The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth

eBook, 112 pages

English language

Published 2024 by Verso Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-83674-008-7

Malm unearths the shared roots of colonial adventurism in Palestine and fossil fuelled warfare.

Israel’s pulverization of Gaza since October 7, 2023 is not only a humanitarian crisis, but an environmental catastrophe. Far from the first event of its kind, the devastation Israel has inflicted on Palestine since October 2023 has merely ushered in a new phase in a long history of colonization and extraction that reaches back to the nineteenth century. In this book, Andreas Malm argues that a true understanding of the present crisis requires a longue durée analysis of Palestine's subjugation to fossil empire. Returning to the British empire’s first use of steam-power in war, in which it destroyed the Palestinian city of Akka, Malm traces the development of Britain’s fossil empire and shows how this enduring commitment to fossil energy continues to drive Western support for the destruction of Palestine today.

Malm unearths the shared roots of colonial adventurism in Palestine and fossil fuelled warfare.

Israel’s pulverization of Gaza since October 7, 2023 is not only a humanitarian crisis, but an environmental catastrophe. Far from the first event of its kind, the devastation Israel has inflicted on Palestine since October 2023 has merely ushered in a new phase in a long history of colonization and extraction that reaches back to the nineteenth century. In this book, Andreas Malm argues that a true understanding of the present crisis requires a longue durée analysis of Palestine's subjugation to fossil empire. Returning to the British empire’s first use of steam-power in war, in which it destroyed the Palestinian city of Akka, Malm traces the development of Britain’s fossil empire and shows how this enduring commitment to fossil energy continues to drive Western support for the destruction of Palestine today.

3 editions

Jim Brown reviewed The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth by Andreas Malm

"A wagon that could be placed on ready-made tracks"

No rating

This short book was initially a lecture and then a series of exchanges via blog posts and articles in Jacobin. Malm's main intervention is to argue that the link between the genocide in Gaza and the climate catastrophe comes into focus if we look to deep history. In 1840, Britain first used steam-powered ships for warfare, and it did so in Palestine and Lebanon. Malm argues that tracking this history demonstrates how colonialism and its extractive logics are tied to the climate crisis. Toward the end, he also makes some arguments about Hamas and its tactics of armed resistance. Most responses to his argument focused on these latter arguments and not on the historical research (which really is the bulk of the lecture essay). The end of the book offers some responses to the various critiques about Hamas.

The historical argument is detailed and worth a reader's attention: "But …

This short book was initially a lecture and then a series of exchanges via blog posts and articles in Jacobin. Malm's main intervention is to argue that the link between the genocide in Gaza and the climate catastrophe comes into focus if we look to deep history. In 1840, Britain first used steam-powered ships for warfare, and it did so in Palestine and Lebanon. Malm argues that tracking this history demonstrates how colonialism and its extractive logics are tied to the climate crisis. Toward the end, he also makes some arguments about Hamas and its tactics of armed resistance. Most responses to his argument focused on these latter arguments and not on the historical research (which really is the bulk of the lecture essay). The end of the book offers some responses to the various critiques about Hamas.

The historical argument is detailed and worth a reader's attention: "But when the Zionist movement was eventually assembled, it was a wagon that could be placed on ready-made tracks, laid out by the British Empire after 1840: the dominant classes of the metropole had already constructed the logic of its satellite colony in Palestine, if only as a mental image." (43)

Subjects

Palestine
ecocide
ecologism
imperialism
colonialism