On October 24, 2023, two and a half weeks after Hamas’ attack on Israel, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported a grim new record: Israel’s bombardment of the Strip had killed 704 Palestinians in the previous 24 hours alone. The next day, Egyptian-Canadian writer Omar El Akkad posted a now famous sentence on X: “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.”
That razor-sharp turn of phrase, which has since been viewed more than 10 million times, stayed with El Akkad all the way to February 2025, when it became the title of his third book. “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” El Akkad’s first non-fiction work after two acclaimed novels, is a collection of essays examining Western liberalism’s failures and hypocrisy, particularly in the face of Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign in the Gaza Strip…..more
