what happened? snipers. they would shoot the knee of the kids. many legs were mp tainted by the snipers. -- amputated by the snipers. [indiscernible] so whatever the palestinians will do, we will --israel will keep killing us. it started in 1948 and it will keep until they have the support from the european and u.s. administration. one day the entire world will

believe -- amy: fadi abu shammalah, thank you so much for being with us. fadi is just vision's outreach associate in gaza and the executive director of gaza's general union of cultural centers. he is speaking to us from khan younis, which also has been bombed repeatedly. we will link to your "new york times" piece "what more must the children of gaza suffer?" coming up, "but we must speak: on palestine and the mandates of conscience" --ta-nehisi coates in a recent trip to the occupied west bank and how it changed him. stay with us. ♪ [music break]

amy: "checkpoint" by jasiri x. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. with nermeen shaikh. amy: as pressure builds for a cease-fire after 27 days of bombardment, we spend the rest of the hour with acclaimed author and journalist ta-nehisi

coates. this summer he spoke at a literary festival that connected the palestinian struggle with decolonization struggles around the world. in ramallah, he opened his remarks with a comparison between the struggle of african americans and palestinians. in recent weeks, coates spoke at -- join others in ending the catastrophe unfolding in gaza and from the pursuing a comprehensive and just solution, political solution in palestine. amy: last night, ta-nehisi coates dissipated in another event hosted by organizers of the palestine festival of literature at the union theological seminary here in new york city. it was called "but we must

speak: on palestine and the mandates of conscience." he is the recipient of a prestigious macarthur fellowship and the recipient of numerous prizes, including the national book award for his book "between the world and me." another book "we were eight , years in power: an american tragedy," and his memoir "the beautiful struggle." his novel is titled "the water dancer." in 2014, he wrote an award-winning cover story for "the atlantic magazine" titled "the case for reparations." welcome back to democracy now! it is great to have you with us under extremely difficult circumstances. last night this remarkable event almost did not happen. it was in the james chapel of union theological seminary but venue after venue had said no to this gathering. without almost any publicity, well over 1000 people turned out

but the place only held 300s of people went across the street to another place, overflow, and then thousands watched on the live video stream. can you talk about your experience being in the west bank, going to the occupied territories, and how it changed you? >> oh, wow. i spent 10 days in palestine, in the occupied territories in israel proper. i've had a great luxury of the past 10 years sing a few countries. i have not spent more time or seen more of another country or territory can i did this summer -- then i did this summer. i think what shocked me the most was in any sort of opinion piece

or reported peace or whatever you want to call it that i have read about israel and the conflict with the palestinians, there's a word that comes up all the time and it is "complexity." that an "complicated." while i had my skepticism and suspicion of the israeli government of the occupation, what i expected was i would find a situation in which it was hard to discern right from wrong, hard to understand the morality at play. it was hard to understand the conflict. perhaps the most shocking thing was i immediately understood what was going on over there. probably the best example i can think of is the second day when we went to hebron and the reality of the occupation became clear. we were driving out of east jerusalem. i was with palfest and we were

driving out of east drew slung into the west bank. you can see the settlement and point out the settlements. it suddenly dawned on me that i was in a region of the world where some people could vote and some people could not. that was obviously very familiar to me. i got to hebron and we got out and we were given a tour by our palestinian guide. we got to a certain street and he said to us, "i can't walk down this street. if you want to continue, you have to continue without me." that was shocking to me. we walked down the street and came back and there was a market area. hebron is very, very poor. there are a few vendors that i wanted to support.

i was walking to try to get to the vendor and i was stopped at a checkpoint. checkpoint all through the city come all to the west bank. your mobility is completely inhibited and the mobility of the palestinians is totally inhibited. i was walking to the checkpoint and an israeli guard stepped out my probably about the age of my son. and he said to me come up with what what is your religion, bro i said, i'm not really religious. he said, stop messing around, what is your religion? i said, i'm not playing, i'm not really religious. it became clear to me that unless i professed my religion and the right religion, i was not going to be of to walk forward. what were your parents? well, they were not that religious either. he said, what were your grandparents religion you i said my grandmother was a christian. then he allowed me to pass.

it became clear to me what was going on. i was in a territory where your move ability is inhibited, where your voting rights are inhibited, where your right to water is inhibited, your right to housing is inhibited. it is all based on ethnicity. that sounded extremely, extremely familiar to me. the most shocking thing about my time over there was how uncomplicated it actually is. i am not saying the details are not complicated. history is always complicated. but the way this is reported in the western media is as though one needs a phd in middle eastern studies to understand the basic morality of holding a people in situation in which they don't have basic rights, including the right we treasure most, the right to vote. and then declaring that state a

democracy. it is not that hard to understand. it is quite familiar to though with the familiarity to african-american history. nermeen: ta-nehisi coates, last night you asked about the significance of martin luther king's words on vietnam. you said, it has taken you years to "understand nonviolence as an ethic and that you understood that ethic in israel." could you explain? >> i think the thing to do is proceed off what i said. martin luther king dedicated his life to the fight against segregation. this is a segregated society. it is not hard to understand. for bidding different people from going different places. what the authorities will tell you is this is a security

measure. you go back to the history of jim crow, they would tell you the exact same thing. people always have good reasons besides "i hate you and i don't like you" to justify the right for imposing an oppressive regime on other people. it is never that simple. that was the first thing. the second thing i think you're referring to, this is really personal for me. i came up in a time and place where i did not really understand the ethic of nonviolence. by ethic i mean the notion that violence itself is corrupting, that it corrupts the soul. i did not quite understand that. if i am truly honest with you, as much as i saw my relationship with the palestinian people and as much as it was clear what the relationship was, it was at the same time -- there was some sort of relationship with the

israeli people, too, and it was that when i particularly enjoyed. because i understood the rage that comes when you have a history of oppression. i understood the anger and sense of humiliation that comes when people subject you to just genocide and people look away from that. i, from the descendants of 250 years of enslavement. i come from a people where sexual violence and rape is marked in our dna. i understand how what you feel the world has turned its back on you, how you can then turn your back on the ethics of the world. but i also understood how corrupting that can be. i was listening to my congressman last night or i guess two nights ago talk on the news. a journalist asked him, how many children, how many people must

be tilled to justify this outrage? the upper limit to the number of people that could be killed. where you would say, this is just too much, this doesn't compute, this does not add up? the congressman could not give a number. i thought, that man has been corrupted. that man has lost himself. he has lost himself in humiliation. he has lost himself in violence. i keep hearing the term repeated over and over again, "the right to self-defense." what about the right to dignity? what about the right to morality? what about the right to be able to sleep at night? because what i know is if i was complicit -- and i am complicit in dropping bombs on children in dropping bombs on refugee camps, no matter who is over there, it would give me trouble sleeping at night. and i worry for the souls of people who can do this and can't sleep at night. amy: let me ask you, last night

as i said at the beginning, i think union theological was the fifth place that palfest turned to for this event. i want to point out who was there. among the speakers was you, a macarthur genius fellow, was michelle alexander, the remarkable author and lawyer. a leading palestinian-american scholar of arab studies at columbia university and others. you being at union theological, dr. martin at their king is down for that speech that he gave across the street at riverside church but started at riverside theological. so many people came he had to go a cost for it. it can you talk about this difficulty in speaking out? just last week was to the

vietnamese-american pulitzer prize-winning author who was on a book tour for his latest memoir and the 92nd street y canceled his conversation about his memoir because he had signed on to a letter -- i think it was signed by 750 other people -- calling for a cease-fire. the u.n. secretary-general has called her gaza cease-fire. can you talk about what it means to break the sound barrier? and if you're nervous about coming out and speaking about gaza, about the west bank -- even going to begin with knowing what you would feel responsible for doing what you came out? close i was not just nervous, i was afraid. i hear people talk all the time about how fearlessness is a

necessary quality. i have never had that. [laughter] i have never had that in my life and not in my career certainly. i spent five days with palfest when i was there and then five days with a group of israeli jews. i knew whatever i was going to see, like i had a sense of it. i could not express it like i did just now because i had not -- but i had a sense what i was going to see was not going to be great. i know that, eight, because of my upbringing and, b, because as a journalist, you can't be whole -- behold evil in return and not speak on it. segregation is evil. there is no way for me as an african-american to stand before

you come to witness segregation and not say anything about it. one of the hardest things was to come back and then to read the rhetoric of certain african-american politicians who are defending this regime. i could not understand it. i wanted to know if they had been to hebron. i wanted to know. had they seen? had they really seen what is actually happening here? i don't know how anybody who benefits, who stands on the shoulders of our ancestors struggle against jim crow, against segregation, could see what is happening right now, could see the bombs being dropped -- 9000 people dead, ungodly number of them children, in service of jim crow and segregation which we have exploited, and be ok with that.

i don't understand. yes, i have my fears. i am afraid right now sitting here talking to you. but i have to measure my fear against the measuring -- misery that i saw. i guess the promises that i made to the palestinians who welcomed me into their homes and gave me the facts. to the israeli jews welcome to be into their homes and gave me the facts. the holocaust survivors who welcome to be and gave me the facts. i have to measure it against my own estes first, because frederick douglass ida b wells, recently faced off against inns that were much more perilous than going someplace, coming back and telling people what you saw. this is the minimum. it is scary, but it is the minimum. the fact people are trying to suppress speech is not an excuse for you not to speak. it has always been this way for black writers and journalists.

this is our tradition. i feel as i do -- i feel i am in good company because i am in the company of my ancestors. nermeen: i want to ask about the way in which this conflict is being represented in the media come and as you pointed out politicians, congressmembers, but also the white house. on monday, white house press secretary karine jean-pierre compared pro-palestinian protesters to the white supremacists who took part in the deadly unite the right rally in charlottesville, virginia, in 2017. she made the comment in response to a question from fox news' peter doocy. >> does president biden think the anti-israel protesters in this country are extremists? >> what i can say is what we've been very clear about this, when it comes to antisemitism, there is no place. we have to make sure that we speak against it very loud and be -- and be very clear about that. remember, what the president decided to -- when the president decided to run for president is

what he saw in charlottesville in 2017, when we -- he saw neo-nazis marching down the streets of charlottesville with vile, anti-semitic just hatred. and he was very clear then, and he's very clear now. he's taken actions against this over the past two years. and he has continued to be clear, there is no place -- no place -- for this type of vile and despite -- this kind of rhetoric. nermeen: ta-nehisi coates, that is the white house press secretary. your response? >> i don't to personalize it. i am sure she is a very nice person and a very kind person. all of us staying on the shoulders of martin luther king. all of us stand on the shoulders of the nonviolent struggle. and on king's birthday, the white house, like it has done

for years, stands up and praises dr. king and talks about dr. king as a modern-day prophet. i don't know how these people do that and sleep at night. i don't know how you compare people who are trying to stop -- who are very much in the tradition of nonviolence, are trying to stop bombs being dropped -- literally -- on refugee camps to neo-nazi protesters. it is disgraceful, to use her own words. it is disgraceful. it is reprehensible. it is offensive as far as i am concerned to the shoulders -- on those whom we stand right now. i don't understand it. i would extend this further. hearing president biden himself,

downplay the number of palestinian deaths, to say he does not believe the palestinians, i -- his own state department was citing this figures only months ago. at some point there is that saying when people show you who they are, you have to believe them. i've spent a lot of time trying to do the political calculus on this. i think it a certain point, we have to stop and say, they believe it. they believe bombs should be dropped on children. they think it is ok. or at the very least, they think it is the price of doing business. that is not an ethic i can align myself with. as i've said several times in his interview, i come from a history where people want to make the same calculus about us and took stances that we would now say are immoral. the test is that what you did in the past, the test is what you do in the moment right now. i am a writer. i was working on a book about

this, i would be much more come to will sitting at home writing about this. it is not my nature to talk about things that i have not written about yet. but one has to balance one's responsibility against the suffering, against the death, gives the body count, and to see what is coming out of this white house right now is morally reprehensible. i don't know how people sleep at night. amy: you have been talking about dr. king. his daughter dr. bernice king, lawyer, youngest daughter of martin luther king, responded to post by comedian amy schumer, who shared a video of dr. king condemning anti-semitism and defending israel's right to exist. bernice king wrote -- "certainly, my father was against anti-semitism. he also believed militarism come along with racism and poverty, to be among the interconnected

triple evils. i am certain he would call for israel's bombing of palestinians to cease." if you could comment on this? also, talk about how the issue of palestinians, the occupied territories, the occupation, has been raised in the black community, the movement for black lives for years now. and the pressure you come under when you do. >> look, i think it is very important talk about the course of anti-semitism in history. american history, in fact. it is a very real thing and i don't think you can understand the events at a moment without understanding that. i think over the past few weeks,

especially, much has been made about the historic alliance between black folks and jewish activists and jewish folks. it is a very real thing, very important thing. but i think like any alliance, it is at its best when it grounds itself in moral principle. not in a kind of gang truce, not in a kind of "i had your back so you'll have mine." a moral alliance that is transactional is not a moral alliance. you've always been at our best -- when i think about the jewish civil rights workers who went south and put their bodies on the line for the civil rights movement, i like to think, and i think it is true, that was not a transactional arrangement. that was not an attempt to say, look, i'm doing this because i think you'll have my back in the future. they did it because it was right. they did it based on principle. i think some of the frustration

that certain people feel about the lack of african-american support for this war comes from this notion that we should have people's back as they drop bombs to try to defend segregationist apartheid regime. we should not do that. and we have not done that. that is the history that you allude to, going back to angela davis, sncc, black lives matter. i sit here very humbly as a latecomer to the cause, but someone who has come to the cause nonetheless. we have to stand on principle, man. we have to stand on principle. if i am a latecomer to the palestinian cause, i'm a latecomer to the cause of nonviolence, but i am here now. knowing what that has meant your history -- there's no way in the world that we can leverage the memory of dr. martin luther king, no way we can leverage the

weight, the ancestry of our movement in defense of a war, in defense of indiscriminate bombings of refugee camps. we just can't do that. we would be a disgrace to our ancestors. nermeen: last night you said -- we have just spoken about the fact it was so difficult for the palestine festival of literature to find a venue for last night's event. your own books here in u.s. have facebook bands and yours are not the other ones, of course. you said when people resort to these measures, book banning, limiting public discussions come these are weapons of a weak and decaying order. could you explain what you mean by that and why there is, despite the horror of the moment, some scope for optimism? >> i think -- a lot of this is from my time talking to

professor khalili at colombia. one point he made, i came back from palestine and i was glass side. i did not understand. i had this deep-seated feeling i have been lied to and i began consulting people and talking to people. i got to spend some time with the professor and one thing he said to me was, never -- this is somebody who has been fighting this war for his entire life. never has the movement been as powerful as it is right now. i had to take that in. i also have to take in, like, when i think about what i did not know and when i did not know, it wasn't that i had competing sources and did not know where to turn. the way i think americans have traditionally up until recently -- amy: 10 seconds. >> sorry about that. i would say i am very optimistic about the fight and i think we're going to win. amy: ta-nehisi coates, acclaimed

writer. we will link to the livestream from last night. the palestinian news agency is reporting at least 27 people were killed today in an israeli bombing of an unrwa school in