Gaza Catastrophe: The Genocide in World-Historical Perspective

by Gilbert Achcar

From a foremost expert on the Middle East—a searing indictment of the forces that led to genocidal war on Gaza and its reverberations across the globe.
 
The destruction rained on Gaza has been seen and accepted by many as a vengeful overreaction to the reckless Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023. This book, however, argues that the new catastrophe befalling the Palestinian people is the culmination of a decades-long pattern that runs parallel with Israel’s inexorable shift to the Right. It also contends that Gaza was the final nail in the coffin of the Atlanticist “international liberal order” before Donald Trump came back to the White House.
 
Gaza Catastrophe reckons with the lethal consequences far greater than the Nakba of 1948 and the significance of a war waged by an advanced military-industrial state—with full US participation and open 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. 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 volume is essential to understanding the root causes of the violence destabilizing the entire region and the wider world, as well as the conditions required to bring it to an end.

256 pages, Hardcover

Published August 5, 2025

About the author

Gilbert Achcar is a Lebanese academic, writer, and socialist. He is a Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. His research interests cover the Near East and North Africa, the foreign policy of the United States, Globalisation, Islam, and Islamic fundamentalism. He is also a Fellow at the International Institute for Research and Education.

Reviews

[Jeff Schauer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to like this more for its much needed perspective and framing. However, the fact that it's cobbled together from a range of essays written over a period of decades, however penetrating their interpretations, means that it lacks the coherence and contemporary framing to actually be a world-historical perspective.