Deluge - Gaza and Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm

Why did Hamas attack? What is Israel trying to achieve? Did this catastrophe have to happen? And is there a way forward? The book’s expert contributors address these and other questions, which have never been more urgent.

In September 2023, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan boasted that the Middle East “is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” One week later, unprecedented violence in Gaza and Israel shattered the status quo and shocked the world.

Hamas’s Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge punctured delusions of stability as hundreds of militants burst forth from the Gaza prison camp. In the ensuing carnage and firefights, 1,200 Israelis were killed and hundreds more taken hostage.

Israel’s retaliation turned the besieged enclave into a howling wasteland. Nearly 30,000 people were killed in four months, including more than 12,000 children, and over 60 percent of homes were damaged or destroyed. Israel targeted the wounded and infirm, newborns and near-dead, as Gaza’s healthcare system—hospitals, clinics, ambulances, medical personnel—came under a systematic attack unprecedented in the annals of modern warfare.

The Hamas massacre and the genocidal Israeli campaign which followed together mark a historic turning point in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The reverberations have also shaken politics far beyond, not least in Europe and the United States, where gigantic, round-the-clock protests for Palestinian rights pitted politicians against the public and exposed a growing statist authoritarianism.

In this groundbreaking book—the first published about the 2023 Gaza war—leading Palestinian, Israeli, and international authorities put these momentous developments in context and provide an initial taking-stock.

Contributors: Musa Abuhashhash, Ahmed Alnaouq, Nathan J. Brown, Yaniv Cogan, Clare Daly MEP, Talal Hangari, Khaled Hroub, R. J., Colter Louwerse, Mitchell Plitnick, Mouin Rabbani, Sara Roy, and Avi Shlaim

List of contents

PART I. CONTEXTS
1/ Israel’s War on Gaza – Avi Shlaim
2/ Econocide in Gaza – Sara Roy
3/ Is Hamas to Blame for the Failure to Resolve the Israel-Palestine Conflict? – Colter Louwerse
4/ Rule Number One of Nonviolent Resistance: It Can’t Work If It’s Misrepresented as Violent – R. J.

PART II. CATACLYSM
5/ Targeting Civilians: Its Logic in Gaza and Israel – Yaniv Cogan
6/ Just Like That: Life and Death in Gaza – Ahmed Alnaouq
7/ Nothing Fails Like Success: Hamas and the Gaza Explosion – Khaled Hroub
8/ The Quiet Front: Reflections from the West Bank – Musa Abuhashhash
9/ All Shook Up: Regional Dynamics of the Gaza War – Mouin Rabbani
10/ Into the Abyss – Nathan J. Brown

PART III. SOLIDARITIES
11/ Breakthroughs and Backlash in the Belly of the Beast – Mitchell Plitnick
12/ Palestine Solidarity in Britain – Talal Hangari
13/ Sins of Commission: How Europe Was Bounced into Supporting Israel’s War Crimes in Gaza – Clare Daly MEP

About the author

Jamie Stern-Weiner is an Associate Editor at OR Books and a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford. Israeli-born and London-raised, he has written extensively about the history and politics of the Israel-Palestine conflict as well as the contemporary politics of antisemitism. His publications include Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions (OR Books, 2018), Antisemitism and the Labour Party (Verso, 2019), and How the EHRC Got It So Wrong (Verso, 2021). His articles have been published in The Nation, Jacobin, Jadaliyya, Middle East Eye, and elsewhere. He co-founded the New Left Project.

Clare Daly MEP is an Irish politician, currently serving as a member of the European Parliament, representing the constituency of Dublin. Elected as an independent socialist, she is affiliated to the Left in the European Parliament, and works across a range of policy areas, including migration and human rights, data protection, home affairs, transport, and defense. She is a vocal advocate for peace and a critic of EU foreign policy.

Khaled Hroub is professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Northwestern University/Qatar and the author of two books on Hamas.

Mouin Rabbani is co-editor of Jadaliyya and host of its Connections podcast.

Sara Roy is an associate of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Her most recent book is Unsilencing Gaza: Reflections on Resistance (Pluto Press, 2021).

Avi Shlaim is an emeritus professor of International Relations at Oxford University, a fellow of the British Academy, and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2014) and Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (2009).

Summary

Why did Hamas attack? What is Israel trying to achieve? Did this catastrophe have to happen? And is there a way forward? The book’s expert contributors address these and other questions, which have never been more urgent.

In September 2023, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan boasted that the Middle East “is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” One week later, unprecedented violence in Gaza and Israel shattered the status quo and shocked the world.

Hamas’s Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge punctured delusions of stability as hundreds of militants burst forth from the Gaza prison camp. In the ensuing carnage and firefights, 1,200 Israelis were killed and hundreds more taken hostage.

Israel’s retaliation turned the besieged enclave into a howling wasteland. Nearly 30,000 people were killed in four months, including more than 12,000 children, and over 60 percent of homes were damaged or destroyed. Israel targeted the wounded and infirm, newborns and near-dead, as Gaza’s healthcare system—hospitals, clinics, ambulances, medical personnel—came under a systematic attack unprecedented in the annals of modern warfare.

The Hamas massacre and the genocidal Israeli campaign which followed together mark a historic turning point in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The reverberations have also shaken politics far beyond, not least in Europe and the United States, where gigantic, round-the-clock protests for Palestinian rights pitted politicians against the public and exposed a growing statist authoritarianism.

In this groundbreaking book—the first published about the 2023 Gaza war—leading Palestinian, Israeli, and international authorities put these momentous developments in context and provide an initial taking-stock.

Contributors: Musa Abuhashhash, Ahmed Alnaouq, Nathan J. Brown, Yaniv Cogan, Clare Daly MEP, Talal Hangari, Khaled Hroub, R. J., Colter Louwerse, Mitchell Plitnick, Mouin Rabbani, Sara Roy, and Avi Shlaim

Foreword

• Social media promotions with contributors and endorsers: Some of the contributors and endorsers have already posted about the book, allowing for a combined exposure of 1 million people: Clare Daly (@ClareDalyMEP, 377.8k Twitter followers, 539k Instagram followers, 116k Facebook followers), Norman Finkelstein (428.1k Twitter followers), Mouin Rabbani, and Ahmed Alnaouq. There will be continued promotion through the network of contributor and endorsers, including Cornel West (1 million followers on Twitter).


• Pitch television, radio, and podcast interviews to Democracy Now!, Al Jazeera’s UpFront, The Dig, Intercepted, Citations Needed, On the Media, Rumble with Michael Moore, The Young Turks Show, NPR Politics podcast, Stuff You Should Know, Radiolab, The Ezra Klein Show, Useful Idiots, Bad Faith, Breaking Points, Empire Files, American Prestige, and more. 


• Pitch op-eds, excerpts, and reviews to a wide array of publications including Against the Current, Associated Press, Chicago Tribune, Common Dreams, Current Affairs, Guernica Magazine, Intercept, Los Angeles Review of Books, Mondoweiss, N+1, New York Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Slate, The Atlantic, The Baffler, The Drift, The Grayzone, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Vox, and more.
  Excerpts already published: Avi Shlaim’s chapter in the Middle East Eye and Jamie Stern-Weiner's introduction in Jacobin and in Danish translation in Eftertryk.

Product details

• Assisted by: Jamie Stern-Weiner (Editor), Avi Shlaim (Introduction), Shlaim Avi (Introduction)
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 16.04.2024
• EAN: 9781682196199
• ISBN: 978-1-68219-619-9
• No. of pages: 240
• Dimensions: 139 mm x 209 mm x 19 mm
• Weight: 418 g
• Illustrations: Illustrationen, nicht spezifiziert
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Israel, Gaza, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Genocide & War Crimes, HISTORY / Middle East / Israel & Palestine, POLITICAL SCIENCE / World / Middle Eastern, 21st Century, Genocide & ethnic cleansing, Genocide and ethnic cleansing, Specific wars and campaigns, War & defence operations, c 2020 to c 2029, Specific wars & campaigns, HISTORY / Wars & Conflicts / General