The Monstrosity Of Our Century – The War On Palestine And The Last Western Man
ISBN: 978-1-963892-29-1
Publisher: Clarity Press
Author: Amir Nour
Review by Iqbal Jassat
In his foreword, Richard Forer describes Amir Nour’s book as a comprehensive tour of Israel’s ongoing offensive against Gaza, while documenting historical events that set the stage for this tragedy to unfold.
A winner of the NYC Big Book Award, Forer commends Nour for not shying away from implicating the West for its role in Israel’s genocide.
Indeed, Ramzy Baroud concurs that Nour’s book is a bold and refreshing critique of Western imperialism, centered on Israel’s settler colonialism in Palestine and its genocidal war on Gaza.
It challenges many erroneous notions about the roots of global conflict, the binary narrative of the “war on terror”, and the dangerous “us vs. them” mentality espoused by Washington and its Western allies, is Baroud’s view.
The author Amir Nour is an Algerian researcher in international relations and a Research Associate of the Canada-based Centre for Research on Globalisation. His introduction to the book deals with what he describes as “the insanity of of Western political discourse”.
He rightly spells out that the textbook case of genocide Israel is carrying out against the Palestinian people with the murderous complicity of most Western governments, has inflamed public opinion across the whole world.
Nour reminds us that despite global anger, the observation made by Chris Hedges finds not a single U.S. university president has denounced Israel’s destruction of every university in Gaza.
Instead, “heads of these academic institutions grovel supinely before wealthy donors, corporations – including weapons manufacturers – and rabid right-wing politicians”.
In addition to the Introduction, The Monstrosity of Our Century is made up of eight compelling
chapters, a Conclusion and a Postscript which contains the martyr Yahya Al-Sinwar’s will.
Chapter one covers the period before the “Al-Aqsa Flood” military operation by Hamas on October 7, 2023, followed by the second chapter which expands on the Flood.
The third chapter provides a critical review of Western bias. Nour writes that most Western governments continue to show an uncompromising alignment to Israel. If the Zionist-apartheid regime is one of the world’s worst pariah states, why is Occupation and annexation of Palestinian territories continue to be legalised and legitimized?
The core theme of how we got to Monstrosity of Our Century, is extensively dealt with in chapter four. In Nour’s words: “To be sure, from day one of the war on Gaza, Israel has been waging a war of genocide with thousands of innocent lives being sacrificed live before our eyes via social media all over the world”.
In chapters five, six and seven, the author meticulously unpacks key issues dealing with the inevitability of Palestine’s independence in the long term. Nour also poses an equally important question: “Whither the Jewish State?”, and the road ahead.
The final chapter scrutinises a fundamental question that Nour describes as “A new global order in the making?”
Along with the Conclusion aptly titled “The End of Empathy, Genocide, and the Last Western Man”, Nour sets out his view that the Gaza genocide will have long-lasting and far-reaching consequences given its potential to reshape the entire Middle East, to further exacerbate international tensions, and to possibly provoke a conflagaration that could spread beyond a part of the world that has experienced more than its share of humiliation for more than a century.
Baroud is absolutely correct in his profound observation that Nour has helped to liberate the history of the so-called “conflict” from the provisional, often short-sighted approach to history.
Iqbal Jassat
Executive Member
MEDIA REVIEW NETWORK