The Gaza Catastrophe : The Genocide in World-Historical Perspective

A leading expert delivers a powerful critique of the forces behind the Gaza war, tracing its roots to decades of rightward Israeli shifts, US complicity and global fallout. Gilbert Achcar unpacks the genocide’s causes, consequences and the failures of the liberal world order.

The destruction that has been rained on Gaza has been seen and accepted by many commentators as a vengeful overreaction to the reckless Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023. As if the annihilation has come about, perhaps even by accident. This book argues that the new catastrophe that has befallen the Palestinian people is in fact the culmination of a decades-long pattern that runs parallel with Israel’s inexorable shift to the Right. The lethal and destructive consequences of the Gaza catastrophe are far greater than the Nakba of 1948. The significance of a war waged by an advanced military-industrial state – with full US participation and open support from the West – irredeemably exposes the double standard intrinsic to the Atlanticist pretence of a liberal ‘rules-based international order’. In this incisive analysis, renowned political scientist Gilbert Achcar explores the dynamics of a complex historical process that culminated in the war on Gaza and in wider conflict in the Middle East. Achcar offers critical insights on the genocide’s regional and international consequences, as well as radical critiques of Zionism, Hamas and other state and non-state actors. This vital volume places the Gaza catastrophe in its wider geopolitical and historical context. It is essential to understanding the root causes of the violence destabilising the entire region and the wider world, as well as the conditions required to bring it to an end.