History’s Present

A Review of “Gaza Faces History” by Enzo Traverso.  Other Press, 2024.

As I write this review in February of 2025, the world is not what it was just 16 months ago.  With the election of Donald Trump in November of 2024, the structure of things that many have taken for granted has changed- not just in the US but in all the places where the gravitational effect of the world’s most powerful country is felt, in other words, in the whole world.  While many might argue that for societies that do not enjoy the relative (internal) stability of the US, things haven’t really changed, it is hard to imagine that being true given the trade wars, jingoism, anti-immigrant stand, bellicosity, and, recently, the support of Putin evinced by Trump 2.0.  Add to that the assault on all pro-Environment policies and the shameful annulment of the US commitment to the Paris Accords and it is clear that no one on the planet will remain unaffected by what has come to pass in the last months.

Trump was elected in November 2024 and assumed official power in January 2025.  So why did I mention “16” months? On that score, the murderous events of October 7^th, 2023, and the destruction of Gaza that followed mark a fundamental turning point in the affairs of people.  At once, a high-tech, armed-to-the-teeth, modern society was attacked with over 1200 killed and its power structure seemingly asleep at the wheel.  Oddly asleep at the wheel, that is, since the attack came from Hamas forces in Gaza, a place that has been colonized, policed, and the site of murder and privation for decades.  History in that sense, and vengeance, caught up with the 1200 people who sadly were mowed down on that day.  Anti-colonial violence, by both legitimate revolutionaries and megalomaniacs, is a predictable outcome of colonialism and has marked decolonization in many states.  For the 1200 and their families, the crime is real of course and beyond painful.  Palestinians will tell you that so too is it for them and will remind you that after October 7^th, the shock and awe unleashed by Israel has killed over 50 times the Oct 7^th numbers and will no doubt result in at least 100 times the deaths- from disease, hunger, and demographic thinning.  It should be lost on no one that 100X was the Lidice Ratio after the murder of Heydrich. Nor should it be lost on anyone that for 75 years leading up to 2023, the denigration, incarceration, torture, and murder of Palestinians was a distinct part of Israeli policy.  The world did not start in 2023, but its unraveling started accelerating then. 

Oct 7^th was also a turning point in countries far away from the Middle East.  In those countries, free in name and allegedly by creed, dissent from the Israeli narrative was cracked down on, often violently.  Antiliberalism found its way into every discussion of Israel and Palestine and the most notorious antisemites (White Supremacists and the Far Right all over the planet) suddenly became staunch supporters of both Israel and of Jews world-wide. This is of course a thin veil for what is really at play- a hatred of the weak, poor, and displaced – especially of Palestinians and “their kind.  As curious bedfellows were made, free speech and assembly were shot in the back by the fascists waiting in the wings. 

Against this backdrop, we need books, films, discussions, and lessons- to set the record straight and to attempt to reanimate ideas of antiracism, justice, and civilization.   Enter Enzo Traverso.

In a short tour de force, Traverso walks us through the history of Palestinian suffering and of Israeli dissembling and propaganda and illustrates Western cultural complicity in this sordid affair.  He skillfully exposes double standards and carefully illuminates the hierarchy of humans, in which certain people are denigrated to the point of nothingness and others are upheld as honorable, decent, and chosen. 

He walks us through the debates on Zionism that predate the creation of Israel.  Traverso does so with a moral and intellectual lens and while he doesn’t hesitate from stark and damning language, his voice as a humanist rises to the top.

He takes on the weaponization of the idea of “antisemitism” and even shreds the argument that “From the River to the Sea,” is an antisemitic phrase.  He does so with dignity and aplomb.

The book’s power is captured by his last paragraph, which is worth quoting in toto

“Israel has proven to be vulnerable, and because of its destructive fury, devoid of any shred of moral legitimacy…What is at stake today is not the existence of Israel but the survival of the Palestinian people.  If the war in Gaza were to end in a second Nakba, Israel’s legitimacy would be definitely compromised.  In that case, neither American weapons, nor the Western media, nor German reason of state, nor a distorted and profaned memory of the Holocaust, will be able to save it.”

Traverso’s is one in an honorable pantheon of books, many written by Jewish authors, that expose the gruesome, Machievellian history for what it is.  All should be applauded.