The Message, a new book by award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates, includes a contentious essay about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Coates concluded that the dispute isn’t complicated. It’s a simple matter of right and wrong—and Israel is wrong. Coates never mentioned in his book that Israel is surrounded by nations seeking to eradicate it and is constantly coping with terror attacks, thereby perplexing a CBS interviewer. The interviewer sought to know whether Coates omitted these facts since he thought Israel had no right to exist. Coates replied, “No country in this world establishes its ability to exist through rights. Countries establish their ability to exist through force, as America did.” Clearly, Coates suggests that the extermination of the Native population and the seizure of their land led to the creation of America, and that Jews followed suit in Palestine to establish the state of Israel. Spanish, French, and British colonies were responsible for the conquest of land and the annihilation of native populations throughout North and South America, but the United States of America established itself through rights. The United States declared independence from England. The King of England believed the 13 colonies had no right to autonomy. Europe’s governing principle at the time was the divine right of kings, whereas the king was God’s representative and ruled on God’s behalf.  The Declaration of Independence challenged the King’s “divine right” to rule. In order to reduce the King of England from God’s representative to a common man whose title had no divinity, the document declared that men were equal. The Declaration replaced the divine right of kings with the concept that all human beings had natural rights bestowed on them at birth by their Creator. Legislation could never revoke these rights, nor could a civil authority grant them. The purpose of government was to protect these God-given rights, and the founding fathers sought to form such a government. The Revolutionary War altered the course of history, not by separating the United States from England but by challenging the divine right of kings. One should be aware that Coates is an atheist. In 2017, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins published a piece in The Guardian that questioned whether atheism was the reason for Coates’ pessimism. He wrote, “Coates’ entire worldview rests on a theology of global chaos. [His book] We Were Eight Years in Power describes this theory of chaos as black atheism. Remarkably little attention has been given to the pivotal role this idea plays in his work.” Since chaos reigns supreme for Coates, he rejects the premise that the divine-right of kings or God-given natural rights factored into the establishment of any nation. Therefore, the United States forced itself into existence for its own gain without any guiding first principle, while Israel forced itself into existence after the Holocaust to create a safe haven for the Jewish people, despite having no right to do so in a region already populated by Arabs. Coates can reject God-given rights, but he can’t ignore the right to self-determination.  1948 was the year the British mandate in Palestine expired. The previous year, the newly established United Nations planned to create one state for the Jews called Israel and another for the Arabs called Palestine, once the British withdrew from the region.  The United Nations aimed to promote self-determination among subjected people by establishing nation states. The UN Charter defined self-determination as the right of a people to constitute itself in a state while having the right to freely choose its political, economic, social, and cultural systems. The Arabs rejected the UN’s plan because they didn’t want to share the region with Israel. The Israelis, on the other hand, declared their independence and seized the portions of land designated to them by the UN. The neighboring Arab countries attacked Israel in an effort to eliminate the Jewish state, but the Israelis fought for their right to self-determination, won the war, and established the state of Israel. Coates’ premise that America and Israel established themselves through brute force without natural rights or self-determination being fundamental factors in their independence is shortsighted. Coates also asserted that the Palestinian territories are no different than the Jim Crow South. When Coates was on The Gray Area podcast, the host told him, “When you compare Palestine to the Jim Crow South, my reaction is that these are both moral obscenities, but they are different. And I do think it’s complicated.”  “Tell me why you think it’s complicated.” Coates inquired. The host replied, “I think it matters that Black people in the Jim Crow South wanted to be treated as equal citizens in a fully democratic America. I don’t think it’s generally true that Palestinians want equal rights in a fully democratic Israel. And if they had that, they might vote to end its existence as a Jewish state … And I also think it matters that Jews are indigenous to that land and have nowhere else to go. I just think that complicates the picture.” Coates’ American parallel fails because the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is unprecedented. There aren’t historical comparisons. Coates made the Jim Crow comparison because it was the easiest way to condemn Israel. Unfortunately, Coates refused to acknowledge the inadequacy of his Jim Crow comparison and the complexity of the Israel/Palestinian conflict. He simply made another comparison.  He told the podcast host, “There is nothing in this world that will make separate and unequal okay, and there’s nothing—and I’ll use this word—that makes apartheid okay.” I guess Coates ran out of American parallels.     The post J. Pharoah Doss: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ poor American parallels appeared first on Atlanta Daily World.