Gilbert Achcar, Emeritus Professor at SOAS, University of London, discusses his latest book, The Gaza Catastrophe: The Genocide in World-Historical Perspective (2025), while also analysing the violence and scope of Israel’s response to 7 October 2023, to include the clearly stated genocidal intention by Israeli leaders. Covering how the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) started to flatten Gaza with 1-tonne bombs dropped on urban settings with the end goal of killing tens of thousands of people with no regard for civilian lives, Achcar notes how the Israeli government seized the opportunity of 7 October in order to effect its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Historicising the US-Israel relationship, Achcar chronicles how Israel did not always have a strategic alliance with the United States, but that this alliance grew sharply in the mid-1960s just as the US was losing ground in the Middle East due to the rise of Arab nationalism and Israel’s blow to Egypt and Syria during the Six-Day War. Achcar examines the deterioration of Israel’s image on the international stage from its invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the First Intifada in 1987, the Second Intifada in the 2000s, and 7 October 2023, while he elucidates how the Zionist movement has resorted to the instrumentalisation of the Holocaust and false accusations of antisemitism to deflect criticisms of its genocidal actions.

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