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The Israeli destruction of Gaza has returned the idea of genocide to the centre of world politics, with sharp conflicts between protesters and lawyers who invoke it and governments and media that deny it. This book, by the foremost sociological theorist of genocide, defends the idea against thinkers who have questioned it, and argues that it is essential to the understanding of mass atrocities. It maintains that Gaza has opened a new age in which the West not only fails to prevent, but also participates in genocide.
As well as discussing the genocide idea, the book analyses the Gaza genocide in the context of the longer histories of the problem, both globally and in Palestine. Further chapters deal with "forgotten genocides", the attempted Russian elimination of Ukraine, and the history of British complicity. The New Age of Genocide brings the debate up to date and is essential reading.
— A. Dirk Moses, author of The Problems of Genocide
Martin Shaw was one of the first to recognise genocide in Gaza. His book relates it to the larger structures of genocide in Palestine and the wider world. With this work, Shaw charts new pathways for understanding genocide through both sociological and legal lenses – an endeavor urgent now more than ever. By deepening and contextualizing our collective grasp of what genocide is, Shaw invites us to confront its meaning in our own time. The Israeli genocide in Gaza, like every atrocity of its kind, leaves wounds no one may be able to fully heal: every life lost is a loss for humanity itself. Yet it is precisely in the face of such devastations – atrocities we have failed to prevent and stop – that scholars must probe the broader significance of these crimes, equipping us with insight and, perhaps, with tools to face the future, as Shaw does.
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
1. The return of the genocide idea
PART I Twenty-First Century Genocide
2. Genocide in history and in our time
3. Dynamics of war and genocide in Ukraine
PART II Gaza and the Structure of Genocide in Palestine
4. The Gaza War-Genocide
5. The structure of genocide in Palestine
PART III Conceptual and Historical Challenges
6. In defence of the genocide idea: a critique of Dirk Moses
7. “Political groups”, class and genocide
8. Britain and genocide: structures of complicity
Conclusion: theses on genocide thought and action after Gaza