{"id":54650,"date":"2025-08-18T09:00:22","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T17:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=54650"},"modified":"2025-08-18T09:00:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T17:00:22","slug":"the-wests-long-struggle-against-genocide-prevention-obliteration-and-complicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/18\/the-wests-long-struggle-against-genocide-prevention-obliteration-and-complicity\/","title":{"rendered":"The West\u2019s Long Struggle Against Genocide Prevention: Obliteration and Complicity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Steinbock\u2019s highly topical new book The Obliteration Doctrine<\/em><\/a> is about the genocide in Gaza, the West\u2019s complicity and long struggle against<\/em> genocide prevention. In this Q&A with Dr. Steinbock, we will focus on just a few themes of the his highly topical new book.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the Bosnian genocide, mass atrocities took place in just a few days in July 1995. In the Rwandan genocide, all hell broke loose in the course of just three months in 1994. Gaza is in a class of its own. Starting in October 2023, Israel\u2019s genocidal atrocities in Gaza \u2013 reliant on arms transfers by US-led West \u2013 have been perpetrated 22 months, day after day, night after night, and they have happened in real time while \u201cthe world is watching.\u201d<\/p>\n

How is such indifference possible?<\/p>\n

Question (Q): That is the central question addressed by your new book.<\/p>\n

Dr Dan Steinbock (DS): Yes. In my previous book, The Fall of Israel<\/em><\/a> (2024), I examined Israel\u2019s economic, political, military and regional path to the Gaza catastrophe. In The Obliteration Doctrine<\/em><\/a>, I examine the military doctrine and the US-led West\u2019s complicity behind Gaza\u2019s devastation and the West’s long failure of genocide prevention \u2013 and try to show the way out.<\/p>\n

Question (Q): The book is your response to indifference?<\/p>\n

DS: Yes. After Auschwitz and Hiroshima, indifference to genocide is not possible. It violates everything I revere in the Jewish legacy of social justice. With genocide, silence is not an option.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Deliberate embrace of obliteration\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

In his pained foreword for The Obliteration Doctrine<\/em>, Dr. Mahathir Bin Mohamad, the longest-serving prime minister of Malaysia, cautions that the word genocide may not be adequate to describe \u201cthe deliberate mass killing of the Gaza Palestinians by Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Ahmet Davuto\u011flu, former Prime Minister of T\u00fcrkiye and prominent scholar of international relations, \u201cThe Obliteration Doctrine<\/em> is a timely theoretical framework that warns against the emerging destructive warfare in the 21st<\/sup> century.\u201d<\/p>\n

The notion that the decimation of Gaza is likely to be a harbinger of much worse to come runs through the book. \u201cThe West did not flounder into genocide complicity, it plunged into it willfully,\u201d as former finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis puts it.<\/p>\n

Professor William Schabas, perhaps the leading scholar of genocide and international law believes that, with the term Obliteration Doctrine, the book \u201cadds a new term to the lexicon on genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

These endorsements are seconded by Richard A. Falk, the former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine; Alfred de Zayas, former UN and international expert on human rights and ethnic expulsions; Alex de Waal, an internationally renowned authority of famine at Tufts University; Edgar Morin, the French philosopher who has fought fascism since the Spanish Civil War; Curtis F.J. Doebbler, the highly-regarded international human rights lawyer; Scott Horton, Director of the Libertarian Institute and the Antiwar.com; and Dr Feroze Sidhwa, the trauma surgeon who has volunteered extensively in Gaza and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Gazan genocide and weaponized starvation \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Q: When did the weaponization of starvation start in Gaza?<\/p>\n

DS: Israel first weaponized famine in Gaza almost two decades ago. When Hamas won the Palestinian election, Israel blockaded the Strip with the support of the US-led West. After the Hamas offensive of October 7 and Israel\u2019s ground assault in that fall, starvation deaths were seen already in early spring 2024. However, those images were largely suppressed in the West. The current media coverage is a belated effort at an absolution \u2013 but only after<\/em> the genocide in and decimation of Gaza.<\/p>\n

Q: The Obliteration Doctrine<\/em> shows that famines have often served as a prelude to genocide and that starvation has occasionally been purposely weaponized.<\/p>\n

DS: As the pioneering genocide scholar Raphael Lemkin stressed in 1945, murder is the most direct technique of genocide, but not the only one. Genocide may also \u201cbe the slow and scientific murder by mass starvation or the swift but no less scientific murder by mass extermination in gas chambers.\u201d In the case of Gaza, cumulative evidence of mass starvation is abundant, overwhelming and impossible to deny.<\/p>\n

Q: Among other things, you use data on daily calorie intake in a comparative historical analysis.<\/p>\n

DS: It\u2019s a rough measure, but better than nothing. The calorie level in certain parts of Gaza has been less than the daily intake needed for survival, but also lower than the level observed amid Imperial Britain’s human experiments in the late 19th<\/sup> century India, which caused the deaths of millions. In certain areas of Gaza, it has also been lower than in the German concentration camps in 1940 and at the end of World War II.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Accessorial liability: The Israeli case\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Q: When did you first conclude that Israel was engaged in genocide in Gaza?<\/p>\n

DS: Toward the end of 2023. That’s when I began to use the term “genocidal atrocities.” In spring 2024, when I concluded in The Fall of Israel,<\/em> these atrocities already fulfilled most conditions of legal genocide, as defined by the UN Genocide Convention…<\/p>\n

Q: … which highlights the issue of complicity. The Obliteration Doctrine<\/em> asks how complicity should be defined: Who<\/em> is responsible for Gaza?<\/p>\n

DS: In 1945-46, the Nuremberg Tribunal sentenced 22 of the most important surviving Nazi leaders for their mass atrocities. In 1946-48, the Tokyo Tribunal tried 28 important leaders of Imperial Japan for their mass atrocities. In spring 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) targeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant.<\/p>\n

Q: What about the others?<\/p>\n

DS: For now, they have been ignored. Behind Netanyahu and Gallant, there have been at least half a dozen other Israeli cabinet members, including the far-right Itamar Ben-Gvir, the self-proclaimed fascist Bezazel Smotrich, defense minister Israel Katz with his key role in the devastation of Gaza and its infrastructure, the far-right Amihai Eliyahu endorsing \u201cnuking Gaza\u201d and so on. All of them contributed directly to crimes against humanity, with some insisting on more destructive measures. And many were supported by Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, and Ron Demer, Netanyahu\u2019s US-born advisor.<\/p>\n

There is also another set of cabinet members that\u2019s less known internationally but they have played a vital role in the protracted genocidal atrocities. These include Miri Regev, the self-proclaimed \u201chappy fascist\u201d supporting torture in the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp; Galit-Distel Atbaryan tweeting for the \u201cerasure of Gaza\u201d; May Golan pushing openly for \u201canother Nakba\u201d to cleanse Palestinians from Gaza; and so on.<\/p>\n

Finally, the Netanyahu cabinet has featured military leaders \u2013 the not-so-moderate Benny Gantz; and Gadi Eisenkot, the architect of the Obliteration Doctrine whose role was also vital in the aftermath of October 7.<\/p>\n

Q: Are you saying that the ICC should charge them all?<\/p>\n

DS: If the ICC is to deliver its promise, it should proceed according to the Articles 2 and 3 of the Genocide Convention, which should be enforced equally in genocidal atrocities \u2013 where ever they occur.<\/p>\n

US-led West\u2019s complicity<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q: Does the accessorial liability also apply to the Biden administration and certain European leaders, due to the arms transfers and financing?<\/p>\n

DS: According to the Genocide Convention, yes. Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide. Article 3 defines the crimes that can be punished under the convention, including \u201ccomplicity in genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

DS: In the US, accessorial liability would seem to start at the highest level of decisionmakers, including President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin and a long list of their subordinates who failed to raise the alarm on the use of arms transfers to Israel in blatant disregard of U.S. foreign policy. But the broader net is more extensive. It features Vice President Kamala Harris touting continued military aid to Israel amid the atrocities; Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen enabling the ceaseless flow of arms in both Gaza and Ukraine at the same time; and so on.<\/p>\n

Q: What about the Trump administration?<\/p>\n

DS: With its open support for ethnic cleansing and direct participation in regional escalation, the Trump administration has managed to take the horrors of complicity to an entirely different, far more destructive level.<\/p>\n

The Obliteration Doctrine<\/em> examines these widening nets of accessorial liability and the efforts to have such leaders prosecuted in cases against the Israeli and US administrations, and certain European leaders.<\/p>\n

Given free rein, the Obliteration Doctrine that subjected Gaza to devastation and genocide may serve as a prelude to new and far more destructive \u201cfinal solutions\u201d \u2013 conventional or nuclear holocausts of entire nations.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Gaza catastrophe as a policy choice<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Q: In the second part of The Obliteration Doctrine<\/em>, you examine the pioneering activities of Raphael Lemkin, the founder of the Genocide Convention, and genocide politics amid the Cold War. In particular, he highlights the inadequate enforcement of the Convention, the failure of genocide prevention and the long path to the Obliteration Doctrine. Was this catastrophe inevitable?<\/p>\n

DS: Absolutely not.<\/p>\n

Q: Could<\/em> the Gaza catastrophe have been stopped?<\/p>\n

DS: Of course. It could have been stopped in the past 22 months; and it could be halted today; overnight.<\/p>\n

Q: How?<\/p>\n

DS: Right after October 7, 2023, President Biden, during his visit in Israel, warned the Netanyahu cabinet about US \u201cmistakes\u201d following September 11, 2001. If the Biden administration had ceased the arms flow to Israel soon after the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) first initiated the massive bombardment of Gaza, the Strip would still be habitable. More than 65,000 Palestinians would still be alive. Up to 155,000 would not have been injured or maimed. And hundreds of thousands of indirect<\/em> deaths could have been avoided \u2013 these deaths and debilitating health conditions will ensure that the nightmares of Gaza will prevail for decades to come.<\/p>\n

Q: So, it all takes us back to the question why this all happened …<\/p>\n

DS: Or why it was<\/em> allowed <\/em>to happen… Passive tense blurs complicity and hides responsibility. There is nothing automatic about Gaza\u2019s obliteration. Every step has been a result of a choice. Every day the carnage prevails is another vote for genocide.<\/p>\n

Q: Will the Netanyahu cabinet\u2019s looming \u201cnew Gaza war\u201d change the equation?<\/p>\n

DS: Yes, for the worse. It is set to compound the devastation, multiply deaths and accelerate the involuntary transfer of surviving Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Compromise and complicity \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Q: The Prologue of The Obliteration Doctrine<\/em> outlines South Africa\u2019s genocide case against Israel and shows how the case was thoroughly diluted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) even before the onset of the judicial process. Was it censorship?<\/p>\n

DS: It was exclusion, dilution and erosion of South Africa\u2019s original genocide case. A prelude for things to come.<\/p>\n

Q: South Africa\u2019s case focuses on Israel, but you analyze others, too.<\/p>\n

DS: Yes, starting with the Palestine et al. v. Biden et al.<\/em> in the U.S. District Court. Eventually, it was rejected on the basis of the \u201cpolitical question doctrine,\u201d which goes back to a Supreme Court case in 1803. According to the doctrine, legal questions are deemed justiciable, while political questions are nonjusticiable.<\/p>\n

Q: One could say that it is a convenient doctrine to courts that seek to insulate themselves from the real world.<\/p>\n

DS: In general, yes. Except that, in the Palestine<\/em> case, the judge did not<\/em> reject the genocide argument, which opened the Pandora\u2019s Box for new legal initiatives in the future. Moreover, there have been other cases challenging political leaderships whose action or inaction led to the Gaza catastrophe, including DAWN v. Biden et al.<\/em> in the ICC, GIPRI v. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Nicaragua v. Germany, <\/em>and so on.<\/p>\n

Q: Against the Biden cabinet and European political leaders?<\/p>\n

DS: From the standpoint of international law, perpetrators are perpetrators, on both sides of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

Follow the money\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Q: Who are the beneficiaries of the genocide in Gaza?<\/p>\n

DS: The US accounts for two thirds for arms transfers to Israel, but Europe \u2013 Germany and Italy, the UK and many smaller players \u2013 supply the rest. Israel depends on US for arms and Europe for trade. In Gaza, Israel pulls the trigger, but the supply of bullets and arms, financing and intelligence comes from US-led West.<\/p>\n

Q: Has war profiteering overridden the humanitarian catastrophe?<\/p>\n

DS: In the post-9\/11 wars world, the stock prices of the major US defense contractors have soared. With the Ukraine War and the Gaza catastrophe, these prices have multiplied. Worse, revolving doors prevail between the US administration, the Pentagon and the Big Defense, and their preferred think-tanks, such as the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in the Biden era. These generate huge moral hazards and conflicts of interests. With the Trump cabinet and its oligarchic base, these linkages are even more prominent.<\/p>\n

Q: You also look at the money chains.<\/p>\n

DS: In the long view, ex-President Biden has a special place in the fund flows of the Israel lobby to U.S. senators since the early \u201890s. Coupling Biden\u2019s Senate data from 1990 and his presidential campaigns since 1988, his total amounts to $11.2 million. He is followed by ex-Democrat Robert Menendez, convicted for corruption, and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n

Q: … based on data by?<\/p>\n

DS: Reputable NGOs, OpenSecrets and bipartisan research organizations. Different messengers, but the same message.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Obliteration first tested two decades ago\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Q: The Obliteration Doctrine has a long history, yet it differs from precedent military doctrines. How?<\/p>\n

DS: In historical view, the Obliteration Doctrine combines lethal forms of warfare \u2014 particularly scorched earth destruction, collective punishment and civilian victimization \u2014 with massive and indiscriminate area bombing and counterinsurgency operations. What\u2019s new is the chilling mix of artificial intelligence (AI) in genocidal atrocities violating all humanitarian principles related to the conduct of war. What happened in Gaza won\u2019t stay in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Q: You show that the Obliteration Doctrine was known well before it was deployed in Gaza, starting in late fall 2023.<\/p>\n

DS: There\u2019s wide consensus on these matters among military analysts. Though building on ancient military tactics and modern bombardment canons, the Obliteration Doctrine was largely perfected nearly two decades before October 7, 2023.<\/em> It was first piloted by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) in Dahiya, a predominantly Shia Muslim neighborhood in Beirut.<\/p>\n

Q: No proactive intervention by the international community, despite the looming nightmare?<\/p>\n

DS: There was no effective intervention in the subsequent time period by the international community. There was no major effort to preempt the impending execution of the lethal doctrine, even as its Israeli proponents pledged that they\u2019d deploy it in their \u201cnext war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of prevention, recording genocides\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Q: One of the most intriguing aspects of your book is the argument that, in contrast to Raphael Lemkin\u2019s wishes, the Genocide Convention has been deployed in a way that enables<\/em> rather than preempts<\/em> genocides.<\/p>\n

DS: The Genocide Convention was shrewdly diluted and tailored by the Western powers to erode measures of genocide prevention. It is what broke Lemkin\u2019s heart as it undermined his quest for a comprehensive Genocide Convention.<\/p>\n

Q: So, this all goes back to the early days of the Cold War…<\/p>\n

DS: … when Truman buried the Rooseveltian legacy of an effective United Nations. Instead, Lemkin\u2019s quest for genocide prevention was initially supported mainly by the developing countries of the Global South, not by the Western countries whose delegates sought to undermine it.<\/p>\n

Q: Why?<\/p>\n

DS: Motives differed, but colonial legacies were the common denominator. London had little interest in genocide investigations in the British Empire. Washington was concerned about international attention being directed to its racial segregation, the many lynchings of African Americans, and the genocidal massacres of Native Americans. Such concerns were also typical to other former colonial states, including France, the Netherlands, Canada and Sweden, and the defeated Germany, Italy and Japan.<\/p>\n

Q: What about Lemkin\u2019s goal of preemption?<\/p>\n

DS: Lemkin was originally focused on \u201cpreparatory attacks\u201d and early warning signals, to preempt<\/em> mass atrocities before they could take place. Yet, today instead of preempting new mass atrocities, the goal is to name, condemn and record genocides but only after<\/em> they have taken place. So, it follows that a genocide is required to trigger a mechanism to prevent, belatedly.<\/p>\n

Toward new \u201cfinal solutions\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Q: You are uncomfortable with the term \u201cGaza war.\u201d<\/p>\n

DS: Usually, war is a battle of armies or various non-state actors. In Gaza, up to 70 percent of the killed and wounded –\u00a0 more than 100,000\u00a0 – are women and children who have nothing to do with hostilities. Many have been targeted by Israeli snipers. That’s not war. That is mass butchery.<\/p>\n

Q: What\u2019s the way out?<\/p>\n

DS: Effective genocide prosecution will ensue only when Genocide Convention can deliver its ultimate purpose: To prevent<\/em> and punish<\/em> the crime<\/em> of genocide.<\/p>\n

Q: You call this the shift from \u201cvictors\u2019 justice\u201d to \u201cvictims\u2019 justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

DS: Yes. But it won\u2019t be viable until and unless the countries of the Global South will have an adequate voice and representation in genocide prevention in particular and in global governance in general.<\/p>\n

Q: … and without such effective countervailing forces?<\/p>\n

DS: … the Obliteration Doctrine is setting an atrocious precedent and provides a brutal blueprint for far, far worse to come.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Dr. Steinbock\u2019s new book, The Obliteration Doctrine: Genocide Prevention, Israel, Gaza and the West<\/em><\/a> (Clarity Press) builds on his previous The Fall of Israel<\/em><\/a>. Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognized visionary of the multipolar world and <\/em>the founder of Difference Group. He has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see <\/em>https:\/\/www.differencegroup.net<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Steinbock\u2019s highly topical new book The Obliteration Doctrine is about the genocide in Gaza, the West\u2019s complicity and long struggle against genocide prevention. In this Q&A with Dr. Steinbock, we will focus on just a few themes of the his highly topical new book. In the Bosnian genocide, mass atrocities took place in just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":609,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[915],"class_list":["post-54650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/609"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54650"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54658,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54650\/revisions\/54658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54650"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=54650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}