The Obliteration Doctrine: Genocide Prevention, Israel, Gaza & the West

by Dr. Dan Steinbock, Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad (Foreword by)

Overview

The Obliteration Doctrine tackles the deadliest canon of 21st century warfare. It addresses the abject devastation that this military doctrine has wrought, how it was done and those responsible. It puts the Genocide Convention’s failure to punish and prevent this crime under close scrutiny.
The Obliteration Doctrine combines lethal forms of warfare—scorched-earth military tactics, collective punishment and civilian victimization—with indiscriminate area bombing and counterinsurgency operations. What’s new about this form of warfare is the chilling mix of artificial intelligence and genocidal atrocities in violation of international law, the very foundations of international society and all human life.
This book shows how the doctrine’s implementation in Gaza was facilitated by the United States, with Germany, the UK, Italy and Canada as strategic partners. While Israel pulled the trigger in Gaza, the weaponry and financial and diplomatic support came from the US-led West. Hence their complicity in the fatal carnage.
The rise of this deadly doctrine has been enabled by the West’s long opposition to genocide prevention, which Raphael Lemkin’s quest for effective legislation failed to overcome. Fearful of its vulnerability, the West succeeded in excluding and diluting core parts of the Genocide Convention addressing colonial atrocities, cultural genocide, political killings, and ethnic cleansing. Enforcement was repressed throughout the Cold War, and the few tribunals afterward soon proved inadequate. The West undermined genocide prevention by shunning preparatory attacks, early warnings and incitement prosecution. Ex post facto justice records but doesn’t preempt genocides.
Stunningly, the Obliteration Doctrine was largely perfected institutionally by Israel two decades before October 7, 2023, yet the international community failed to prevent its further implementation, which its proponents openly pledged to deploy in the “next war.” That said, a broad variety of legal efforts have been launched against Israel and its complicit Western allies in international and domestic courts by many activists and countries increasingly in and by the Global South.
The erasure of Gaza reflects the tragic inability of the Genocide Convention to prevent the genocides it was created to identify, preempt and punish. The Obliteration Doctrine has set a horrendous precedent, providing a template for new and far worse “final solutions” to be unleashed on entire nations

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781963892222
Publisher:	Clarity Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	08/01/2025
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally-renowned expert on the multipolar world economy and author of The Fall of Israel The founder of Difference Group Ltd, he has served in the India China and America Institute (US), the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). He has lectured around the world and consulted for multinationals, and multilateral institutions, such as the OECD and the EU, and been interviewed by and contributed to major media worldwide. He has supported Israel’s Peace movement and Israeli-Palestinian talks since the 1970

Dr.Mahathir Mohamad was the fourth prime minister of Malaysia, holding office from 1981 to 2003. He improved the economy and was a champion of developing nations. He won five consecutive elections and served for 22 years, longer than any other prime minister in Malaysia’s history. Under him, Malaysia experienced rapid economic growth. He is founder of the Perdana Global Peace Forum,.which began began with the launching of the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War.

Read an Excerpt

Epilogue:
Right following October 7, 2023, the Israeli army expanded its authorization for bombing non-military targets, thereby loosening the constraints regarding expected civilian casualties. For the first time, it used artificial intelligence (AI) to generate potential targets, which proved terrifyingly efficient. The decision to allow algorithms to dictate not just who will die, but also to take out others in their proximity, typically family members and other families; all of them civilians; that was something new.1 It violated the basic tenets of international law. But it was strategic in the sense that it was well-aligned with the Obliteration Doctrine. It transformed the ethics of warfare into a dark real-life survival game in which life and survival had little to do with one’s conduct, but everything with probability degrees of destruction.
As IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari acknowledged only two days after the Hamas offensive, “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.”2 Yet, two long months of massive Israeli bombing took place before the U.S. intelligence community would acknowledge in public that nearly half of the air-to-ground munitions used in Gaza had been unguided, while the rest were precision-guided munitions.
The use of these less precise “dumb bombs” poses a greater threat to civilians, especially in densely populated areas.3 It suggests that the intent has been to expunge all Palestinian presence from the territory altogether; not just the individuals and infrastructure, but all traces of Palestinian culture and history. It exemplified the kind of physical, mental, intellectual and spiritual “cultural genocide” that Lemkin had hoped but failed to see included in the Genocide Convention.
Necrotizing the Living Dead
Deploying AI for maximum devastation, Israel’s mass assassination factories were premised on programs like Lavender, Where’s Daddy? and The Gospel, particularly in the early days of the Gaza War. These notorious programs enabled the identification of the most desired targets and their location, usually when at home with their families. In the past, comparable targeting was subjected to protocol constraints to minimize collateral damage. After October 7, the Israeli military gave officers sweeping approval to embrace the Lavender kill lists, fully knowing that the system made “errors” in about 10 percent of cases and occasionally targeted individuals who had little or no connection to militants.

Editorial Reviews

Dan Steinbock’s The Obliteration Doctrine: Genocide Prevention, Israel, Gaza and the West is not only a deeply original examination of the ongoing genocide in Gaza from multiple dimensions, but also a timely theoretical framework that warns against the emerging destructive warfare in the 21st century. Building on the profound insights of his earlier works, Steinbock presents Gaza as a compelling and urgent case study that illuminates the broader dynamics of obliteration methods of genocide. This book will serve as both a critical resource for understanding the Gaza case and a roadmap for preventing future genocides.” AHMET DAVUTOGLU, former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister of Turkiye. Founder and leader of the Future Party, author of Systemic Earthquake: The Struggle for World Order (2019), and prominent academic in International Relations.

“The West did not flounder into genocide complicity – it plunged into it willfully. Dan Steinbock’s timely new book explains how.” YANIS VAROUFAKIS, internationally-renowned economist, secretary-general of a pan-European political alliance and the former Finance Minister, Greece

“This important study adds a new term to the lexicon on genocide, ‘the obliteration doctrine’, with its detailed review of and insights into the Gaza conflict of 2023-5, notably in the application of international law and its judicial mechanisms. Dan Steinbock’s discussion of the international legal challenges to Israel’s conduct make this a vital contribution to our understanding of the conflict.”
WILLIAM SCHABAS, professor of international law, Middlesex University London and author of Genocide in International Law, Cambridge University Press, 2025

“Dan Steinbock has written an indispensable book that illuminates the most fundamental challenges facing humanity at a time when a massive genocide darkens the skies hovering above the planet. The originality of his approach by way of the Obliteration Doctrine is to put the genocide unfolding in Gaza within a historical, functional, and conceptual framework that encompasses European colonial treatment of indigenous peoples, Western asylum for Nazi scientists considered useful assets in the emergent Cold War, monetary incentives supportive of genocidal tactics, imperatives of improved genocide prevention with links to preventing nuclear wars of annihilation, strengthening and broadening the Genocide Convention. This is a deeply challenging text that deserves close reading, but more than this, citizen engagement and anti-genocide activism.”
RICHARD A. FALK, former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University

“This book demonstrates that western values of democracy and human rights have been betrayed by our leaders, that the Gaza genocide entails a frontal attack on our civilization, international law and morals. Dr. Steinbock reminds us that not only Israel is guilty, but the US, UK, France, Germany are complicit in the genocide, that the United Nations has failed in its Responsibility to Protect, and that our negationist mainstream media bear responsibility by white-washing crimes and suppressing evidence. The US, European and Israeli lust for murder and destruction must have consequences. Punishment, however, is ex post facto. The real purpose of the 1948 Genocide Convention is prevention. This book helps us understand why we have failed.”
ALFRED DE ZAYAS, former UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order, international expert on human rights and ethnic expulsions

“Gaza is our moral ground zero. As Dan Steinbock compellingly recounts, even more shocking than the depth of deprivation in Gaza is the candor with which its architects convey their intent and the impunity they enjoy.”
ALEX DE WAAL, internationally renowned authority on famine and the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Dan Stenock advances the urgent dscourse egun n hs The Fall of Israel, advancng from a concern wth moral responslty to the framework of legal olgaton. Hs astute analyss dssects how States facltatng genocde—whether through drect ad, poltcal cover, or wllful nacton—are culpale under nternatonal law. Bold and unflnchng, The Olteraton Doctrne challenges the nternatonal communty to confront ts hypocrsy and enforce accountalty for Israel and the Unted States genocde of the Palestnan people. Ths ook s an mportant contruton to human rghts scholarshp and a claron call for justce—when humanty needs t most.
CURTIS F.J. DOEBBLER, nternatonal human rghts lawyer, professor of law

“With The Obliteration Doctrine, Dr. Steinbock has provided historians and layman readers alike the definitive guide to understanding the atrocities committed by the Israeli government with the assistance of the American empire. The book is very well documented, very readable, with a great amount of supporting evidence for his claims. I highly recommend it.”
SCOTT HORTON, Director of the Libertarian Institute, author of Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine

“The Obliteration Doctrine places the US-Israeli assault on Gaza in historical context, making clear that it is hardly an Israeli project that the United States and Europe are ‘complicit’ in, but rather a joint project between western governments and Israel to destroy a threat to their hegemony. While it may seem strange to write a book about a genocide that was documented in real time and live streamed to the world, this is a valuable contribution to understanding what happened, how, and why.” DR FEROZE SIDHWA. trauma and critical care surgeon, and program director of San Joaquin General Hospital volunteering extensively in Palestine, including European hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, and elswhere

” The great merit of Professor Dan Steinbock’s book is that, thanks to its historical, legal and geopolitical approaches, it allows us to grasp the complexity of the absolute tragedy that the Palestinian people are experiencing. By scrupulously studying the theory of the strategy of annihilation claimed to have been used for years by the Israeli army and the historical and legal nature of the notion of genocide, it is a valuable tool for understanding the ongoing human catastrophe in the Middle East.” EDGAR MORIN, internationally-renowned French philosopher and sociologist of information, polycrisis and comple, and recipient of the French Legion of Honor.

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