“Either apartheid is right or wrong. It’s really, really simple,” the Black writer Ta-Nehisi Coates replied to a CBS Morning Show anchor.
One of the presenters had just admonished Coates for not acknowledging in his newly published book The Message that Israel’s occupation and the system of apartheid imposed on Palestinians was a “complicated” issue.
The previous day a review of The Message in The New York Times raised the same objection, saying that Coates was “suggesting that ‘factual complexity’ is simply so much noise.”
The “It’s Complicated” narrative is a familiar one to Palestine solidarity activists who encounter it routinely. Although they generally recognize it for the ruse it is, it’s still very commonly used by Zionists. So Coates’ rejoinder that “it’s really, really simple” is a welcome one – and so is The Message itself. …more
