A Book Review of The World After Gaza by Pankaj Mishra
Essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra’s book makes an exceptionally valuable contribution to understanding the war between Palestine and Israel. The merit of the text lies in its exploration of three key issues: first, understanding life after the Holocaust (Shoah); second, the act of remembering the Shoah; and third, exposing Western hypocrisy.
Mishra begins his book by citing Omer Bartov, a prominent historian of the Holocaust, who states that Israel has sought from the very beginning “to make the entire Gaza Strip uninhabitable, and to debilitate its population to such a degree that it would either die out or seek all possible options to flee the territory.”1 Since 1948, Israel and its allies have aimed to establish the country as a homeland for the Jewish people. The Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 was a violent act. Mishra argues that this incident became a turning point for Israeli settlers, further advancing their agenda of expelling Palestinians from their land and expanding illegal settlements.
Mishra also highlights the hypocrisy of the USA and European countries. He emphasizes how the Western world remains silent while witnessing the brutal violence and genocide committed against Palestinians. Thousands of children, men, and women have been killed, yet there seems to be little concern from the West. He further critiques the silence of politicians and intellectuals regarding the protection of innocent civilians in Gaza by pointing to figures such as Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Keir Starmer, and Jürgen Habermas.
Mishra critically examines the hypocrisy of Western media in its coverage of Israeli atrocities, arguing that distorted reporting has obscured the reality of who is doing what to whom—and under what circumstances. He illustrates how prominent media outlets, including The New York Times, the BBC, and CNN, have selectively framed the conflict, often downplaying or omitting the scale of violence inflicted on Palestinians. Mishra notes, for example, that editors at The New York Times were reportedly instructed not to refer to the ongoing violence as ‘ethnic cleansing or genocide’2 reflecting a broader pattern of editorial sanitization and political alignment.
Furthermore, he exposes how powerful American billionaires or politicians have launched smear campaigns against student protesters in university campuses, contributing to a fear and repression. Academics and journalists have been dismissed, artists and intellectuals de-platformed, raising urgent questions about freedom of speech and the cost of dissent in the West.3 Mishra provocatively asks: why has the West, so eager to defend and shelter Ukrainians from Russian aggression, remained indifferent to Palestinian suffering?
Mishra draws attention to the ideas of thinkers such as James Baldwin, Karl Jaspers, and Ali Shariati to expose the ideological foundations of Western supremacy over the non-Western world, particularly the dominance of white over Black.4 Baldwin, for instance, denounced the “pious silence” of Whiteman on Israel’s actions, highlighting how moral double standards are maintained through omission and indifference. Jaspers’s concept of “metaphysical guilt” is used to interrogate the broader moral responsibility of societies that tolerate or justify oppression. Ali Shariati, meanwhile, critiques the West’s historic and ongoing treatment of the “darker people.”
Shariati famously asked: “Why should the West and Christianity give up Islamic Palestine as payoff? Why shouldn’t they give up a part of Poland where they put the Jews under the most terrible torture?”5
In the second part of the book, Mishra reflects on his personal journey, offering glimpses of his 2008 visit to Israel. He was born into a Brahmin Hindu nationalist family in India, and grew up witnessing the tensions and deep divisions between Hindus and religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians. Although he had little personal contact with Jewish people, that is why, he initially admired Zionism.6 However, his visit to Israel profoundly altered that perspective. Confronted with the reality of systemic discrimination against Palestinians and the exclusionary, separatist attitudes held by Israelis. Mishra experienced a moral reckoning and left him deeply disturbed, shaking his earlier admiration for Zionism.7
As Mishra elaborates, the stand of Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore and the cultural Zionist Ahad Ha’am on nationalism, both of whom criticized it, his own perspective shifted. He came to realise that nationalism was a dangerous ideal of ethnic superiority, both in India and Israel.8 Witnessing the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli military control during his visit to the West Bank, Mishra started to see Israeli as people who, in many ways, resembled his own ancestors’ who persecuted atrocity against Muslims and Christians. Mishra views Hindu nationalism, too, as a tragedy, rooted in the aftermath of India’s partition in 1947 which he argues, was enabled by the failures of leaders like Gandhi and Nehru. “This division led to the slaughter and rape of countless Hindus, widespread violence and the creation of Pakistan.”9
Gaza is surviving the recreation of the Shoah over many more people than the world’s Jewish population survived. Mishra illustrates an orgy of bestial violence has happened on Palestinian, a 19-year-old, Sha’ban al- Dalou, burning alive with four lines connected to his arm and many hospitals bombed by Israel.10 The question now echoes across the globe: why is the world ascending into chaos and war? From Gaza to Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Russia, India, Pakistan and now Iran, violence festers and spreads, and why those with power either remain silent or speak calculated half-truths to maintain their strategic stand.
This book is published amid significant debates, with Mishra addressing critical global issues and offering new analytical perspectives. However, questions arise regarding his decision to publish with Penguin: what motivates a writer who has consistently critiqued Zionism, Hindutva, and state-sanctioned violence to align with a major publishing corporation? Such a choice always pins the question on author’s moral and ethical considerations. Publishing is not a neutral act; as Achille Mbembe’s concept of Necropolitics suggests, institutions can play a role in legitimizing systems that determine life and death. In this context, the association of Mishra’s work with Penguin raises important questions about complicity and the ethical dimensions of literary production, particularly in relation to the ongoing erasure of Palestine and atrocities against Indian Muslims.
As a Muslim reader, the wound is impossible to overlook. Mishra has written eloquently against the siege of Gaza, global hypocrisies, serving for many as a secular ally articulating what we could not always voice. Yet, solidarity cannot remain merely rhetorical. When that same ally chooses to collaborate with a corporation entangled with Zionist tech, with Israeli and Hindutva propaganda, and the machinery of war. This betrayal is not merely symbolic. It is tangible and material too.
The World After Gaza is not structured around a single argument. It is written with historical facts and analytical insights, taking the reader through waves of history, from the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943 to the October 2023 attacks and from the racist crimes of the west to the apartheid regime of Israel, with abundant quotes from Holocaust survivors, philosopher critics, historians and politicians. Mishra makes his readers grapple with the unsettling questions of our present moment and forces us to think: what if the world has come to accept, even normalize, a hierarchy of human life, where suffering of some is broadcast as tragedy, like Palestinians in Gaza, is rendered invisible or justified? What does it reveal about the moral compass of the West that it continues to offer unwavering support to Israel, even as the humanitarian catastrophe deepens?
Photo by Ash Hayes on Unsplash
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Works cited:
- Pankaj Mishra, The World After Gaza, pp. 18. [↩]
- Pankaj Mishra, The World After Gaza, pp. 19. [↩]
- Pankaj Mishra, The World After Gaza, pp. 22. [↩]
- Pankaj Mishra, The World After Gaza, pp. 176. [↩]
- Pankaj Mishra, The World After Gaza, pp. 24. [↩]
- Pankaj Mishra, The World After Gaza, pp. 45–46. [↩]
- Pankaj Mishra, The World After Gaza, pp. 87–89. [↩]
- Pankaj Mishra, The World After Gaza, pp.71-73. [↩]
- Pankaj Mishra, The World After Gaza, pp.51-52. [↩]
- Pankaj Mishra, The World After Gaza, pp.273. [↩]
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