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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.
In his compelling new book, Martin Shaw argues that the destruction of Gaza and Ukraine in different ways indicate that genocide is 'returning to the centre of a brutal new constellation of world politics'. A pioneering scholar of war and genocide, he shows how and why the pursuit of permanent security drives the mass destruction of civilian populations and their cultures.
— 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
This is a sharply written and most welcome new contribution on the multiple new genocides of the 21st century... Shaw makes highly perceptive observations... with a thoughtful defense of the genocide concept, against those misguided scholars who seek to discard it. Instead he advocates reclaiming it and using it in new ways.
— Journal of Peace Research
Martin Shaw is Emeritus Professor of International Relations and Politics at the University of Sussex and Research Professor at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals. He has written widely on global politics, war and genocide.
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