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<h1 class="page__title title balance-text" id="page-title">Ta-Nehisi
Coates sings of Zionism</h1>
<header class="node__header">
<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/rania-khalek"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Rania Khalek</a></span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2016-02-23T19:25:00+00:00">23
February 2016<br>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/ta-nehisi-coates-sings-zionism/15776">https://electronicintifada.net/content/ta-nehisi-coates-sings-zionism/15776</a></small></small></small></b><br>
</span></span> </p>
</header>
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<p>In 2014, Ta-Nehisi Coates published a compelling <a
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">case
for reparations</a> owed to Black Americans for racial injuries,
particularly with respect to discriminatory housing policies, that
continue to affect millions today.</p>
<p>Published at <em>The Atlantic</em>, his award-winning piece
sparked an important national debate. It also helped propel him
into the national spotlight as a MacArthur Foundation “<a
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/09/2015-macarthur-genius-grants-announced/407758/">genius</a>”
and a best-selling author read, among others, by <a
href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2015/08/president_barack_obama_ta_nehisi_coates_memoir_on_his_2015_summer_reading.html">President
Barack Obama</a>.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, there is a major flaw in his argument that exposes
one of his most glaring political lapses. Coates presents German
reparations to Israel as a successful and moral model, ignoring
the horrors Israel inflicted and still inflicts on Palestinians
and other people of the region using those funds.</p>
<p>To make matters worse, shortly after the publication of his
piece, Coates promoted reparations at a live event <a
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2014/06/the-atlantic-presents-ta-nehisi-coates-the-case-for-reparations-jeffrey-goldberg-to-interview-coates-at-sixth-i-on-june-12/371975/">with
his <em>Atlantic</em> colleague Jeffrey Goldberg</a>, the
former Israeli prison guard and <a
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/05/obama-interview-iran-isis-israel/393782/">Obama
favorite</a>.</p>
<p>If the objective is to demonstrate the feasibility of
reparations, then emphasizing German compensation to Holocaust
victims would be completely appropriate.</p>
<p>But Coates focuses on the totally separate issue of German
“compensation” to the settler-colonial state of Israel, portraying
it as a positive development that contributed to Israel’s civilian
infrastructure and economic growth.</p>
<p>“Reparations could not make up for the murder perpetrated by the
Nazis. But they did launch Germany’s reckoning with itself, and
perhaps provided a roadmap for how a great civilization might make
itself worthy of the name,” Coates writes.</p>
<p>There are some gaping holes in this narrative.</p>
<p>First, it relies on a total conflation of Israel and Zionism, on
the one hand, with Jews, on the other. And it accepts uncritically
the <a
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/05/2013521184814703958.html">ahistorical
claim</a> that Israel and Zionism were the victims of the Nazis,
and therefore Israel was the appropriate address for
“reparations,” the delivery of which could offer Germans
absolution.</p>
<p>It also completely ignores the fact that while other Jews were
resisting the Nazis, Zionists infamously made a deal with them,
the notorious Transfer Agreement of 1933, to facilitate the
transport of German Jews and their property to Palestine and
which, <a
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201331884943284526.html">as
Joseph Massad points out</a>, broke the international Jewish
boycott of Nazi Germany started by American Jews.</p>
<p>But even if we set these fundamental questions aside, as a
practical matter, from the standpoint of Israel’s victims, German
reparations were not used to repair but to destroy. The billions
Germany gave Israel were an enormous contribution to Israel’s
military capacity, enabling its colonial expansion, land theft,
military invasions and occupations and further ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians.</p>
<p>Despite people pointing out such concerns to Coates on social
media and in person (I tried engaging him on the issue at one of
his speaking events, to no avail), he continues to invoke Israel
as a model.</p>
<p>Appearing on <em>Democracy Now!</em> earlier this month to
discuss reparations, Coates again cited Israel, <a
href="http://www.democracynow.org/2016/2/10/ta_nehisi_coates_is_voting_for">telling</a>
host Amy Goodman that reparations from Germany were “invested in
Israel. They basically sold them goods that Israel then used to
build themselves up.”</p>
<p>This is a shameful whitewash of Palestinian suffering that needs
to be corrected.</p>
<h2>“Indirect victims of the Holocaust”</h2>
<p>Contrary to the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-benjamin-netanyahu-trying-whitewash-hitler">fabrications</a>
of Israeli leaders, Palestinians played no role in the Holocaust.
Yet they have been made to pay for it with their land and their
lives in the name of Western atonement.</p>
<p>Germany has been sacrificing Palestinians to atone for its
genocide of millions of European Jews since at least 1952, the
year Israel’s first prime minister, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/david-ben-gurion">David
Ben Gurion</a>, and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer
signed a reparations agreement.</p>
<p>As the first postwar chancellor, Adenauer saw publicly
compensating Israel as the most effective way to rehabilitate
Germany’s image. He also <a
href="http://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2015/summer/germany-japan-reconciliation">spoke</a>
about payments to Israel as easing the way to a “spiritual
settlement” for Germany’s “moral and material” debts.</p>
<p>And Ben-Gurion, facing an ailing economy, was desperate for the
resources to preserve and expand Israel’s Jewish demographic
majority following the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians by
Zionist militias from 1947 into the early 1950s, an event known to
Palestinians as the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/nakba">Nakba</a>.</p>
<p>So against the backdrop of fierce Israeli protests, an Israeli
delegation, which included <a
href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3302786,00.html">no
Holocaust survivors</a>, negotiated a reparations deal despite
knowledge that the West German government included many Nazis and
Nazi collaborators whose pasts Adenauer was <a
href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-holocaust-in-the-dock-west-germany-s-efforts-to-influence-the-eichmann-trial-a-756915.html">working
hard to conceal</a>.</p>
<p>Adenauer’s chief advisor, for instance, was Hans Globke, a man
who helped <a
href="http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206301.pdf">draft</a>
and enforce many pieces of anti-Jewish legislation, including the
infamous Nuremberg Laws, during the Nazi regime.</p>
<p>Since then, Germany has paid some <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.655332">$60
billion</a> in reparations to Israel.</p>
<p>“This cash flow from Germany went directly to the Israeli
occupation machine that has made the Palestinians indirect victims
of the Holocaust,” <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/germany-made-palestinians-indirect-victims-holocaust-says-author-max-blumenthal/14030">observes</a>
author and journalist <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/max-blumenthal">Max
Blumenthal</a>. “The current bloodshed is a result of this
policy.”</p>
<p>Indeed, according to the independent Jewish magazine <a
href="http://www.momentmag.com/inside-germanyisrael-relationship/"><em>Moment</em></a>,
“As early as 1954, German reparation funds were secretly being
used to buy patrol boats, tanks and arms.”</p>
<p>Germany itself directly supplied Israel with weapons through
various channels.</p>
<p>The magazine cites a <a
href="https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33808.pdf">US
Congressional Research Service report</a> from 2007 that
concluded that German-supplied arms “played a considerable role in
Israeli military victories in 1967, 1973 and 1982.”</p>
<p>In other words, Germany played a key role in enabling Israeli
violence, including the ongoing occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza Strip and Israel’s devastating invasion of Lebanon, including
the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/sabra-and-shatila-massacre">massacres
at the Sabra and Shatila</a> refugee camps.</p>
<p>Germany’s military support for Israel may have gone beyond
conventional weaponry. Last year, Germany’s <em>Welt</em> <a
href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11535629/West-Germany-secretly-funded-Israels-nuclear-bomb-despite-Israel-denials.html">reported</a>
that Adenauer’s government financed Israel’s secret nuclear
weapons program in the 1960s to the tune of $500 million,
disguised as a development loan – an allegation Israel, which
refuses to confirm it has nuclear weapons at all, has denied.</p>
<h2>Aiding atrocities</h2>
<p>In the early years of the state, before 1967, the Israeli army’s
priority was to keep Palestinian refugees from returning to their
land while <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-tried-recast-palestinians-strangers-their-own-land/13368">subduing
the Palestinians who remained</a> with military rule.</p>
<p>In 1957, Germany forged a secret agreement for <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.576629">military
and scientific cooperation</a> with Israel <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.655332">rooted</a>
in the belief that Germany was obligated by its Nazi past to
guarantee Israel’s security as a Jewish state.</p>
<p>Israel regularly exploited this sentiment.</p>
<p>In early 1964, after Germany began funneling tanks, submarines,
artillery, mobile cannons and missile boats to Israel, details of
the secret program were leaked to the media, generating public
opposition across Germany. The government was pressured into
halting the arms flow and it pledged not to send any more weapons
into conflict zones.</p>
<p>Israel’s deputy defense minister Shimon Peres <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.576629">issued
a cable</a> to the Israeli diplomatic delegation in West
Germany, shamelessly capitalizing on Holocaust guilt.</p>
<p>Israel “doesn’t see itself as being located in a conflict region
or as involved in an armed struggle,” wrote Peres, but “as part of
the Jewish people, which is under constant threat of annihilation
from the dictatorial government in Egypt.”</p>
<p>“If the Germans want to pass a law [against selling arms to
conflict zones], they must
commit themselves to correcting historical injustices toward the
Jewish people and not make life easier for their simplistic policy
at our expense,” he added.</p>
<p>Germany responded by resurrecting the arms program and
establishing an open military relationship that was instrumental
to Israel’s future conquests.</p>
<p>This dynamic remains so profitable to Israel that an Israeli
diplomat <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.662962">told
journalists</a> last year that “it was an Israeli interest to
maintain German guilt feelings” about the Holocaust. Without
German guilt, “we’d be just another country as far as they’re
concerned,” the diplomat reportedly said.</p>
<p>While the US has replaced Germany as the main guarantor of
Israel’s military dominance, German money continues to fuel
Israel’s military might.</p>
<p>As part of its perceived moral obligation to Israel, Germany has
delivered <a
href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-newest-sub-leaves-germany-bound-for-haifa/">five
Dolphin-class submarines</a> that are capable of carrying
nuclear warheads.</p>
<h2>Destitute Holocaust survivors</h2>
<p>If German reparations were intended first and foremost to support
victims of Nazi atrocities, then by the most direct measures, the
tens of billions of dollars in payments appear largely to have
failed.</p>
<p><a
href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4646867,00.html">According
to</a> a 2015 report by the Foundation for the Benefit of
Holocaust Victims in Israel, 45,000 survivors in Israel live in
poverty – 30 percent of all Holocaust survivors in the country.</p>
<p>German reparations appear to have been just as unsuccessful at
alleviating the suffering of survivors of its atrocities now
living in the US. In the New York region, more than half of
Holocaust survivors who are supposed to benefit from such funds –
approximately 40,000 people – lived on very low incomes defined as
below 150 percent of the <a
href="https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines">federal poverty
threshold</a>, <a
href="http://forward.com/news/200803/more-than-half-of-nyc-holocaust-survivors-living-i/">according
to</a> the UJA-Federation Jewish Community Study of New York for
2011.</p>
<p>In recent years, hundreds of Israeli Holocaust survivors have
sued Israel and the Jewish Agency for appropriating the funds
gained from Germany, ostensibly in compensation for their
suffering, while they struggled with trauma and destitution.</p>
<p>“The money was officially given to help resettle what were termed
‘Holocaust refugees,’ but instead Israel spent the money on
general public use instead of giving it to Holocaust survivors,”
Gad Weissfeld, the lawyer for hundreds of survivors, <a
href="http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/Holocaust-survivors-sue-state-over-unpaid-reparations">said
in 2011</a>.</p>
<p>“A great many people benefitted from the money, but not the
Holocaust survivors. They came here as ‘human dust,’ with
absolutely nothing, and needed it for basic things like housing
and education,” Weissfeld added.</p>
<p>After years of litigation, Israel’s high court ruled against two
groups of survivors, <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.570320">in
2014</a> and again <a
href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Supreme-Court-closes-door-on-Children-of-Tehran-Holocaust-survivors-444254">this
month</a>.</p>
<p>On the same day the Israeli government won its legal battle to
deny compensation to the survivors in 2014, the Tel Aviv newspaper
<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.570320"><em>Haaretz</em>
noted</a>, Israel’s parliament “approved funding to fly some 70
Knesset members to Auschwitz on International Holocaust
Remembrance Day.”</p>
<h2>Invisible Palestinians</h2>
<p>It would be unfair to demand that Coates delve into the history
of Palestine in an article about reparations for Black Americans
had he not devoted an entire section and more than a thousand
words to lauding Germany’s bankrolling of a racist,
settler-colonial state as a model.</p>
<p>By doing so, he ignores the Nakba, erases Palestinian suffering
and gives Germany a free pass for making Palestinians into
secondary victims of its European genocide.</p>
<p>Acknowledging these shortcomings would require at the very least
recognizing the existence of Palestinians, something Coates has
struggled with in the past.</p>
<p>But Coates apparently has no problem recognizing – and maybe even
identifying with – the oppressors of the Palestinians.</p>
<p>In an article headlined “The Negro sings of Zionism,” he once <a
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2008/05/the-negro-sings-of-zionism/5201/">likened</a>
Black liberation leaders Malcolm X and Huey Newton to Zionists,
while making no reference to Palestinians or to the fact that
Newton’s avowedly internationalist Black Panther Party <a
href="http://psreview.org/content/view/7/68/">rejected</a>
Zionism, equating it with “chauvinism and ethnocentrism.”</p>
<p>On another occasion, Coates wrote about <a
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/who-are-we-humans-jews-or-zionists/280691/">Jewish
immigration to Palestine</a>, likening the Black struggle
against American racism to the Zionist colonization of Palestine.</p>
<p>“Should German Jews continue the fight against anti-Semitism in
Europe or should they separate and give up trying to convince
people who have long hated them?” Coates asks, observing that “the
dilemma is familiar to some of us.”</p>
<p>Nowhere do the Palestinians figure in Coates’ moral or political
calculations.</p>
<p>To his credit, Coates later tweeted an apology for writing “as
though the Palestinian people do not exist.”
</p>
<div id="file-34776" class="file file-document file-text-oembed
oembed-rich oembed-default oembed-twitter">
<div class="oembed-content">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en"><a
href="https://twitter.com/veganforareason">@veganforareason</a>
<a href="https://twitter.com/NYCJulieNYC">@NYCJulieNYC</a> <a
href="https://twitter.com/ZaidJilani">@ZaidJilani</a> Yes
it is. Penned as though the Palestinian people do not exist.
Deeply wrong.</p>
— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) <a
href="https://twitter.com/tanehisicoates/status/501191486185435136">August
18, 2014</a></blockquote>
</div>
</div>
<div id="file-34781" class="file file-document file-text-oembed
oembed-rich oembed-default oembed-twitter">
<div class="oembed-content">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en"><a
href="https://twitter.com/ZaidJilani">@ZaidJilani</a> <a
href="https://twitter.com/veganforareason">@veganforareason</a>
<a href="https://twitter.com/NYCJulieNYC">@NYCJulieNYC</a>
Apologies for pontificating on an actual struggle, as though
it were a pet science project.</p>
— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) <a
href="https://twitter.com/tanehisicoates/status/501191794974294016">August
18, 2014</a></blockquote>
</div>
</div>
<p>Yet here we are in 2016, and one of America’s most celebrated
public intellectuals is still speaking as if Palestinians, and the
violence Israel inflicts on them daily, are invisible.</p>
<p><em>Rania Khalek is an associate editor of The Electronic
Intifada.</em></p>
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