Moral Abdication

How the World Failed to Stop the Destruction of Gaza

Didier Fassin, Gregory Elliott

$22.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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French

Verso
03 June 2025

History; Colonialism & imperialism; War crimes

Series: The Verso Palestine Pamphlets

Consent to the obliteration of Gaza has created an enormous gulf in the global moral order. History will record how Western governments and large sections of their elites have supported the war waged by Israel against Palestinians after Hamas's attack on 7 October 2023 and silenced voices calling for a ceasefire, a just peace and a respect of international law.

Not only buildings have been devastated and civilians massacred, but also language and thought have been damaged. Providing an archive of the first six months of the war nourished by multiple sources, the book examines how the past of occupation and oppression of Palestine has been negated, how a vocabulary and a grammar of facts have been imposed, how accusations of antisemitism have produced censorship and self-censorship, how mainstream media have been restrained and biased. It addresses the acceptance of the unequal worth of lives and the differential treatment of deaths. It questions the invocation of the existential threat for Israel and the debt contracted because of the Holocaust. It analyses how the geopolitical and economic stakes in the Middle East and the growing rejection of Muslims and Arabs have contributed to the abdication of values and principles claimed as foundational.

By: Didier Fassin
Translated by: Gregory Elliott
Imprint: Verso
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: Paperback original
Dimensions: Height: 178mm, Width: 111mm,
Weight: 150g
ISBN: 9781804299678
ISBN 10: 1804299677
Series: The Verso Palestine Pamphlets
Pages: 128
Publication Date: 03 June 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Didier Fassin is Professor at the Collège de France, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Anthropologist, sociologist and physician, he conducted research in Senegal, Congo, South Africa, Ecuador, and France, focusing on moral and political issues. Recipient of the Gold Medal in anthropology and the Nomis Distinguished Scientist Award, he is a member of the American Philosophical Society and a former Vice-President of Médecins sans frontières. He authored 23 books, translated in 9 languages, including Humanitarian Reason. A Moral History of the Present and Enforcing Order. An Ethnography of Public Policing, and edited 27 collective volumes.

Reviews for Moral Abdication: How the World Failed to Stop the Destruction of Gaza

""One of the outcomes of the ongoing genocide in Gaza has been a total collapse of any semblance of moral authority on the part of the West...Didier Fassin’s book surveys this moral abdication, focusing on how many western states and institutions have actively consented to the destruction of Gaza, particularly by obstructing and criminalising Palestinian solidarity. By foregrounding students and other activists who have defended the basic rights of Palestinians, the book also seeks to 'attest to the existence of a refusal, shared by many, of consent to the obliteration of Gaza'."" —Irish Times