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In the final chapter of the book, Coates travels to Palestine. He starts the chapter by describing his visit on the final day of his trop to Yad Vashem–The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. He walks through the museum without a guide and is overwhelmed by the magnitude of the Holocaust. Coates remarks that after seeing many of the exhibits, his mind starts to question whether human depravity has any limit. He then discusses the formation of the Israeli state. He recalls the twenty soldiers, armed with rifles, outside the museum and thinks about the contrast between the armed soldiers and the quiet sadness of the exhibits. He states that the soldiers were there to protect the site from people who believe in Hitler’s work, but adds that soldiers of Israel do far more than that.

Coates then starts discussing his trip from the beginning. He traveled to meet other writers at the Palestine Festival of Literature. Once in Jerusalem, he and several other writers (from around the world) travel to the Al-Aqsa complex, a site that is revered by Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Coates states that Israelis are allowed to tour the site regularly, while Palestinians are often barred access. While traveling in Jerusalem, Coates notes all the Israeli checkpoints, manned by armed soldiers. At one point, he is stopped and asked to state his religion. Coates states, “Israel was revealing itself to be a country where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person anywhere.” He briefly discusses the disparities in citizenship and protections under the law for both groups of people. After learning that the Israeli government issues permits for any devices that gather water (including rooftop cisterns that gather rainwater), he states that “Israel had advanced beyond the Jim Crow South and segregated not just the pools and fountains but the water itself.”  

Coates then starts to discuss one of the articles that he wrote early in his career, “The Case for Reparations.” He prefaces the discussion by stating that it hurts him to think about the individuals that he dismissed and reduced in his writing. He wrote the article while he worked for The Atlantic. He states that he was trying to write a well-researched article that would be more difficult to ignore, one that would “display the truth and gravity of the debt of white supremacy.” Coates reflects on his lack of understanding of the conflict between Israel and Palestine while he was writing the article and how it paralleled some of the concepts in the article. “I was seeking a world beyond plunder—but my proof of concept was just more plunder”—with Coates’s “proof of concept” being the Israeli state.   

Coates next travels to an estate outside of Ramallah for the Palestinian Festival of Literature. He interacts with different writers and artists. He states that when “The Case for Reparations” was published, he began to feel the “mistake” of it, but he did not fully understand it at the time. After another writer quotes a line from one of Coates’s books, he states that as a “bearer of tradition, a writer, and a steward… my writing had soared, my stewardship had failed.”

While Coates travels back to Jerusalem, he reflects on the disparity between the Israelis and the Palestinians. He states that “those who claimed Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East were just as likely to claim that America was the oldest democracy in the world.” He remarks that both claims exclude large groups of people within those democracies. Coates again compares Israel to the Jim Crow South. 

Coates next travels south toward Hebron with Avner, the leader of Breaking the Silence, a group of former IDF soldiers who oppose the occupation. Coates reflects on the idea that journalists get to choose the sources of information, creating their own frame. He thinks about how media outlets also choose how to frame information by choosing which stories get told. He then considers that “the first duty of racism, sexism, homophobia, and so forth is the framing of who is human and who is not.” While traveling, Avner tells Coates about his time as an IDF soldier. He describes breaking into Palestinian homes and holding families hostage as a show of power. Avner and Coates stop at Kiryat Arba on the way to Hebron and walk around Kahane Park. The park is named for, and is the gravesite of, a Jewish supremacist and one of his followers, who killed 19 worshippers in a Mosque in Hebron. Coates notes that Israel tried to distance itself from such extremism, but the park is in a settlement that is sanctioned and subsidized by the state.  

Coates describes the origins of Israel and the Zionist movement and states that there were always plans to remove the Palestinians. He compares it to colonialism in the United States. Like Native Americans, the Palestinians were described as barbaric savages. The goals of Zionism were to civilize and modernize the Palestinians. Coates discusses the state-based incentives for first-time (Jewish) settlers to build homes in Palestine, as well as build factories and farms. Such colonization “advances a primary interest of Israel—the erosion of any grounds for a future Palestinian state.” Coates and Avner next travel to the village of Susya in the South Hebron Hills. Coates learns that Israel declared Susya an archaeological site and forced all the Palestinian residents out of their homes. Coates and Avner spend time with a former resident who lives illegally in a camp at the edge of town. The man describes the occupation as “apartheid.”

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