[[link removed]]
PORTSIDE CULTURE
GENOCIDE IN PERSPECTIVE
[[link removed]]
David Finkel
July 1, 2025
Against the Current
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]
_ "It must be said," writes reviewer Finkel, "that this book is
essential reading, but not pleasant for anyone." _
,
_Gaza Catastrophe
The Genocide in World-Historical Perspective_
Gilbert Achcar
University of California Press
ISBN: 9780520423558
_“IN WHAT SENSE is Israel’s genocidal onslaught on the Gaza
Strip a consequence of the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023?”_
Gilbert Achcar poses the question at the beginning of his new (August
2025) book _Gaza Catastrophe._ His answer encapsulates the catastrophe
in one paragraph:
_“The best way to answer this question is to resort to an allegory.
Imagine a Native American who, having intended to set a few houses on
fire in a nearby white settler colony, inadvertently sets off the
gigantic blast of a huge buildup of explosive material, purposely
amassed with the intention of inflicting death and mayhem on the
native reservation to which the arsonist belongs. The same type of
causality pertains to both the deadly attack of 7 October and the Gaza
genocide._” (7)
The book pulls together much of the author’s writing before and
since October 7, including background analyses spanning three decades
from 1994 to 2024 — comprising a primer on the Zionist movement, the
“peace process” debacle and the development of Hamas — and
timely articles and columns written in the wake of October 7
(published at his website). [[link removed]]
These sections are sandwiched between a major introductory chapter
“Reflections on the Gaza Catastrophe and its World-Historical
Significance,” and an Epilogue titled “Enter Trump.”
Regarding the expectation of Trump’s “arm-twisting of Netanyahu
for the sake of peace,” Achcar writes:
_“The period preceding Donald Trump’s inauguration and its
immediate aftermath deserves a special mention in future history books
as one of the most striking instances of a widespread epidemic of
wishful thinking._” (197)
While Trump and Netanyahu (at the present moment) are not on the same
page about launching war with Iran, the U.S. administration’s
indifference to mass death, displacement and starvation in Gaza and
rampant ethnic cleansing throughout Palestine is a daily-confirmed
constant.
It must be said that this book is essential reading, but not pleasant
for anyone. It will give no comfort to deniers of the genocide, or
apologists for the administration of Joe Biden, whose mantra
throughout his political career was “You don’t have to be a Jew to
be a Zionist.”
Even while giving full and unconditional U.S. support to Israel’s
carnage in Gaza, the wretched Biden was played by Netanyahu in a
manner similar to how the loudmouth Trump is currently being played by
Vladimir Putin over the torture of Ukraine.
Nor will Achcar’s account be pleasing to anyone with illusions about
the role of Hamas in the Palestinian struggle, culminating in “7
October 2025: A Catastrophic Miscalculation.”
He reminds us how previously “the clearest illustration of the
counterproductive character of Hamas’s violent strategy is what
happened in May 2021, when the movement’s action aborted the Unity
Intifada that had started in Jerusalem on the sixth day of that month,
and over the following days rapidly spread to the West Bank, and even
to Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
That upsurge collapsed after Hamas and Islamic Jihad launched some
rockets toward Israel, which set in motion a predictable brutal
repression and “aborted the budding Intifada, demobilizing the
Palestinian youngsters who had set it in motion.” (20-21)
As for October 7, Achcar dissects the messianic delusions of the
leadership of the military wing of Hamas, producing “what has been
the most catastrophic miscalculation ever in the history of
anticolonial struggle,” with its expectations of uprisings
throughout Palestine and the entire region “which a rational mind
can only perceive as a rather pitiful instance of taking one’s
dreams for realities.” (22, 24)
At the same time, even for those of us who agree with Achcar’s
Marxist approach and who thought we had few remaining illusions about
what imperialism and setter colonialism do to the world’s people,
the Gaza genocide — which is already an order of magnitude greater
than the 1948 Nakba — has been absolutely shattering, and is nowhere
near being concluded. And its implications, Achcar suggests, are truly
“world-historical.”
In this brief summary, there isn’t space to cover Achcar’s
exploration of the disintegration of what was called a “rule-based
international order.” In his important previous book _The New Cold
War_ (2023), the author expressed some hope that the United Nations
and the surrounding institutional framework represented at least
hopeful steps toward a better future.
Today, in the wake of events including NATO expansion, Russia’s
annexationist invasion of Ukraine and the rise of the far right
globally:
_“Western condoning of the Gaza genocide has indeed been the final
nail in the coffin of that purported rule-based order. The Western
promise of rule of law made in 1945 and renewed in 1990 is now
dead…May this relapse of international relations into barbarism be
reversed before it leads to a new global catastrophe.”_ (51)
Gilbert Achcar is Emeritus Professor of Development Studies and
International Relations at SOAS, University of London. His many books,
published in more than twenty languages, include _The Clash of
Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder_; _Perilous Power:
The Middle East and US Foreign Policy_, with Noam Chomsky; _The Arabs
and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives_; _The People
Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising_, and _The New Cold
War: The United States, Russia, and China from Kosovo to Ukraine_.
* Gaza
[[link removed]]
* Genocide
[[link removed]]
* Israel
[[link removed]]
* Hamas
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]
INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT
Submit via web
[[link removed]]
Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit portside.org
[[link removed]]
Twitter [[link removed]]
Facebook [[link removed]]
########################################################################
[link removed]
To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]
