The Message

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Palestinians are now barred from Al-Shuhada Street, while any non-Palestinian can stroll the street as they please. “There are 126 Israeli cameras filming and recording the whole way here,” Walid said. Then he pointed toward rooftop after rooftop and said, “There is a camera there. A camera over there. A camera there.”

walked out to buy some goods from a shopkeeper. But before I could get there, a soldier walked out from a checkpoint, blocked my path, and asked me to state my religion. He looked at me skeptically when I told him I did not have one and asked for my parents’ religion. When I told him they were not religious either, he rolled his eyes and asked about my grandparents. When I told him they were Christian, he allowed me to pass.

For as sure as my ancestors were born into a country where none of them was the equal of any white man, Israel was revealing itself to be a country where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person anywhere.

And in those West Bank settlements which I once took as mere outposts, you can find country clubs furnished with large swimming pools. On seeing these cisterns, it occurred to me that Israel had advanced beyond the Jim Crow South and segregated not just the pools and fountains but the water itself. And more, it occurred to me that there was still one place on the planet—under American patronage—that resembled the world that my parents were born into.

There was quiet in the car for a moment. Avner answered first. He said he believed in self-determination for the Jewish people and that questions of where that self-determination should play out were now theoretical. “We’re here,” he said. “The question is, can there be a way to have the right to self-determination for Israelis and to Palestinians? I think the answer is yes, there has to be. I mean, there’s no other way. But I do think that there are very dangerous things that have grown out of this concept of Jewish nationality, which has transformed into Jewish superiority or Jewish supremacy, which goes beyond Kahane or Goldstein. I mean, this is deeply rooted within Israeli society, within Zionist ideology. There is a wish and a want for self-determination. I don’t think that’s inherently wrong. I think what’s inherently wrong is one nationality coming at the expense of the other.