Athlone launch of new book on genocide in Palestine
A Midlands launch of a new book on the genocide in Palestine takes place in Athlone this evening.
The book, ‘Genocide - Sponsoring the Destruction of Palestine’ by Fintan Drury is a follow-up to Catastrophe: Nakba II, extending his forensic chronicle of the genocide in Gaza into its third year. Opening on October 13, 2025 – when Donald Trump addressed the Knesset and held a Peace Summit in Egypt – the book dissects a spectacle that excluded the oppressed while rewarding the oppressor. Drury uses this moment to show how Western governments, led by the US, deepened their political, military, and moral support for genocide.
Drawing on meticulous research, he examines how bombardment, starvation, imprisonment, and territorial expansion formed a deliberate strategy, and argues that Western arms, funding, and diplomacy knowingly enabled it. Drury also explores the Trump–Netanyahu alliance, showing how political and commercial interests sidelined alternative peace efforts.
The book highlights how Israel’s focus on Iran is used to deflect attention from continued expansion in Gaza and the West Bank, and critiques a ‘peace’ framework built around Israeli priorities. Urgent and provocative, Genocide contends that without sustained Western backing, the crisis could neither have begun nor persisted – and insists that accountability is overdue.
The Midlands launch takes place tonight, Friday, at 7pm in the Athlone Springs Hotel.
The book is on sale for €18.99
Fintan Drury was a journalist with RTÉ in the 1980s. Before co-anchoring Morning Ireland for its first three years, he was a correspondent in Northern Ireland and reported from Britain, Europe, Africa and the USA. In 2016 he volunteered in a refugee camp in Athens, which led to a fifteen-part series in The Irish Times on the diary of a Syrian refugee. A longtime activist on migration, he’s written extensively on the subject. His 2025 book Catastrophe: Nakba II was released to critical acclaim and was shortlisted for Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards. Fintan now lives and works in Dublin; he is chair of SARI (Sport Against Racism Ireland).