Book on Israel's slaughter in Gaza: 'One Day Everyone Will Have Been Against This'

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This author Omar El Akkad on Gaza (Zeteo)

Author Omar El Akkad has 4.7 out of 5 stars with 91 ratings and the Number 1 new release in democracy. This New York Times bestseller is making an impact.

From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values.

"[A] bracing memoir and manifesto."

—The New York Times

“I can’t think of a more important piece of writing to read right now. I found hope here, and help, to face what the world is now, all that it isn’t anymore. Please read this. I promise you won’t regret it.”

—Tommy Orange, bestselling author of Wandering Stars and There There

(PoliticsJOE) How the destruction of Palestine will be remembered

On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet:

“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.

• On Sunday, March 16, 2025, at 8:30 am, Akkad was interviewed by Chris Hedges, KPFK, Pacifica free speech radio for Los Angeles. LISTEN: Online Archives - KPFK 90.7 FM

As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that the West promised freedom, a place of justice for all. But in the past 20 years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated [genocidal] slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie.

He has further concluded that there will always be entire groups of human beings the West has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege.

One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage.

This is El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date, a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, on college campuses, on city streets; the consequences of this rupture are just beginning. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time. More

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Omar El Akkad was born in Cairo, Egypt, and grew up in Doha, Qatar, before moving to Canada. He worked as a journalist at The Globe and Mail, and his coverage of a 2006 terror plot earned him a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Reporting. His other journalistic work includes dispatches from the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, the military trials at Guantánamo Bay, the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt, and the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Missouri. He has also received the Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Journalists, as well as three National Magazine Award honorable mentions. He is a graduate of Queen's University. He now lives with his wife in the woods just south of Portland, Oregon. Source