Book Review: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

I received an Advance Reader’s Copy of this book. All opinions are my own. Pub date: February 25, 2025

No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sign of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.

For those of us in the Western world who have the luxury of turning away from the horrors of Gaza, of the Middle East, of Ukraine, who have the luxury of tucking our children into bed each night and worrying about nothing more than if they’re getting a cold or getting along with their friends. This is a book that begins to ask the question, “Do I have a duty to look at what is happening on the other side of the world and to not look away?”

One day, El Akkad posits, we will all know that what is happening in Isreal and Palestine right now is wrong and we will speak about it with the moral clarity that we use now to speak about the Holocaust or slavery. But of course, when those atrocities were occurring, there were many who were not against them. There were those who participated, yes, but there were also those who did nothing.

El Akkad gives a good deal of his own background, his family’s history and arrival in Canada and then the USA. His experience of being a young Arab-American man in the aftermath of 9/11 and his time as a journalist, in Canada and in Afghanistan. He’s angry but restrained as, no doubt, a man of colour needs to be in 21st century America. And he directs his anger equally at the right and left-wings of political followers in North America today. For those who might wonder how anyone could have chosen to not vote Democrat in the most recent American election, this book offers an explanation.

This book is hard to know how to review because I know that I’m exactly part of the group that El Akkad is speaking against. Is it trite to say that it was an enlightening read? A challenging one? I’m glad I read it but it also left me feeling guilty. But it’s also a book that pushes me to not stop there in my guilt and for that reason, I hope people choose to read this one.