‘My life will never be the same’ – Ta-Nehisi Coates on Israel and Palestine
In an UpFront special, Marc Lamont Hill talks with award-winning writer, journalist, and author Ta-Nehisi Coates about the ties between Palestinian oppression and systemic racism.
Coates says witnessing Palestinian oppression in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem changed his life. He compares it to systemic racism in the US, while confronting his own misunderstandings of Israel’s history. He also calls out a news media that he says is complicit in the erasure of Palestinians.
Smotrich calls for ‘hundreds of thousands of new settlers’ in West Bank, Gaza
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has again called for hundreds of thousands of new Israeli settlers to establish “new cities and settlements deep in the [West Bank]”, The Times of Israel reported.
Smotrich made the remarks on Sunday at the Middle East Summit, a conference in Jerusalem sponsored by Israel365, a media outlet aimed at “pro-Israel” Evangelical Christians.
He also used his speech to justify creating illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza, saying that without a civilian and “long-term military presence… there is no security and there is an existential threat to the State of Israel and its citizens”.
Smotrich also called for forcibly displacing Palestinians to Arab countries, saying:
“Those who do not want or are unable to put aside their national ambitions will receive assistance from us to emigrate to one of the many Arab countries where the Arabs can realise their national ambitions, or to any other destination in the world.”
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also spoke at a conference on settling the Gaza Strip in southern Israel on October 21
