“A brilliant book by an outstanding veteran journalist who has followed and reported on Israeli politics for decades. Marwan Bishara shows that the path to genocide was not built accidentally but was paved by decades of intentional dehumanization and supremist indoctrination. More than any other book, it expertly probes the political arrogance, structural racism and cultivated cruelty that set the stage for October 7.”
—Raja Shehadeh, author of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I

“Hard-hitting, compelling, honest. A tragic portrait of the violence that has overtaken the Middle East since 7 October 2023, from genocide in Gaza to wars in Lebanon and Iran, as Israel and the United States combine forces to reshape the region. Essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the world today.” —Eugene Rogan, author of The Arabs: A History and The Fall of the Ottomans

“Marwan Bishara has written an essential work of contemporary history. He powerfully and meticulously illuminates how decisions made over twelve days in October 2023 set the stage for Israel's genocide in Gaza, as well as the wars against Iran and Lebanon that followed. Twelve Days That Shook the Middle East exposes not only a 'fortress of complicity' between Israel and its allies in the West, above all the United States, but a catastrophic moral failure, rooted in the logic of colonial violence and imperial patronage, that has led to unimaginable destruction and horror. Yet Bishara, one of the region's most astute commentators, is driven less by anger than by the dream of 'a day when Palestinians and Jews are united by the hope of a shared future, not divided by the hate of fanatic leaders.' The result is an indispensable contribution to understanding the genocide, to the remembrance of its victims, and to ensuring that it never happens again—to anyone.” —Adam Shatz, US Editor, London Review of Books and author of The Rebel’s Clinic: the Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon