The concept of genocide has been part of global politics and intellectual life for the past eighty years. Although the reality of genocide has never gone away since then, and is demonstrated today not only in Gaza, but in Ukraine, Ethiopia, Sudan, Myanmar and Azerbaijan, the idea has waxed and waned according to political circumstances, intellectual fashion and the pattern of actual genocidal events. Its meaning has become more unclear and contested over time.

In global politics, recognition of genocide has been largely avoided, even over Gaza the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court brought charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, not those of genocide against Israel’s leaders in 2024. In academia it has often been substituted by other notions and has largely failed to realize its potential as a coherent framework for socio-historical understanding.

This book regards this return of genocide after Gaza as an opportunity to restore the idea to its central place in thinking about mass atrocities, to apply it to the neglected cases, and ultimately to settle the question of "What is genocide"?