Wednesday 10 December

Book launch with Gilbert Achcar

The Gaza Catastrophe – The Genocide in World-Historical Perspective

Published by Saqi Books

Venue:
Somers Town Community centre,
150 Ossulston Street, NW1 1EE
(Nearest tube is Kings Cross and Euston station)

This book is 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. Gilbert Achcar will discuss the genocide’s regional and international ramifications, as well as offer radical critiques of Zionism, Hamas and the role of imperialist states.

THE GAZA CATASTROPHE is available on special offer from Resistance Books here https://resistancebooks.org/product/the-gaza-catastrophe/

Gilbert Achcar was born in Senegal in 1951, grew up in Lebanon, lived in Paris (1983-2003) and Berlin (2003-2007), and has been based in London since 2007. He graduated from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lebanese University (Beirut), and the Ecole Supérieure des Lettres de Beyrouth (Université Lyon-II), and completed a PhD in Social History / International Relations at Université Paris 8. Prior to London, he was teacher and/or researcher in Beirut (Faculty of Social Sciences, Lebanese University), Paris (American University of Paris and Université Paris 8) and Berlin (Centre Marc Bloch, CNRS). He is now Emeritus Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at SOAS, University of London (Department of Development Studies). His many books include: The Clash of Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder (2002, 2006); Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy, with Noam Chomsky (2007, 2009, 2024); The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (2010, 2011, 2025); Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism (2013); The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising (2013, 2022); Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in The Arab Uprising (2016); The New Cold War: The United States, Russia and China, from Kosovo to Ukraine (2023); and The Gaza Catastrophe: The Genocide in World-Historical Perspective (2025). [207 words]