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.

From a foremost expert on the Middle East, a searing indictment of the forces that led to the genocidal war on Gaza and its reverberations across the globe.

The destruction rained on Gaza has been seen by many as a vengeful overreaction to the reckless Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023. However, the new catastrophe befalling the Palestinian people is the continuation of a decades-long course in which Israeli politics, policies and military strategies have inexorably shifted to the right. Gaza was the final nail in the coffin of the Atlanticist “international liberal order” before Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

The Gaza Catastrophe reckons with the lethal consequences and the significance of a war waged by an advanced military-industrial state – with full US participation and support from the West. Renowned political scientist Gilbert Achcar explores the dynamics of a complex historical process that culminated in the war on Gaza and wider conflict in the Middle East. He offers critical insights on the genocide’s regional and international ramifications, as well as radical critiques of Zionism, Hamas and other state and non-state actors.

This vital volume 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.