The Message, Ta-Nehisi Coates‘ latest book (pub. October 2024), is a reflection of life through his travels to Palestine and other places – this review will deal exclusively with the book‘s last section, detailing his perspective on his time in the occupied West Bank. I found this section underwhelming and in parts even damaging to the message Coates is trying to pass on. (Certain praise has to be given to the first section of his book, reflecting modern education and learning as well as teaching processes)

Coates starts his section on Palestine with a visit to Yad Vashem – part of his ten day journey to the West Bank and East Jerusalem in Summer 2023 – and elaborates on the violence of the Holocaust. Now to me, a reader, this implies a connection between the violence brought upon Palestine and the Holocaust (something that is simply ignorant of Palestinian history and a rather unclear message). In his narrative, he remains in Jerusalem/Al Quds for a little while and details his visit to Al Aqsa*.
Once there, like many authors featured in anthologies and narratives surrounding mobility in Jerusalem and the West Bank, he centres his message around his own restrictions of movement and access. A pity, in my opinion, because while the IOFs control over movement should always be called into question it concerns first and foremost the everyday lives of Palestinians, not that of visitors. The real task, perhaps the real “message” is to bring Palestinian lives closer to American audiences in an equally humanizing way as Coates’ narrative regarding his own experience was. 

Further down the line, Israeli foreign politics in African countries are explored, as well as the weaponization of Antisemitism claims in American politics – but when Coates takes a closer look at Palestinian journalists and chooses to focus on those in American newsrooms instead of those being targeted on the ground in Palestine – words fail me. I think it is far from any constructive message at this point, and given the timing of Coates journey (summer 2023) this exclusion seems deliberate. This book was published in the midst of the genocide on Gaza, and to obscure the exclusion of Gazan and Palestinian journalists elsewhere from global reporting is no accident, but a distraction into representation and inclusion into an already unjust system. 

What do we do with the wisdom he calls for, why witness if not even speak precisely about violence?

*this is mispronounced consistently throughout the audiobook read by the author himself.