The brutal war launched by Israel on the Gaza Strip in in response to the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, or Operations Swords of Iron to give it its official name, was a major landmark in the blood-soaked history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This was the eighth Israeli military offensive in Gaza since Operation Cast Lead of December 2008. It was also the most savage, destructive, and lethal attack with a death toll that exceeded by far the combined total of the previous seven offensives. In this book Avi Shlaim places Israel’s policy towards the Gaza Strip under an uncompromising lens. He argues that these recurrent attacks – what Israeli generals chillingly call “mowing the lawn” – are the inevitable result of Zionist settler colonialism whose basic objective is the elimination of the native population. In this war, however, Israel has gone beyond land-grabbing and ethnic cleansing to commit the crime of all crimes – genocide. Providing Israel with the weapons of mass murder as well as diplomatic protection at the UN, makes America not only complicit but an enabler of Israel’s egregious war crimes. Noam Chomsky observed that “Settler colonialism is the most extreme and vicious form of imperialism”. There is no better illustration of this eternal truth than Israel’s long and cruel war against the Palestinian people on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. “Clear, forthright and cogent, Genocide in Gaza is essential reading for both those who understand little of Palestine-Israel and those who have followed the unfolding horrors for decades. As a historian, Shlaim is meticulous, thoughtful and robust. As a person who has lived in three worlds – Iraqi, Israeli and British, with a Jewish religion and an Arab ethnicity – few understand it as well on a personal level. His political vision is clear-sighted, his ideal humane.” Selma Dabbagh, novelist and human rights lawyer.
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