“Dan Steinbock’s The Obliteration Doctrine: Genocide Prevention, Israel, Gaza and the West is not only a deeply original examination of the ongoing genocide in Gaza from multiple dimensions, but also a timely theoretical framework that warns against the emerging destructive warfare in the 21st century. Building on the profound insights of his earlier works, Steinbock presents Gaza as a compelling and urgent case study that illuminates the broader dynamics of obliteration methods of genocide. This book will serve as both a critical resource for understanding the Gaza case and a roadmap for preventing future genocides.”
——AHMET DAVUTOGLU, former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister of Turkiye. Founder and leader of the Future Party, author of Systemic Earthquake: The Struggle for World Order (2019), and prominent academic in International Relations.

“This important study adds a new term to the lexicon on genocide, ‘the obliteration doctrine’, with its detailed review of and insights into the Gaza conflict of 2023-5, notably in the application of international law and its judicial mechanisms. Dan Steinbock’s discussion of the international legal challenges to Israel’s conduct make this a vital contribution to our understanding of the conflict.”
——WILLIAM SCHABAS, professor of international law, Middlesex University London and author of Genocide in International Law, Cambridge University Press, 2025

“Dan Steinbock has written an indispensable book that illuminates the most fundamental challenges facing humanity at a time when a massive genocide darkens the skies hovering above the planet. The originality of his approach by way of the Obliteration Doctrine is to put the genocide unfolding in Gaza within a historical, functional, and conceptual framework that encompasses European colonial treatment of indigenous peoples, Western asylum for Nazi scientists considered useful assets in the emergent Cold War, monetary incentives supportive of genocidal tactics, imperatives of improved genocide prevention with links to preventing nuclear wars of annihilation, strengthening and broadening the Genocide Convention. This is a deeply challenging text that deserves close reading, but more than this, citizen engagement and anti-genocide activism.”
——RICHARD A. FALK, former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University

The Obliteration Doctrine tackles the deadliest canon of 21st century warfare. It addresses the abject devastation that this military doctrine has wrought, how it was done and those responsible. It puts the Genocide Convention’s failure to punish and prevent this crime under close scrutiny.
The Obliteration Doctrine combines lethal forms of warfare―scorched-earth military tactics, collective punishment and civilian victimization―with indiscriminate area bombing and counterinsurgency operations. What’s new about this form of warfare is the chilling mix of artificial intelligence and genocidal atrocities in violation of international law, the very foundations of international society and all human life.
This book shows how the doctrine’s implementation in Gaza was facilitated by the United States, with Germany, the UK, Italy and Canada as strategic partners. While Israel pulled the trigger in Gaza, the weaponry and financial and diplomatic support came from the US-led West. Hence their complicity in the fatal carnage.
The rise of this deadly doctrine has been enabled by the West’s long opposition to genocide prevention, which Raphael Lemkin’s quest for effective legislation failed to overcome. Fearful of its vulnerability, the West succeeded in excluding and diluting core parts of the Genocide Convention addressing colonial atrocities, cultural genocide, political killings, and ethnic cleansing. Enforcement was repressed throughout the Cold War, and the few tribunals afterward soon proved inadequate. The West undermined genocide prevention by shunning preparatory attacks, early warnings and incitement prosecution. Ex post facto justice records but doesn’t preempt genocides.
Stunningly, the Obliteration Doctrine was largely perfected institutionally by Israel two decades before October 7, 2023, yet the international community failed to prevent its further implementation, which its proponents openly pledged to deploy in the “next war.” That said, a broad variety of legal efforts have been launched against Israel and its complicit Western allies in international and domestic courts by many activists and countries increasingly in and by the Global South.
The erasure of Gaza reflects the tragic inability of the Genocide Convention to prevent the genocides it was created to identify, preempt and punish. The Obliteration Doctrine has set a horrendous precedent, providing a template for new and far worse “final solutions” to be unleashed on entire nations

Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally-renowned expert on the multipolar world economy and author of The Fall of Israel The founder of Difference Group Ltd, he has served in the India China and America Institute (US), the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). He has lectured around the world and consulted for multinationals, and multilateral institutions, such as the OECD and the EU, and been interviewed by and contributed to major media worldwide. He has supported Israel’s Peace movement and Israeli-Palestinian talks since the 1970

Dr.Mahathir Mohamad was the fourth prime minister of Malaysia, holding office from 1981 to 2003. He improved the economy and was a champion of developing nations. He won five consecutive elections and served for 22 years, longer than any other prime minister in Malaysia’s history. Under him, Malaysia experienced rapid economic growth. He is founder of the Perdana Global Peace Forum,.which began began with the launching of the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War.