Gaza Faces History

“Enzo Traverso delivers a stinging riposte, rigorously anchored in his mastery of European Jewish history, to the virtually unanimous sanctification by Western elites of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, and their dishonest weaponization of anti-Semitism (in some cases by true anti-Semites on the far right) to attack supporters of Palestinian rights.” —Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine

“In the face of a massive attempt at distortion of facts comes this lucid analysis that explains, among other things, why the West is unable and unwilling to stop arming Israel, how the memory of the Holocaust is utilized in the defense of Israel, and how Israel succeeds in posing as the victim while destroying Gaza under a hail of bombs and much much more.” —Raja Shehadeh, author of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I and What Does Israel Fear from Palestine?

“One of the world’s leading exemplars of the virtues of thinking with history, Enzo Traverso offers a uniquely important voice of critique: his latest intervention, impassioned and searching, could not be more timely.” —Mark Mazower, author of Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century

“In this somber and eloquent book, Enzo Traverso situates the atrocities of October 7, and Israel’s destruction of Gaza, in a historical sequence that encompasses both the Shoah and the Nakba, the crimes of Nazism and the crimes of colonization. The result is a work of erudition and moral gravitas, offering a devastating indictment of the rhetorical subterfuge by which Israel and its supporters in the West have justified Gaza’s slaughter.” —Adam Shatz, author of The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon

“Hard-hitting and urgent, Gaza Faces History blends political acumen and historical insight to offer a critical account of the public debates that have taken place since October 7, 2023. Traverso’s ‘contrapuntal’ approach challenges the common sense around questions of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, victims and perpetrators, and political violence. Without minimizing the complexities of the crisis in which we find ourselves, the book concludes with a necessary binational vision—the only way forward.” —Michael Rothberg, author of The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators

“This wide-ranging essay by master historian Enzo Traverso presents a courageously unsparing analysis of the debate about Gaza. Ranging from the tension between universalism and orientalism in the West, the role of national myths and appropriate historical analogies, to the efficacy of anticolonial and revolutionary violence, Gaza Faces History challenges the shibboleths that distort understanding of conflict in the land between the river and the sea. It will, I suspect, make for difficult, if necessary, reading for some.” —A. Dirk Moses, author of The Problems of Genocide

“In this edifying little work, Enzo Traverso reflects on Israel’s war on Gaza in light of his experience as historian and intellectual. He thus offers the reader a condensed overview of decades of research and thinking on closely related issues, providing a much deeper perspective on the Gaza tragedy.” —Gilbert Achcar, author of The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives

“This short book by Enzo Traverso is a fundamental critique of the distorted and destructive ways by which the genocide in Gaza is being discussed by large segments of the West. It essentially explains how a distorted memory of the Holocaust enables and legitimizes the occurrence of the genocide in Gaza. This is a sad must-read for anyone who wants to understand the depth of the crisis we find ourselves in today, more than a year after October 7.” —Amos Goldberg, coeditor with Bashir Bashir of The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History