One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a collection of essays by Omar El Akkad, an award-winning Egyptian American journalist and novelist. This work follows his acclaimed novels American War (2017) and What Strange Paradise (2021). El Akkad has reported extensively on conflicts in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, and the Arab world, and these experiences inform his perspective on global politics and humanitarian crises. This essay collection is a work of creative nonfiction that combines elements of memoir, cultural criticism, and political commentary as El Akkad examines Western responses to the 2023 Gaza conflict alongside broader patterns of colonial violence and moral disengagement.

This study guide refers to the 2025 Knopf eBook edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, child death, death by suicide, physical abuse, racism, illness, and death.

Summary

The book’s Introduction opens with a description of a young girl being rescued from bombed ruins. This scene serves as a metaphorical entry point to explore how violence is experienced, portrayed, and rationalized. El Akkad examines language as a tool of power, arguing that manipulative language primarily serves not extremists but centrists who need linguistic distance to accept violence as necessary. He emphasizes the limitations of translation to convey cultural meaning and establishes that his book will explore how past violence and trauma continue to shape present realities and identities.

Throughout the book, El Akkad shares his personal background as an immigrant whose life has spanned multiple countries and cultures. Born in Egypt and raised in Qatar during the Gulf War, El Akkad later immigrated with his family to Canada as a teenager. Through the lens of his fragmented upbringing, he examines displacement, cultural identity, and belonging.

El Akkad says several pivotal experiences shaped his worldview: witnessing a wealthy Qatari man assault a South Asian driver while bystanders (including El Akkad) merely laughed; living with omnipresent censorship in Qatar; and experiencing discrimination at the U.S.-Canadian border despite his efforts to assimilate. These experiences initially led him to idealize Western societies as places of freedom and fairness, but this belief would eventually be challenged and broken.

El Akkad’s decade-long career as a journalist, particularly his work as a war correspondent, provides another crucial perspective. He joined his college newspaper shortly after 9/11 and secured an internship at the Globe and Mail, before going on to report from conflict zones including Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.

Through examining his experience as a journalist, El Akkad discusses how language shapes the understanding of violence. He also offers insight into the pretrial hearings at Guantánamo Bay, describing how military courts operated outside normal legal frameworks. He uses these experiences to illustrate how institutional structures can normalize injustice while maintaining a facade of legitimacy.

A central theme of the book is El Akkad’s disillusionment with Western liberal values, culminating in his response to the Israeli military campaign in Gaza beginning in October 2023. Previously, despite witnessing violence against people who shared his ethnicity and religion during the War on Terror, El Akkad maintained faith that Western liberalism was largely well-intentioned. However, the Gaza conflict represented a breaking point in this belief.

After describing the Hamas attack that killed 1,195 Israelis and Israel’s subsequent military response—which he characterizes as a genocide against the Palestinians that was supported by the Western world—El Akkad argues that the Western reaction revealed the hollowness of liberal values and rules-based order. He sees this moment as a severance for an entire generation who previously believed in Western ideals.

El Akkad also explores contradictions in American cultural identity: He notes that many Americans celebrate rebellion against authority while simultaneously enforcing global dominance. He examines how both Republicans and Democrats respond to moral crises, criticizing Democrats for positioning themselves as “less harmful” than Republicans while continuing policies that perpetuate suffering.

He also questions the relationship between literary craft and moral responsibility during times of crisis. He describes declining to attend the prestigious Giller Prize ceremony in Toronto despite being a former winner, feeling unable to celebrate amid the ongoing violence in Gaza. When protesters interrupted the ceremony to call for a ceasefire, the demonstration revealed that the prize’s corporate sponsor held a significant investment in an Israeli weapons manufacturer. El Akkad expresses frustration with writers who remained silent, particularly those who had previously been vocal about free speech but suddenly had nothing to say about violence against Palestinians. He also discusses institutional cowardice in the literary world, citing the Frankfurt Book Fair’s cancellation of Palestinian writer Adania Shibli’s award ceremony and similar patterns of institutions avoiding any mention of Palestine. El Akkad acknowledges the financial precarity of writing as a profession but argues that arts organizations that prioritize financial support over moral considerations essentially function as reputation-laundering operations. He suggests that appreciating beauty in literature should not preclude acknowledging atrocity.

In the latter chapters, El Akkad examines forms of resistance against genocide and injustice, particularly focusing on “negative resistance”—the act of walking away or refusing to participate in systems that enable atrocities. He reflects on various acts of conscience, from Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation outside the Israeli embassy to campus protests supporting Palestinians, interpreting these demonstrations as refusals to accept a system that offers no sustainable future. El Akkad observes how economic boycotts are often characterized as “economic terrorism” when directed against Israel, yet similar actions by governments or wealthy donors are considered acceptable. He finds this disparity revealing about how power operates: The individual’s right not to participate is viewed as a threat to systems that depend on perpetual consumption and compliance.

Despite his bleak assessment of systems that perpetuate violence and injustice, El Akkad maintains hope by documenting acts of courage: Palestinian doctors remaining with patients during bombardments, international aid workers operating in conflict zones, artists creating despite displacement, politicians risking their careers to speak out, and ordinary people documenting abuses. El Akkad concludes that suffering is not inevitable and calls for dismantling oppressive systems entirely rather than merely reforming them. He expresses conviction that humanity will eventually construct something better, even as he acknowledges the grief in severing ties with institutions and individuals who remain silent in the face of atrocity.