Bestselling author Ta-Nehisi Coates’ tour promoting his new book “The Message” is continuing to be dominated by his anti-Israel comments, including his latest remark of note in which he openly speculated about whether he would have participated in Hamas’ October 7 attack. 

Mr. Coates, whose book is currently Amazon’s number one bestseller, sat down for an interview with the anti-Israel comedian Trevor Noah for his “What Now” podcast and speculated about Hamas’ motivations for the October 7 massacre. “Things have histories,” he mused. “They happen in the course of events.”

He referenced the 1831 Nat Turner rebellion in Virginia, in which a group of Black slaves murdered dozens of white people, including women and children. He speculated that, at the time, there were some enslaved people and abolitionists who felt that violence went too far, even in the face of the “degradation and dehumanization of slavery.”

However, Mr. Coates offered a hypothetical scenario that he said he thinks about a lot: what he would do if he were a 20-year-old in Gaza when Hamas members killed more than 1,200 people in Israel. 

Painting a dark picture of Gaza, which he called an “open-air prison,” Mr. Coates speculated about how he would react if he grew up in a Palestinian family with a father who was shot for sailing too far into the Mediterranean Sea or a mother who “picks the olive trees and [if] she gets too close to the wall, she might be shot.”

“And I grow up under that oppression and that poverty, and the wall comes down. Am I also strong enough or even constructed in such a way where I say, this is too far? I don’t know that I am,” he said of October 7. 

Mr. Coates did not respond to a request for comment. 

Pro-Palestinian activists have called the Gaza Strip, which is governed by  Hamas, an “open-air prison” in part as a justification for the attack last year. However, after Israel destroyed much of the strip’s urban centers in its post–October 7 war with Hamas, pro-Palestinian activists have lamented the loss of what they described as Gaza’s vibrant and thriving seaside community, with many hospitals, schools, and mosques.

One writer based in Gaza with the first name Mariam shared a picture of a seaport, which she said was “one of the best places” where “everyone” went to have fun with friends and family and had “magical” sunrise views. She said it had been reduced to rubble since Israel launched its war against Hamas.

Mr. Coates’ comment sparked a flurry of outrage. 

Attorney Erielle Azerrad wrote on X, “This is why CRT [critical race theory] is dangerous, toxic garbage. It makes someone imagine themselves capable of engaging in gang rape and murder for ‘liberation.’ We used to just call these people psychopaths. Now they teach at universities.”

An assistant professor at the Columbia Business School, Shai Davidai, wrote , “Ta-Nehisi Coates is not above raping young women at a music festival in the name of ‘resistance’. That’s the headline. Everything else is commentary.”

Author Melanie Notkin said on X, “The Jews Hamas brutally raped, set on fire, and shot dead in bordering kibbutzes on Oct 7 were peaceniks who would drive into Gaza, pick up sick Palestinians and bring them to Israeli hospitals.

Also, there are fine Palestinian MDs in Gaza (who studied medicine in Israeli universities!) But TNC proudly says he would probably murder these Jews anyway. Sick!”

Mr. Coates’ book tour is already causing waves as it has thrown CBS News into turmoil after he was interviewed by the network’s Tony Dokoupil and encountered pushback over a lack of context in the section about Israel.  

During the interview, Mr. Dokoupil asked Mr. Coates, widely celebrated in left-wing circles, why his one-sided account did not mention the daily threats facing Israel or the first or second intifada. 

While the Washington Post called the discussion “calm” and “heartfelt,” other CBS staff members felt the interview was “racist” and “xenophobic” and lodged complaints, according to Puck. Those complaints eventually reached the news division’s top leadership, who said the interview did not meet its editorial standards in a highly unusual rebuke of one of its star morning anchors. 

The fallout from the interview with Mr. Dokoupil has called into question the fate of the network’s leadership, and the outrage has turned into a public relations nightmare for the network over its handling of the situation. 

Additionally, there has been a near-daily drip of details about CBS’s anti-Israel bias in its reporting standards, such as a warning against labeling members of Hamas terrorists or calling Jerusalem the Jewish state’s capital.