📚 On 25 October, 2023, only weeks following the events of 7 October which would see over 69k — documented — Palestinians murdered by the Israeli occupation forces in what has since been finally deemed an abhorrent genocide, Canadian-Egyptian novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad, who famously penned American War and What Strange Paradise, took to X, writing: “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.”

In February 2025, El Akkad would publish a non-fiction book under this very title, shortened to One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. Across 200-pages, neatly divided into 10 chapters, each dissecting a sociopolitical aspect of the genocide and how it has been presented to the masses, El Akkad poignantly delivers an analytical masterpiece, bubbling with personal ache and generational scars.

Yet, this is not a book on just Gaza. While the ongoing genocide is indeed the most prominent catalyst of the book, with El Akkad going to great lengths to chronicle its atrocities and the ensuing nonchalance exhibited by the world’s populace, the book is, at its core, a chronicle of a people not allowed to be human — immigrants, Palestinians, residents of the global south. It is because of this dehumanization, El Akkad argues, encouraged by journalists’ words and world leaders’ speeches, that the world may feel excused to turn a blind eye until it’s safe to look.

Throughout the book’s length, El Akkad archives stories told time and again — of immigrants randomly selected for secondary screenings, of a father reassuring his children that the police officer wishes him no harm, of a people destined only with departures, and never with returns. El Akkad bares his past on paper, writing of a childhood spent between borders and countries, his father’s struggles as a first generation Egyptian immigrant, and the negative space in which the lives of those not fortunate enough to be born into privilege exist.

This is a book that transcends description. With the rigor of a journalist, the storytelling of a novelist, and the soul of a man with nothing to lose, El Akkad pieces together an important, timely, and riveting read. It is a political dissection of the ongoing war on humanity, and also one man’s letter of defeat — his realization that the west, which he had for so long glorified, is but a mere sham.

WHERE TO FIND IT- You can find a physical copy of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This at Diwan. You can also find the eBook on Amazon.

Tags: