime of Apartheid in the Rome Statute, a law which has been ratified by 179 nations globally.
When I was young it was Jewish friends and extended family, who themselves had grown up steeped in Zionist myths, who shaped my views on the conflict in a way that cast Zionism in a positive light. So its curious that in the last decade it is overwhelmingly my Jewish friends online that have filled and continue to fill my social media feed with constant unrelenting evidence that what I was exposed to in my youth was self-serving mythology. That the Zionist movement was an ethnic supremacist movement from the very beginning, since from the very beginning it premised its desire to create a home for Jews where they would be free from their centuries-long oppression on the violent displacement, dispossession and oppression of another people.
I also came to understand that many people I know who still call themselves "liberal" Zionists in the west and decry people like Netenyahu (as if its not the founding rationale and decades-long violent conquest and oppression that's the problem, just the far-right in Israeli politics today) are not necessarily deliberately deceiving others when they defend Israel, deny settler colonialism and Apartheid, and distort and misrepresent history and contemporary facts on the ground. Rather, as many Jewish commentators have made me aware (for example Yoav Shamir in his documentary Defamation), they are steeped in cogntive dissonance and self-deception because Zionism has so successfully made itself central to mainstream Western Jewish life and conflated support for Israel no matter what and justification of its oppression with being a good Jew in the West. They have been so inured to that perspective from a young age that they cannot help but rationalize it, to the extent of deceiving themselves. So its impressive to me that despite that, and despite the continued uniquivocal support of some of the most powerful western nations, such a large (and growing) minority of right-thinking Jews in the west are bitterly anti-Zionist, even if they are still a minority.
And I've come to the view that modern Israel is uneqivocally a ethnic supremacist, settler colonial and now genocidal state which is perpetuating Apartheid. Perhaps even, as some veterans of our own struggle who spent time in the occupied territories and witnessed the oppression first hand have said, worse than South Afican Apartheid.
“…I’ve had everyone from right wing Israeli commentators to actual Hamas apologists”.
“…Why is one group right wing advocates, and the other group Hamas apologists?”
I despise how *agressively feckless* some smart people pretend to be.
I'm glad Klein agrees that what Israel is doing is immoral, but I wish he would have given us a little more in terms of what actions he would support to stop this immorality and what he would not. Doing the whole "I'm just describing what is, not what ought to be; it's complicated, and no one knows what to do about it" often operates as a passive way of defending the status quo. When the status quo is continuing to give weapons and diplomatic support to Israel regardless of human rights violations, you have to wonder what is so "complicated" about opposing at least that.
It’s interesting how this conversation brings out the shallow mindedness of Ezra
my thoughts on October 7th is that it was terrible, terrible for the death that occurred, the hostages taken and terrible that the people who did it were and are in a living situation where they felt it was something that had to be done. Young adults in Gaza have spent their WHOLE LIVES at knife point surrounded by suffering and death, that trauma, that hurt colours your whole world view. What should they do? WHAT SHOULD THEY DO! They have tried everything EVERYTHING! No matter what they do violent OR peaceful Israel replies with violence.
Are we talking about the same gazans that held a captured Yazidi girl as a sex slave for 10 years. In an open air prison, Oh wait 🤦♀️
So thankful to Coates for everything he says
I end this debate by yelling at my people "IT WAS THE GERMANS NOT THE ARABS!!!" This entire thing is throwing the blame off white christian fascists onto poor people with dark skin.
Not complicated at all …..!
I just recently had to educate my aunties on this very thing. They genuinely thought that “the Arabs were behind Hitler” as in financing him because Germany couldn’t afford to pay for it all themselves. I had to pull up documentaries on the history of oil in the Middle East just to break them out of that. It’s a shock to discover you are related to racists who also happen to be very low IQ. Atleast be a clever racist.
Here comes the race hustler 😂🤡
Google "dhimmi".
Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world. Get your facts straight.
Absolutely brilliant point by Coates at 32:45 about Nat Turner's slave rebellion against white people and the use of violence. Follow that thread over a hundred years all the way to Malcolm X and Black Panthers, who were both labelled violent radicals by the same detractors. Their violence was only in resistance to oppression. There is justification for it, it is literally enshrined in international human rights law. All of this applies to what the Native Americans did too: numerous Indian Wars across the centuries, Jamestown massacre, and so forth. It is well understood who is resisting and who is invading. European Jews coming to the Middle East claiming to be from there and entitled to the land is no different from the Christian Crusaders who invaded that _same land with the _*_exact same claim_* 500-700 years earlier.
Zio…is just Manifest Destiny all over agin, repackaged except perpetrated by a different set of Europeans this time
Of course that ignores the Jews being there for a few thousand years before Islam invaded.
It also ignores the fact that most of the returning Jews came from North Africa and the Middle East.
Imagine if the Native Americans took back this country.
@@AlanKastrinsky Yes, but what’s never factually parsed out is that the J’s that have been there are middle eastern Arab ppls, just like there are Arab Christians. The ppl taking over are European J’s. Zio is just sanctioned white sup..under a different name.
@@AlanKastrinsky Islam, Judaism and Christianity were all religions that came into the region, and they were preceded by other religions. The *people* there have always been the same: Palestinians became Muslims, Jews and Christians, but they were always _Palestinians_ . For example, Egyptians were always Egyptian, even before Islam: they were the pharaohs and ancient people of the Egypt. They are not Muslims by ethnic identity (there is no such thing, no religion is an ethnic identity). Palestinians are the same. In fact, they were Canaanites before. Jews were one of them. Before Jews adopted Judaism, there were something else: Canaanites and whatever religion they had then. So the Palestinians have been around as long as the Jews have--in fact, in many cases, they are both the same thing.
The whole argument is that Palestine was never partitioned as a "Jewish state" and a "Arab State" until 1948, and that itself was the problem. Why did they need to be partitioned when, for millennia, they lived side by side?
All of the people peddling Zionism, and all of its leaders---from Theodor Herzl, to Jabotinsky, David Ben-Gurion and nearly all the founders and Prime Ministers of Israel--have been European Jews. Zionism never originated among the middle eastern Jews, the whole movement came from Europe.
The Nat Turner comparison was first made by Norman Finkelstein
When Ezra Klein says that "Hamas knew what it was about to do to their own people" (paraphrasing) and Coates immediately pushed back, I feel like Coates was on the precipice of something he couldn't describe in the moment. The violence from some part of oppressed peoples against their oppressors is as predictable as the sunrise, but who has looked at everything leading up to Oct 7th and said "Israel knows what it is about to do to its own people"? I think that's what Coates is talking about when he says lies like "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East" rest deep in our brains. Klein treats Netanyahu as (for a lack of a better term) more legitimate than Hamas. And while I don't believe in any sense that Klein feels that legitimacy of language justifies anything Netanyahu is doing, that is a function of legitimacy when one does not know the particulars about a situation.
I also think that Klein's criticism about the lack of writing about Hamas might be correct with regards to having a more complete story, but the utility he describes is wishful at best. The people who would dismiss the reality of what is happening in the West Bank because a proper accounting of the Hamas atrocities are very likely the same people who would use the inclusion of those atrocities as their justification for the current state of Israel and Palestine. And if Coates attempted to use any nuance regarding Hamas (like explicitly condemning their atrocities but also pointing out that you cannot expect anything less than violence against you when you run a violent colonial project) then that would be an excuse to likewise dismiss his book by those same people. "Hamas sympathizer" is a label that has been branded on others for less. So maybe the broader narrative is incomplete without content on Hamas, but the utility of its inclusion aside from completeness is questionable.
Well put.
Not all sides are worth listening to. Oppressors will always have a justification for their actions, but it is always, without exception, self-serving lies. Trying to understand those lies does nothing but give them yet another airing and strengthen them.
That's a great recipe for peace genius. Ignore one side's point of view completely and you're good to go. You should work for the UN.
@@joshuafrank3803 Israel isn't interested in peace. It wants domination and control. Peace implies coexistence, a two state solution. There hate is fueled by fear and always has been.
I could not agree with you more. Replacing the repressive, racist Zionist regime with an Islamic state governed by Hamas and allied with Iran is the best to way to further the cause of democracy and human rights. Expanding Iran's power and influence will make the world happier and safer for everyone.
Ha! Is it an excuse to observe the FACT that the Palestinians started almost every war that they lost their nation in? Where is the Palestinian left? Why is it that the parliament in Palestine doesn't have a faction that was against the October 7 attacks? Why is it that there's no Palestinian parliament? Why is it that HAMAS can shoot back from hospitals? Are you saying that the medical staff are firing back at Israeli solders from their place of work? Is that what's going on? Or is it that the medical staff are allowing HAMAS to operate from their building while they're trying to help people. How come there are not protests of Palestinians out in the streets raising their voice against HAMAS? Where is the peace faction in Palestine? Why don't YOU ask these questions?
@@joshuafrank3803 @Gallaphant as abrasive as Joshua’s response is, he has an iota of a point. How do we expect to attain peace if there is no dialogue amongst both sides? The fundamental problem is disenfranchisement, and the solution cannot be more of that (regardless of the hateful justifications provided by the Zionist side) how can we hope to find a solution if one side is rife with so much hate?
This book completely changed my perspective. I’m grateful to the author. Thank you for enlightening the world. 🌎~ Israel is in an apartheid state.
Explain how?
@@talarad1571 read the book! 📕
Read nathan thralls book. He is on another tour of usa so he has been interviewed at least 3 times. One at a launch or book festival and the other times on democracy now. His interviews are on this you channel. Mr thrall has been interviewed by Peter beinart on one of Mr beinarts youtube channel. Mr thrall is a jewish american writer journalist living in Jerusalem with hsi family for many years. His book a day in the life of .... has won a pulitzer for non fiction.
@@helenahanley ok ✅
@@helenahanley I’m not tryi
I'm impressed the NYT would actually publish this. They usually publish stories like Ali Baba and the 40 beheaded babies. Waking up finally?
thanks for the chuckle 😂
they publish it because Ezra K is still so obviously an Israeli apologist and therefore genocide apologist
This is one of the best interviews I have ever heard! Two of the most brilliant minds…. Although I have seen Coates in a ton of interviews, you both profoundly elevated this conversation in a way that was truly eye opening
Ezra, with all of his understanding, still be on here justifying genocide.
Because it's not a genocide. Israel's civilian to combatant ratio is the lowest in history. Hamas wants their citizens to die. If Hamas wanted to protect its' citizens all it has to do is put them in their ridiculously massive tunnel system. It is larger than the metro in the London Underground. They can easily fit their population 3 x over down there, but they don't. Wonder why?
The only one justifying genocide is Coates
This.
I clicked on the video and immediately hit "pause" because I only want to read the comments. People like Ezra are hypocrites...his views will never change because they're not founded on information or knowledge.
I think that's an unfair reading. He has been actively and openly decrying the actions of Israel and the IDF for the better part of a year. He is not justifying. He opposes it. But he is trying to understand.
I personally think he gives to much credence to the Israeli side of the story, and that this credence is unwarranted given Israel's history and actions over the past several decades. But he is entitled to determine for himself which stories he finds credible, which not, and despite my difference in opinion I have always found him to be a good actor who tries his best to make and present information in a compassionate and well-informed manner.
Oh, Ezra, Ezra. If only you could process (!!!) YOUR OWN words. If only!
Ta’nahasi speaking truth to power. Klein was glitching as he tried to comprehend 😂
yes Ta’nahasi the multi millionaire due to the white guilt of NYT low info one sided NPCs is speaking "truth to power". You people are the equivalent to the MAGA tards you constantly wail about.
Worried about losing his entitlements.
I let out a sigh of relief reading the comments
I'm on the Right and I had heard of this guy but never listened to him or read his books.
I respect his straight talk.
If you respect straight talk, it's no wonder you reject whatever the US calls "left" these days. All the actual concern for the working class is gone, and what you get is... what's left.
@@DrVictorVasconcelos You clearly aren't listening to Trump's statements on Israel, to write that. He's every bit as horrific as the rest of them. On Ukraine, too.
I am on the left, and i don't respect him at all
@@rachelkeane331you’re not on the left you’re a zionist lib. you would have been in the SS if you came up in the thirties because you would have bought that it was okay to genocide a whole people
@@rachelkeane331 oh how will he live
Respect to anyone who is standing with humanity who ever he is
Thank you Mr. Coates. Your book is one more in the mountains of truths about the horrors of the Israeli genocide. By writing this book you expose yourself to rebuke, ostracism and a well known attacks of those for whom the truth is too uncomfortable to hear.
Your well earned prestige as an acclaimed author adds weight to the rights of the Palestinian people. You could have stayed silent and rest on your laurels. But you chose to speak. Thank you again and again.
Although the apartheild topic is important. I think another entry point into the Israeli Palestine subject, is simply, does Israel target civilians?
I certainly believe they do.
What do others think? If one's opinion of the conflict is less simplistic than Coates's, how do you contextualize the deliberate killing of civilians, joirnalists, aid workers etc? If you dont believe Israel deliberately kills civillians, may you make your case for why not?
RIP
Aysenur Ezgi Ehgi
Rachel Corrie
Shireen Abu Akleh
Hind Rajab
The only way a person can deny that they target civilians is if they get their info from the Israeli government or grew up ingesting western corporate media and have refused to question their biases during this current act.
@@doyouevennaturebro4593
I totally agree with the notion that it's near impossible to in goodfaith conclude that Israel does not target civilians. Do you agree with me that since this is the case, one does not need to know the history or much else, to be in the right protesting or otherwise pressuring Israel to stop doing so? Simple? At least this demand of so called proPalestinian protestors is justifiably uncomplicated, right?
I don’t think they do, because they don’t see their targets as civilians.
They would have to acknowledge that those targets are human first.
Ezra proved his view is no different than Netanyahu, Biden and main stream media.
You act like they are all the same view
@@1984isnotamanual overall they are.
Who owns the media
Oh right mr Kleins diaspora 😂😂😂
@@1984isnotamanualThey are
Ta-Nehisi and Ezra thank you for the conversation about a very complex problem affecting all of us who want to live in a just society. Preserving humanity is the responsibility of all
I really appreciated this conversation. Thank you to you both!
Klein is delusional. If he thinks the IDF and Netanyahu are more moral than Hamas he's a part of the problem. His basic logic is that Hamas' terrorist attack is more egregious than Israel's genocide, because 1,200 Israeli civilians deserve(d) to live more than 40,0000 Palestinian civilians. The moral math doesn't add up Ezra.
Particularly when you consider how many of the 1200 were active military or reservists i.e. trained soldiers of the IDF. The crimes that Hamas soldiers committed on October 7 should be prosecuted in the ICJ under the rules of armed conflict. A prosecution and defence (if any) should be presented. As they should also be presented for Israel's actions in response.
Very good in-depth discussion.
1. There’s actual evidence that Hamas did not “know” what Israel was going to do to the people of Gaza. A hostage reported that one of her captors said don’t worry you’ll only be here a few days. I think Hamas grossly overestimated the value of the hostages to Netanyahu and therefore thought the hostages would provide more protection and negotiating strength than they ultimately did.
2. You started to discuss the role of Palestinian leadership and it got sidetracked. You can research this information. The reason why Palestinians do not have better leadership is because Israel targets arrests and kills all potential Palestinian leaders (similar to Navalny etc). Israel knows it can fall back on - and you said the quote from Ben Givr - the argument that it cannot have a 2 state solution bc it has no governing partner. Well that’s bc you’ve killed and imprisoned all of the good governing partners. The man who could unite Gaza and the West Bank and lead Palestine is currently sitting in Israeli jail.
Could you imagine being stopped my military and asked your religion and if you answered wrong, you could potentially be detained? The whole situation is bizarre. And there more accounts of these encounters.
The people criticising him by claiming he was only there for 10 days or he's not an expert on the subject don't seem to understand the point he's making. There is no justification for treating other human beings like caged animals period.
Even if they openly support Hamas ?
@@Gphilly819 Have a think about how you would view the world and the Israelis if you were a Palestinian being treated like an animal in the West Bank.
@@Gphilly8193 million Palestinians in the West Bank are being treated like this…
@@darrenr9136 well if I supported leaders who act like animals like come off, then it would make sense
@@Gphilly819no it makes no sense. You’ve clearly lost a huge chunk of your humanity if you think it does.
Great conversation
Thanks for having it 🫡
This was the kind of back and forth that should have happened on that GMA interview. That Coates was attacked right out of the gate in that place and here Ezra was able to get to the same questions and disagreements with grace and respect speaks to the level amateur journalism that was going on with that Tony guy. Well Done.
There is absolutely no way an African American can witness segregation and ignore it!!! Bravo Mr. Coates...
Respectfully Ezra, you talked way too much during this podcast. You didn't give enough space for your guest to speak.
That’s how Hasbarists work
Thank you for this amazingly thoughtful conversation. Still pondering over it the next day.
this is how we must learn to communicate with each other. Such a respectful and learned conversation between two men who understand that through constructive dialog they can learn from each other and hopefully move the world forward. Ty, gentlemen!
I completely enjoy this conversation and would like to share my thoughts, particularly on the discussion between 44:23 to 48:58. It immediately made me think of the Vietnam War and what it took for Americans to truly understand the horrors of war like with the release of the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the government’s lies, and the footage of a Vietnam military officer recording the brutal reality of sending soldiers into battle, knowing many would be killed or captured than killed. He documented these atrocities because he knew they needed to be seen by the American public, who had little understanding of what war really is. As both of you mentioned, the events of October 7th were horrific, but they forced people to pay attention to the ongoing conflict and start educating themselves about Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, and more. Most Millennials and younger generations had no real understanding of the history over there unless it was a specific area of study. Similarly, in America, during the Civil Rights Movement, James Bevel organized the Children’s Crusade in 1963, knowing what Bull Connor would do to those peaceful protesters in Alabama. And sure enough, Connor unleashed fire hoses and police dogs on children, and it was all recorded. Those horrifying images were what finally got certain Americans to see the truth and helped push forward the Civil Rights Act. Your conversation reminded me of this, and I feel deeply about what's happening not just in Palestine since the mid-1940s, but also to Black Americans since the end of the Civil War. If people can’t see the parallels between Gaza and the ghettos in America, now labeled as Housing and Urban Development they’re missing a crucial point. If I’m wrong, please let me know. Tupac once said in an interview, when asked about violence in the Black community: "Every day, I'm standing outside trying to sing my way in: We are hungry, please let us in. After about a week that song is gonna change to: We hungry, we need some food. After two, three weeks, it's like: Give me the food, or I'm breaking down the door. After a year you're just like: I'm picking the lock. Coming through the door blasting." Is his statement really more disturbing than the real-life violence Black Americans have faced and continue to face? The frustrating reality is that Black Americans have always been told to be patient and wait for justice, with the belief that "history will prove us right." But we often forget that history is written by the survivors, and if we don’t act, our voices may never be heard in the way we hope.
Wow / You must be Black Man/ to understand
You see. Americans had the excuse to ignore all of those atrocities committed on their behalf in the past. Today they don't have any excuse because access to communications technologies including the internet and its real time recording of events around the world. History won't be kind to Americans of this generation. And rightly so because now they seem to be enablers. And that's why Coates and many like him has written his name in history for speaking out.
Well said my friend
The sad part is this has been going on for 75 years. 75 YEARS
From the perspective of someone who had a Judeo-Christian & Lib-Zionist upbringing, the most ironic thing about all of this to me: is how Christian it is-- this idea that we can put all our sins unto someone else-- that a whole entire people who were completely blameless for *OUR* sins can just be scapegoated, punished, sacrificed on place of WE European/Western society who perpetrated the crimes of the 1930s and 40s upon our neighbors and our selves. No, we can simply heal and forget without ever really reckoning with any of it, western Christian & Jew-- by putting it all unto someone else who's been powerless for centuries and crucifying THEM for it. Wicked. It's one thing I never liked about Christian theology, the idea of sacrificing someone who is blameless in order to "pay" for your own wicked deeds.. but here we all are doing it.
Huh?
The sad thing is that as Rene Girard points out, the defining feature of Christianity (at least in comparison to other religions) is the understanding that the sacrificial lamb is innocent. God themselves came down in the form of Jesus and himself became the last sacrifice. Yet all Christians seem to have taken away from Jesus dying on the cross for our sins is that this is how we cleanse our sins.
Dude, this is a huge stretch. It took a moment for me to follow what you were saying and once it did, it only really fit one specific version of christian theology that's sola fide focused. (Which is technically the minority view, as catholics alone out number protestant viewpoints). And even then it feels like a stretch. I'm on the unorthodox end of christianity in beliefs/practice. I have real disagreements with several common orthodox beliefs, including sola fide. But this ain't one of them.
Ummmm, Palestinian terrorists are not blameless.
Why atheism is less complicated and less territorial. We don’t kick out 750,000 people, occupy territories for over 75 years nor do we kill 10s of thousands of people for resisting an occupation all based on books of fiction and greed.
Ezra comes dangerously close to genocidal rhetoric in this conversation
Nope. Not even kind of close.
@@HappyChemicalsMusicRight, it's 100% unadulterated genocide apologia.
@@HappyChemicalsMusiche says he sees no other solution
he went over into it several times, blaming Hamas for anything going on - especially after Coates compared them to Nat Turner & the slave revolts doing whatever they needed to do to get their freedom & were justified in their actions. Klein just ignored any sense of morality and went "both sides bad, this means the status quo must remain" & the status quo is a somewhat slower genocide - but genocide nonetheless. Meanwhile, 'Israel' is bombing Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and whomever else they feel like clearly showing they are a rogue state & genocide in Palestine isn't their end goal, they will not stop their evil until they are stopped by an outside force.
All Klein's calls for "Democracy" like 80% of 'Israel' isn't super fine with the genocide shows just how out of touch he is, as if voting is going to stop what 'Israel' exists to do.
Great conversation I really enjoyed this. But Ezra getting caught up on what is missing from the book is precisely why I think Ta-Nehisi wrote the book. Those voices that Ezra feels are missing from Ta-Nehisi's book are literally everywhere else. You can just turn on any new organization or read the pages of the NYT and there are tons of just every day Jewish people or Israeli's who are relatively a-political, who want the war to end. That voice is purposely not included in this work of essays because we already hear them, on top of all of whatever zionist message we might hear
I’m sorry but this is a completely ignorant statement: if you have been following this conflict at all, then this argument Coates makes is straight out of a terrorists grievance letter from the second intifada. The only thing missing is the suicide bombing-which Coates completely avoids.
I want the war to end but the Palestinians need to have a real leader step up for peace. The Palestinians need to come to grips with the fact that yes there will be security concessions on their side. They have to renounce violence.
Imagine what would happen if an MLK like figure came out of Ramallah. They completely disavowed violence and stated peace was what was wanted. Israel would come to the table.
This will not happen until the Palestinians move on from believing that armed resistance is worth it. Until then, they just keep giving Israel more and more opportunities to grab more of area c.
Continuing the war is only benefits one side. The delusion that Palestinians can fight their war to a peace is a fallacy that needs to be treated the same way of the axis powers after World War Two with the Martial plan.
@@shanajones2456 it might be a little cynical, but I think Ezra was saying that including the other perspective was to make the book less likely to be dismissed, even if that perspective is already everywhere.
i enjoyed this conversation. i do think they talked past each other for large stretches over a point that i felt was pretty simple. ta-nehisi essentially had the scales from his eyes lifted during his trip to israel. his point was that most americans have those same scales on their eyes, and he was trying to determine why this was the case. additionally, he gave (from his perspective) the reality of the situation there. there was a katt williams bit years ago about the war on terror where he mentioned how we call the dead people we killed 'insurgents.' ta-nehisi makes similar points about language...'settler' has a connotation of being unofficial or unsanctioned...but the reality is those settlers are subsidized. americans understand 'democracy' as essentially what america, canada, and a lot of western europe has...but israel literally has segregation, which on the whole, americans haven't accepted as part of democracy in decades. since he read the book, idk why it took ezra so long to understand the point ta-nehisi was making (maybe he was just trying to get more out of him for the podcast), but yea. pretty clear points from ta-nehisi, which, importantly, didn't need the perspective of netanyahu supporters, etc. although, i will say that maybe hearing those ppl speak with clarity about what they actually want over there would have been eye-opening for some americans who think they are actually fighting for a democracy, etc...if that was ezra's point, then ok, but it didn't feel that way.
Great conversation. I think many are trying to dismiss Coates because his work is not a treatise on the conflict. The truth he speaks and the moral clarity understanding how wrong this is is unimpeachable.
What an enlightening and refreshing conversation, there is no pretense that Israel is somehow morally superior to Palestinians. In US media this conversation is so very rare! We need to hear more of it! We need to hear that Israel is not the "only democracy in the Middle East" and reflects US values. Israel reflects our values..... of Jim Crow!
Also of Manifest Destiny, just like America thinks it has the God given right to expand across the continent, most of the people in power in Israel right now similarly think God has promised them the region of "Greater Israel" and the right to displace anyone else in it. Israel is truly a warped mirror image of America in so many ways
@@natedogg890 Jesus Christ stop with your projection, Western imperial relationist world view, and ahistorical bullshit. One Jewish state is a problem but the entire Middle East and a great chunk of Africa is Muslim today because of Arab slavery and conquest.
Lol Palestine refused a two state solution in 1948 and has been an aggressor to which Israel has had to protect itself. The Jewish people who were nearly annihilated and have been expelled from lands through their history are not about to play with an aggressor. Palestinians in the region have been an aggressor or destabilizer not only to Israel but to other countries in the ME as well.
@@natedogg890!!!!
This a great conversation. Thank you for being sincere, honest and polite.
Thank you both for having the courage to speak honestly to each other. Both provided insights essential to extricating these parties from this catastrophe. What we are witnessing in this war is a microcosm of the entire history of the world in which the cruellest slaughter of ones enemies was done with tribal, national and empiric pride, abetted by religious narratives. The difference today is that we have a better understanding of the “other” with whom we share this planet and with whom we can communicate through modern technology . These ancient, indeed biological impulses can be curbed given our increasing understanding of human nature. But more cogently, awareness of the destructive power of these modern weapons (ultimately nuclear) must be the last barrier to global annihilation.
Klein always came off as a pompous brat but parts of this interview indicate that he actually may be an apologist who believes racist agenda and utters right wing talking points. It's a real shame.
Stop larpimg these Jewish scumbags with us on the far right
We said this shit years ago and you dummies still think different
I always clocked him for the worm he is, it blows my mind anyone doesn’t get it immediately