DELETE THIS MESSAGE: Review: The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

The scandal of the book—and the reason Tony Dokoupil of CBS wasn’t simply justified in challenging Coates in a recent interview but had a duty to challenge him—is that Coates never mentions Palestinian terrorism. An unobservant or gullible person could read The Message and have no idea that the Israeli soldiers’ vigilance is a consequence of Palestinians’ notable tendency to lunge at Jews with knives, self-detonate in crowded areas, and otherwise maim and murder innocents. Coates doesn’t mention the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, or any other act of Palestinian terrorism. Nor does he wonder why, although more than two million Arabs are citizens of Israel, few if any Jews are citizens of Arab countries.

With The Message, Ta-Nehisi Coates has become a clownish, postmodern Walter Duranty. Duranty, recall, was the prize-winning Moscow bureau chief of the New York Times who deliberately misled the American public about Soviet crimes. Only Coates isn’t misleading anybody. And Duranty, for all his sins, could write.

Basil Fawlty smiles — finally someone took his advice: “Just don’t mention the war.”