After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization
JVL Introduction
In the wake of the Gaza genocide we are faced with two puzzles: what motivates so much of the Israeli public to support their government’s genocidal annihilation of Palestinians; and why have the United States and key Western governments so enthusiastically supported it?
Hamid Dabashi’s book offers us some answers as Rami Khouri makes clear in his review below.
The analysis calls directly into question the “illusion of Western civilisation”, arguing that any idea of it as a civilizing force or source of moral authority is no longer tenable.
Western settler-colonialism has always practiced racism against other ethnicities and religions, especially Judaism and Islam.
Dabashi concludes:
“Just as after the Jewish Holocaust, the entire project of European Enlightenment modernity was put under scrutiny and systematically dismantled; in the aftermath of the Palestinian genocide, the philosophical project of a post-Western world commences in earnest.”
RK
This article was originally published by Arab Center Washington DC on Tue 13 Jan 2026. Read the original here.
A powerful new book clarifies the key driver of the US-Israel genocide in Gaza
Hamid Dabashi, After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization, Chicago:Haymarket Books 2025, 218 pp
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Spot on review by Rami Khouri, which while critical on the lack of detail in the book, says it can be used to expand the exposure of Israel’s depraved, almost religious justified genocide and barbarism, linked intimately with its Western colonial partners. We need to formulate a new assessment, against all odds and the enclosing ranks of imperialism, and capitalism, particularly the arms industry, of how the world needs to behave, and to establish a proper order of humanity, civilisation based on international and humanitarian law, a body of which exists but is never adhered to, or has the the power to apply. Gaza must be the benchmark of our future direction to achieve the real motivation for Never Again for anyone. Don’t forget the ongoing fascism in the US with Trumps ICE army and the genocides in Myanmar, Sudan, the Congo, Syria, Libya, etc etc etc ..Sadly the human sacrifice is too large.
Does the book address the writings of Franz Fanon, Joseph Needham and Samir Amin. All three are key analysts of western imperialism and colonialism. Fanon writes about both colonialism and settler-colonialism: Needham and Amin analyse what they identify as Eurocentrism.
The overall problem, which impacts all of us, inclusive of our own democracy, is that the terrorist government of Israel is allowed to do whatever it likes, inclusive of its open genocide of indigenous inhabitants, indeed as permitted by the USA but also as helped along by our own rotten establishment government and so-called parliamentary opposition of establishment politicians.