One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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
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.
As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it 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.
"[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
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.
As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it 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.
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Community Reviews
Omar El Akkad pulls no punches in his analysis of the state of things in Palestine and the West’s role in it. This book is a complete accounting of the West’s moral ineptitude and abandonment of justice in the face of obvious genocide. If you read this alongside Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Message,” you will feel every revolutionary bone in your body awakening.
Like Coates, Akkad saved most of his damning commentary for the political left. In that, the right has made it abundantly clear they don’t care for what is morally right or the humanity of “others.” It is the liberals who sit in the painfully hypocritical seat by espousing the right things and marching for causes but not wanting to be radical enough to enact real change. All in an effort to maintain a semblance of a centrist position in a world deeply divided.
The psychological and moral introspection that Akkad goes through is all in the hopes of sparking a call to stand for something rather than swipe our way into complacency. The pronouncement at the end is a reminder that our economic boycott power is our greatest strength. The state wants marches and self emulation. It does not, however, know how to respond when millions combine to put Amazon out of business or collapse professional sports. Internet activism is great, economic boycotts are powerful.
This is a well written one sided conversation (at times, political manifesto) from a well thought journalist author about his life as an immigrant and advocate for peace in the middle east. Careful as an Egyptian refugee, he does not show bias for neither Israelis nor Palestinians but the battle they fight not only in Gaza but the echoes it carries into the Western world. This is a great read for the world for awareness, love, and how injustice is not one-sided.
I feel the author's pain. What I really find interesting, as someone who believes Israel has a right to exist, is that Israel states parallel arguments. Glad I listened to this and I do agree with some of his comments concerning politicians etc. Not to say I will ever support Hamas and what it has done to people both in Gaza and in Israel, but it was an interesting listen that I am glad I struggled (and at times it was a struggle) through.
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