A drinking game one night. The question came up, “What makes you jealous?” Several people, no longer constrained by inhibition, mentioned the usual things- status, money, power, looks. Others had different issues- jealousy of those who are loved came up a few times.
I had three answers, which I spun into a statement of what I respect: enormous acts of generosity, courage, and intellect. Jealous to be sure since I have never achieved enormity in any of these categories.
I am jealous of Omar El Akkad.
With “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” Omar El Akkad has certainly achieved the third. The book is written in such an intelligent, compelling and beautiful style that it is impossible to put down. Unless of course the reader is driven to tears and despair while reading it.
El Akkad is a journalist, born in Egypt, brought up in Qatar and Canada, and resident in the United States. He writes in mellifluous prose, though with no wasted words. This, his second major book, is about Western liberalism as a naked emperor in its genocidal complicity in Gaza. He carefully picks apart the contradictions, double-standards, and capacious language that have defined the US official response to the destruction of Palestine and also the sort of virtue-signaling cocktail party language that allows for the ongoing destruction precisely by showing bits of sympathy for Palestinians while supporting the narrative and structure that has presided over the mass murder of their men, women, and children.
“There’s a convenience to having modular opinions; it’s why so many liberal American politicians slip an occasional reference of concern about Palestinian civilians into their statements of unconditional support for Israel.” (Page 90)
Another apposite quote–“It’s difficult to live in this country in this moment and not come to the conclusion that the principal concern of the modern American liberal is, at all times, not what one does or believes or supports or opposes, but what one is seen to be.” (Page 117)
Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Get the latest CounterCurrents updates delivered straight to your inbox.
El Akkad exposes both the rapacity of US-backed violence and the soft violence of language, fear, and cowardice. He understands that the MAGA surge is fascistic but does not exonerate Democrats for their own filthy complicity in the systematic and industrialized murder of Palestinians.
“One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” must be read with responsibility– One cannot read the book, ingest its lessons, and stay quiet. In that way, El Akkad has produced a hat trick: at once, a work of enormous generosity, courage, and intellect.
