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Omar El AkkadOmar El Akkad
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One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This Paperback – 4 March 2025
by Omar El Akkad (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars (3,076)
WINNER, National Book Award, Non-Fiction, United States, 2025
'A howl from the heart of our age' Richard Flanagan
'A unique and urgently needed book.' Naomi Klein
'A powerful, uncomfortable but thought-provoking read.' Dua Lipa
'Clear, elegant and devastatingly truthful...Read this shatteringly honest book.' Max Porter
From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad, an urgent and necessary reckoning with what it means to live in the West today.
As an immigrant, Omar El Akkad believed the West would be a place of freedom and justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the various Wars on Terror, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, he has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realisation, a moral grappling with what it means-as a citizen of the US, as a father-to carve out some sense of possibility during these devastating times.
This is El Akkad's nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date. It's a heartfelt breakup letter with the West, a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the world, in family rooms, on university campuses, on city streets. This book is for everyone who wants something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.
PRAISE-
' A bracing memoir and manifesto.' The New York Times
'Full of exasperated wisdom and virtue. Its honesty is invigorating.'Vulture
'Certain to become one of the essential texts of this terrible era.' LitHub
'This is one of the most urgent and important nonfiction books of our time- exquisitely written, devastating, and incandescent with feeling and moral clarity about what it means to live in a world where unimaginable atrocities unfold in plain sight.' Antoinette Lattouf
'Terrifying, shameful, and necessary testimony.' Lesley Williams, Booklist
'Rearranged my soul.' Yves Rees, Australian Book Review
'I can't think of a more important piece of writing to read right now... I found hope here, and help, to face what the world is now, all that it isn't anymore. Please read this. I promise you won't regret it.' Tommy Orange, author of Wandering Stars
'A unique and urgently needed book.' Naomi Klein
'A startling, shocking, beautiful and essential book.' Brian Eno
'If you read one thing this year, read this.' Amplify Bookstore
'Part elegy, part rallying cry, this magnificent book should, and will, be required reading for future generations trying to reckon with one of humanity's darkest chapters.' Tea Obreht, author of The Morningside
'I urge you to read Omar El Akkad's astonishing book.' David Olusoga, Black and British
'El Akkad's writing is mesmerising- it juggles the lyrical with the political, the comic with the analytical, and never once drops a ball. His book is at once observation, admonition and tender autobiography.' Good Reading
208 pages
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What are popular highlights?
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Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power. Otherwise, they, like all else, are expendable.
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Whose nonexistence is necessary to the self-conception of this place, and how uncontrollable is the rage whenever that nonexistence is violated?
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It is a hallmark of failing societies, I’ve learned, this requirement that one always be in possession of a valid reason to exist.
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From the brand
==
From the Publisher
About the Author
Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager, and now lives in the United States. He is a two-time winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and the Oregon Book Award for fiction. His books have been translated into thirteen languages.
Product details
Publisher : Text Publishing
Publication date : 4 March 2025
Print length : 208 pages
==
192 customer reviews
From Australia
Ecka
5.0 out of 5 stars Eye opener
Reviewed in Australia on 20 February 2026
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Really good, essential work of fury and humanity, as a damning indictment of western hypocrisy and institutional malignity.
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Fred
5.0 out of 5 stars When it mattered who sided with justice?
Reviewed in Australia on 26 January 2026
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‘When those dying are deemed human enough to warrant discussion, discussion must be had. When they’re deemed nonhuman, discussion becomes offensive, an affront to civility’. That sums it up.
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P. Gunning
5.0 out of 5 stars Read this and think
Reviewed in Australia on 28 November 2025
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This book is brutal but politely so. The words are reasonable and measured, but what they describe is unreasonable hatred, and unreasonable indifference to suffering, cruelty and an unreasonable capacity for looking away from what cannot be unseen.
4 people found this helpful
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Stan
5.0 out of 5 stars look at yourself
Reviewed in Australia on 21 November 2025
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the genocide is bad enough but what’s worse is our apparent ability to side with the perpetrators making us complicit with this genocide- read the book and feel your shame then do something about it
5 people found this helpful
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A. J. Dale
5.0 out of 5 stars Those who should read this, are the most unlikely to do so
Reviewed in Australia on 14 July 2025
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This is a powerful book, it highlights what a lot of people who are following the atrocities occurring in Gaza would already have some awareness of, and ties a line between the lack of wholesale outrage for the victims there, and victims anywhere when the perpetrators get to write the narrative.
Should be widely read.
6 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading
Reviewed in Australia on 25 July 2025
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Essential reading for any Muslim living in the West. Also works to give perspective white people on how all of these current world events make Muslims living among them feel.
One person found this helpful
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Topspin
5.0 out of 5 stars What it is like to grow in two different cultures
Reviewed in Australia on 13 June 2025
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Anyone who has lived in both in the Arab word and the western world would find a deep connection to this book. It is a shared experience , I wish I able to put so well as Omar El Akkad. Many thanks
2 people found this helpful
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Robin
5.0 out of 5 stars Must read
Reviewed in Australia on 21 August 2025
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Read this and pass it on.
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B
5.0 out of 5 stars An easy and yet brilliant read
Reviewed in Australia on 28 November 2025
Format: Paperback
Very well written.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars History repeats
Reviewed in Australia on 24 May 2025
Format: Paperback
Well written Omar El Akkad. You have described the perennial baseness of virtually all tribal human groups who achieve what they believe to be unrivalled power. Entertaining read; but of little real value. They all fall eventually; and than cry foul. History repeats. Very few individuals learn; most just get entertained.
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Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars Two Sides to Every Story
Reviewed in Australia on 31 December 2025
Format: Paperback
There are two sides to every story. El Akkad fails to properly tell the other side. If the people of Gaza voted for Hamas because they had no hope for the future, it seems to me that the Israelis, seeing what happened on October 7 2023, were desperately afraid that it would happen again. Not enough weight was given to the Israeli view (although I think their reaction was terribly wrong.) Hamas placed their command centres under hospitals and schools with absolute disregard for the lives of patients and children, just to get the kind of publicity that has turned Western society (especially young people) against the Israelis. But razing whole cities is unacceptable and El Akkad makes this point well. From a Western point of view (Australia included) what he says about immigrants should penetrate deeply into our conciousness, I quote “I judge the immigrant who is as emotionless and pragmatic about the nation-state as the people who run that nation-state are so regularly emotionless and pragmatic about immigrants, who says honestly and plainly: I don’t love this country, don’t love any country, patriotism being the property of an entirely different type of life than luck has given me, I live because it will always be safer to live on the launching side of missiles. I live here because I am afraid.”
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From other countries
strabazzino
5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece
Reviewed in Italy on 17 March 2026
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From the point of view of a “forever foreigner” who has dabbled in both geopolitics and anthropology for a lifetime, or so it seems: Omar El Akkad’s approach to what many deem to be the most harrowing question of our times is nothing less than a masterpiece. He has succeeded in entwining those two fields of study with his own life experience in an intensely soulful and emotional manner — one might add a philosophical one, in the original, etymological sense of the word — such as one rarely encounters as a reader.
More: I would even venture that this book is vastly more compelling than his two novels (without intending to deprecate these in the least.)
Curiously — a reverse argument of sorts — I found myself to be in disagreement with his brief mention of a couple of issues that are only slightly less important in the context of how today’s world is evolving. As it turns out, judging from the elements of biography revealed throughout the book, Omar El Akkad appears to have only had a second-hand knowledge of these particular topics.
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calvin
5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant breakdown of how western media and culture brutalize the third world
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 November 2025
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A brilliantly written and moving account of what it's like living as an man of Arab descent in the western world. Real insight into how easy it is to "other" entire groups of people. It was very similar to another excellent book I read this year, Viet Than Nguyen's A Man of Two Faces, in that it shows the subtle...and sometimes not so subtle...ways American culture marginalizes non-white communities. Also, great title.
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petr
5.0 out of 5 stars Strong calling out of Western hipocrisy
Reviewed in the United States on 20 May 2026
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Not just Gaza. Ukraine too. After all out war, after Russian tanks strolling through Ukraine borders, there are still people - in my country, that was occupied by Russia 40 years! - that will say that Ukraine is the one responsible for it all. It is so plain and simple, yet we are not able to act. We really have live stream genocide ob Youtube and Instagram, live from Gaza. Even IDF is not even trying to cover it up. Yet…!
What is this book massively missing, is more about US evangelism, and its ideological influence on Israel and their mass extermination of Palestines
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Said Rahim Manandoy
5.0 out of 5 stars Priceless
Reviewed in Ireland on 5 May 2025
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One day, everyone will have always been against this, is precisely written piece of book , which reflects the injustice and in the world. A must read for everyone. Omar El Akkad said what a shape of view
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José Macaya
5.0 out of 5 stars Persuasivo, contundente y convincente
Reviewed in Spain on 6 December 2025
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Muy bien escrito. Persuasivo. Convincente. Una acusación certera al mundo occidental. Explica la interrelación entre la política norteamericana y el mirar para otra parte sobre lo que pasa en Gaza. Escrito por un periodista, que es inmigrante egipcio, con experiencias complicadas por ello, y con visión novedosa.
Siendo muy bueno el libro, el mensaje está ya claro cuando se llega al 60% del libro. Encontré que la última parte aportaba mucho menos. Un libro que se leía rápido y con gusto, al final se hace un poco largo, por repetitivo. Pero el mensaje no por eso deja de ser persuasivo, contundente y convincente.
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Mario BR
5.0 out of 5 stars A wake-up call for all of us
Reviewed in Brazil on 6 July 2025
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A conscious-awakening violent punch in the stomach, written in a very clear, very readable way that allows this book to say what it says without turning you off and letting its message go straight to your heart and mind: the emperor is naked.
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Anonym
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect book
Reviewed in Germany on 18 April 2026
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I love this book so much!! Please read!
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Client d'Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Super Duper !!
Reviewed in France on 2 March 2025
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Super Duper !!
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RJO
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the time!
Reviewed in Italy on 21 April 2026
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Such a great read; I wish everyone could read it.
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Nicholas McCane
5.0 out of 5 stars Stop what you’re doing and read this.
Reviewed in the United States on 14 December 2025
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One of the realest books I’ve ever read. A letter to you and I, and a gut punch to America and some other countries. And guess what? We deserve every word. This was a quick read that pointed a mirror at our hypocrisy, complacency, and involvement in the hatred of minorities and the current genocide of the people in Gaza. This is an important book, and I think everyone should read it. The book was very well written. Too bad that the people who should read this most likely will not. Here are two powerful quotes from the book.
“It is a reminder that, in times like these, one remarkable difference between the modern Western conservative and their liberal counterpart is that the former will gleefully sign their name on the side of the bomb while the latter will just sheepishly initial it.”
“The same people who did the killing and financed the killing and justified the killing and turned away from the killing will congratulate themselves on doing the right thing. It is very important to do the right thing, eventually.”
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Stephen S.
5.0 out of 5 stars TIMELY & MOVING
Reviewed in Spain on 8 January 2026
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A message we must not ignore. Read it. Share it.
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"kasimirio"
5.0 out of 5 stars skip
Reviewed in Germany on 11 November 2025
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The author, seeminly a very intelligent man, runs with with head against the wall again and again. He learns nothing in the process of writing. He does not care how things work, what is their inner logic. He clings to what we hold to be normal. But thinking about it a little longer, it is normal only in peace. In war a different logic prevails, which looks like atrocity and moral outrage when judged with civilised standards.
I did not finish the book but I suspect that Sinwar is not mentioned as the one who triggered the descent into violence. An utterly stupid move to set off a much stronger power. Of course, civilian victims in a war are entirely innocent. But war cause this carnage. The author is entirely blind to this logic.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 December 2025
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This is an excellent book, very well written. It illustrates what a broken immoral world we live in. Real people living in unbelievable horror are simply consigned to the scrap heap in order to appease a genocidal government that is becoming more aggressive with each day that the world just stands by and watches.
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Luegger-Booth
4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoying it!
Reviewed in the United States on 12 May 2026
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I enjoy the authors writing style and the subject matter.
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Amin Jorati
5.0 out of 5 stars Brutally honest and very timely
Reviewed in Germany on 24 December 2025
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It was very cathartic to read the book for me. I identified with it so much so that I could have imagined having written it myself, had I had the aptitude to produce it. Peppered with personal stories and exquisite language, it shares the author's existential angst, inevitable in the world we live in at the moment. It doesn't take me anywhere I haven't been, but neither does it give false hope or lie to me. It's brutally honest.
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Invictus
5.0 out of 5 stars The gentlest of insisting hands rocking your shoulders, reminding you that it is time to wake up.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 May 2026
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A sobering, altering glimpse into a subject I have spent a lifetime being taught to unsee.
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Mirela Setkic
5.0 out of 5 stars The most powerful and beautifully written book of 2025!
Reviewed in the United States on 8 December 2025
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This book is 1000/10, highly recomment, must read!!! This is my second copy, which I am gifting to someone. My own copy was a pre-order back in February, from a local book store. Initially, I was really afraid to read it because I was too scared to feel the emotions I thought this book was going to bring out in me. It did make me feel deep sadness, but it also made me feel seen and not alone during a time when so many people are choosing to not to see the genocide in Gaza. Omar El Akkad is an incredible author who has a way of finding words to describe things/ideas/feelings that are way bigger than words. His work makes our world a better place.
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars daring to say what refuses to be heard
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 August 2025
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It’s all in the title of the review and the title of the book. Compelling, critical writing, read it and see. I’m lost for words and hugely grateful.
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Jehad Abu-Ulbeh
5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book I Have Read in my Life
Reviewed in Canada on 23 November 2025
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I have enjoyed reading this book despite the sadness I felt. It's an honest, open account of the atrocities inflicted on the Palestinians people. I enjoyed reading about the author's life despite the difficulties he faced. The courage and clarity he displayed were to be commended. The language is so rich that I needed to read the sentences twice sometimes to comprehend the depth of their meaning.
I am so grateful for the recommendation, and I highly recommend it. Anyone who is willing to be conforted with the truth about power and ignorance should read this book. This book will open your heart and mind to the issues that you might not have thought about before.
I am happy that this book won the US National Book Award. He deserves it.
One will have a lot to gain by reading it.
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Jana Toporova
5.0 out of 5 stars Thank you
Reviewed in Germany on 12 December 2025
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Everything is pretty good
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Layal
5.0 out of 5 stars Eine sehr empfehlenswerte Lektüre!
Reviewed in Germany on 6 November 2025
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Ein sehr persönliches, bewegendes Buch, das eigentlich jeder in Deutschland kennen und gelesen haben sollte..
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pedikeens
5.0 out of 5 stars The emotional and philosophical impact is indelible and necessary.
Reviewed in the United States on 24 January 2026
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This is not a book that comforts, inspires, or mobilizes in any traditional sense. Instead, it is a meticulous, gutting autopsy of the conscience in a time of atrocity.
Omar El Akkad constructs a work of autofiction so raw it feels less like a story and more like a trap, one set for both the author and the reader. Through a narrator paralyzed by guilt, compromise, and the sheer weight of witnessing a genocide, El Akkad indicts the very act of writing about suffering. He questions what it means to "bear witness" from a place of safety, to transform unspeakable horror into an aesthetic object.
The book’s genius, and its profound difficulty, lies in its refusal of heroism. It lives in the paralyzing space between the moral imperative to act and the human instinct to survive, offering no redemption. Reading it, I felt a deep, familiar rage at the world's cruelty, followed by a disorienting frustration with the narrator’s (and by extension, my own) complicity.
This is not a call to arms. It is a mirror held up to the specific, isolating injury of caring deeply in a world engineered to make that care feel futile. It’s about the corrosion of the soul under the weight of knowledge and powerlessness. The title is its own bleak prophecy, satirizing the future historical revision where everyone claims they were on the right side.
For those already consumed by rage and grief for Palestine, this book will not give you hope. It will give you the chilling solace of recognition, a stark, literary companion for the days when despair feels like the only honest response. It is a devastating and essential read precisely because it offers no easy way out.
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Catherine Trites
5.0 out of 5 stars Oof.
Reviewed in Canada on 15 August 2025
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I spent the entirety of this book in reflection and more is required. It's heavy, but also feels necessary. It's not a long read but I took time to pause and think while reading - something that was needed for sure.
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Fiona Crossland
5.0 out of 5 stars A voice in support of the Gazan People.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 August 2025
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An authoritative voice on the tragic unfolding crisis in Gaza. El Akkad is a war journalist with contacts on the ground, an honest unflinching ability to see the truth but also the nuances of this apocalypse and the weaknesses of human nature. Ultimately though he peers into the future and how humanity might cope with this spectre as it moves forward. A very well rounded but justifiably angry and timely account of how a world has looked away and stood by in the face of genocide.
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Alexander Riley
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 May 2026
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An essential work reflecting on an abominable crime
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Anke
5.0 out of 5 stars wow.
Reviewed in Germany on 2 June 2025
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Read it. And never unsee it again. Courageous book. Stand up for the people who are being murdered in Palestine.
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Amy
5.0 out of 5 stars The book is non-fictional and is beautifully written and deserves the award it received
Reviewed in the United States on 25 December 2025
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Excellent book that documents what Gaza has faced from the Israeli war on civilians. The book is beautifully written. It is personal and political at the same time. My favorite lines that sum up the excuses Israelis give for their savage conduct are: To preserve the values of the civilized world, it is necessary to set fire to a library. To blow up a mosque. To incinerate olive trees. To dress up in the lingerie of women who fled and then take pictures. To level universities. To loot jewelry, art, banks, food. To arrest children for picking vegetables. To shoot children for throwing stones. To parade the captured in their underwear. To break a man's teeth and shove a toilet brush in his mouth. To let combat dogs loose on a man with Down syndrome and then leave him to die. Otherwise, the uncivilized world might win.
p. 77
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Jill M.
5.0 out of 5 stars Very important book
Reviewed in the United States on 10 May 2026
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This book is hard to read for a white, Anglo American. But it's full of facts we need to know that we're not going to find easily elsewhere. He is enraged, for good reason.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 December 2025
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Such an important book. The telling of his personal experiences of discrimination and outright racism, in conjunction with the political & social decisions and movements that made them possible, against the backdrop of a genocide. Beautifully written. I've spent the past months recommending this book to anyone who will listen to me. I've also taken enough photos of the text to be liable for copyright infringement - enough that I bought the e-book too to annotate... I've only annotated one book before this in 40+ yrs of reading.
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Alex U
5.0 out of 5 stars must read
Reviewed in Germany on 25 May 2025
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should be required reading
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Stephen J. Haddon
5.0 out of 5 stars Just read this book. My words can never match those of Omar El Akkad.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 May 2026
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The only reason I wasn't been able to finish reading this book in one sitting, was the need to put it down; and recover from the sadness and trauma.
I can't find the words. Mankind is morally bankrupt? No! That feels like a euphemism.
Just read it. Please.
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William
5.0 out of 5 stars Limited but Powerful
Reviewed in the United States on 4 March 2025
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The body of this book closely follows the theme of the title. I certainly agree that in decades to come it will become generally accepted that a great injustice has been done to the people of Gaza. And when that acceptance arrives many will claim to have been against all the killing and suffering that is now ongoing. Yet for the present the revulsion (in the US and Israel) is surprisingly muted, if it is really there at all.
To its credit, the book is not primarily outrage nor is it centered around depicting the individual tragedies of the Gazans. It does call up analogous situations in history where settled peoples have been decimated by colonizers who acted in conformity with the mainstream attitudes of their countries of origin. In Gaza as in these prior regions the people being displaced are usually seen as lesser beings than the peoples who come in. Consider what you see in the US on the nightly news. The attention is given to one or two Israeli families who had members killed or abducted. Yet on that same day there are dozens of new, equal tragedies in Gaza. That suffering of the Gazans goes largely unnoticed or else it is all blocked together into a single piece.
So one could ask why this merits a whole book? The book does not cover the history of Palestine. Nor does it look at the political forces in the US that are so effective at holding down any widespread criticism of Israel. Nevertheless the author brings plenty of personal experience as well as original points of view into his analysis. I think it is a valuable and interesting read. I was stirred up inside, I bet many readers will come away similarly.
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A.
1.0 out of 5 stars DNF
Reviewed in Germany on 30 April 2026
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Don’t waste your time or money.
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Dr. Suzanne Lerner
5.0 out of 5 stars Most Helpful Book I’ve Read in a Long while…
Reviewed in the United States on 22 March 2026
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“One day…Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This” is an Extraordinary book, that has just won the National Book Award.
If you are torn between looking at, and looking away from all that is going on in our World, this book comes as a Relief to most people with a Moral Consciousness.
In a humble, yet incredibly clear Way, as a dedicated Journalist, Omar El Akkar helps create a timeline, a stepping back over time, so that we can all see:
-When bombing a Wedding Party in Afghanistan suddenly seemed “acceptable“ with carnage being re-named “Collateral damage”
-When a President, on discovering that a girl’s elementary school had been bombed the very 1st day of his illegal unholy War, killing 165 and wounding 85 more in Minab, Southern Iran, this President did not come on Television openly weeping, but instead, showed up w/ casual denial & deflection.
How do we possibly hold this all?
Not turn away, but weave a basket large enough to hold it all?
Omar, born in Egypt, raised in Quatar, then Canada and now a US Citizen, allows us to be accompanied into this Dark Night, and still remember the LIGHT.
A tour de force of writing & remembering in present time, that we can perhaps steer this Planet, this Species, back on Course.
Highest Recommendation!
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paul c geimer
5.0 out of 5 stars must reading
Reviewed in the United States on 24 May 2026
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Calls into question all our liberal pieties and forces one to come to terms with the hypocrisy of our political beliefs. Should be required reading for anyone entering our political system or anyone attempting to critique it. I will endeavor to remember its message any time I am tempted to endorse violence.
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OQman
4.0 out of 5 stars A sombre portrayal of mankind's bewildering and self-defeating humanity
Reviewed in the United States on 7 May 2026
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An unabashed and honest reflection of personalized thoughts that seem haphazard and unique at first glance, but when read through in one sitting, I found them resonating with my own personal worldview of the same concepts the author presented. All very sad, but so very true.
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Penny
5.0 out of 5 stars My must read of 2026
Reviewed in the United States on 17 April 2026
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I'm recommending this to everyone who is interested in what is happening in Gaza, even though the war has supposedly finished. The Palestinians might not agree. At its heart though, it's more about the USA's moral bankruptcy than it is about any particular place, although Gaza is at its centre. Omar el Akkad himself disinteresting; born in Egypt, moved to Qatar as a child, then Canada, and finally the USA where he is now a naturalised citizen.
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Aurelia
5.0 out of 5 stars Important. Easy to read. A bit harder to stomach.
Reviewed in the United States on 7 May 2026
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I think it is very important to read this. Take your time. Think about what the author is saying. Do not just have a gut reaction. Analyze why.
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Melissa Kelly Battiato
5.0 out of 5 stars Facts
Reviewed in the United States on 17 May 2026
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Great book. Important read.
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Tom Rubens
5.0 out of 5 stars Best nonfiction book of 2025
Reviewed in the United States on 9 May 2026
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Outstanding book. Best nonfiction book I read in 2025. Highly recommended.
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megan
5.0 out of 5 stars Heartbreaking
Reviewed in the United States on 5 April 2026
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His writing is very stream of consciousness and he mixes his own anecdotes with stories of people in Palestine. He describes the very real idea of turning away from the horror. Part of me was hopeful at the end of the book but another part of me wonders how many more people have to die before it will move powerful people to do anything.
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Bual
5.0 out of 5 stars It's amazing buy it
Reviewed in the United States on 4 May 2026
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An amazing book that will change how you see the world!
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Samantha Caracciolo
5.0 out of 5 stars a book everyone must read
Reviewed in the United States on 3 April 2026
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This book brought me to tears over and over again, the most compelling, well written, excellent book I’ve read to describe the emotional indifference that currently smothers us.
Yet at the end still remains hopeful that we can be courageous, if we choose to be. I will be thinking of this book for a very long time to come.
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James L.
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential
Reviewed in the United States on 30 April 2026
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Everyone should read this book, especially right wingers and MAGA types.
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Jim L
4.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful & Rational
Reviewed in the United States on 1 February 2026
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This was a tough read for me. Though the author presents his thinking very thoughtfully and rationally, I thought it seemed to take too long. In hindsight, I am glad I made it through to the end of this book, but it’s not an easy read, or as simple a topic as the author contends. Finally: With regard to the word “genocide”. I’m sorry if I see a difference between the crimes committed by German Nazis - and the Israeli Armed Forces. The Nazis organized a system of logistics and processes to murder people because they were Jewish or Catholic or Gay - just like Apple makes iPhones. The Israelis are engaged in house to house urban warfare - which can be equally appalling and horrific - but is not the same thing.
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jessica henson
5.0 out of 5 stars Phenomenal book
Reviewed in the United States on 30 April 2026
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Everyone should read this book
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G. Chamaa
5.0 out of 5 stars A MUST READ...
Reviewed in the United States on 1 May 2026
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Incredible must read book....
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Adonay Navarro
5.0 out of 5 stars The Banality of Evil
Reviewed in the United States on 28 March 2026
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The Palestinian issue and the indifference, mainly focused on the American one, that this people have from the genocide that is taking place in this corner of the world. Keep your distance, a bit of Hannah Arendt's critical style when it comes to human indifference to evil. Good book on the subject, although a bit autobiographical.
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Alicia Crumpton
5.0 out of 5 stars A Moral Dilemma
Reviewed in the United States on 17 April 2025
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El Akkad, O. (2025). One day, everyone will have always been against this. Alfred A. Knopf.
Omar El Akkad is a Canadian journalist and author who currently lives in Portland, Oregon.
El Akkad begins with a striking assertion: "Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power. Otherwise, they, like all else, are expendable." His core premise: power structures will discard even fundamental principles when they no longer serve their interests. He explores how this preservation of power requires the classification of certain groups as "other" or "nonhuman" to justify violence—a pattern repeated throughout history across many nations. When discussing the United States specifically, El Akkad identifies a profound contradiction: Americans simultaneously hold the "belief that one's nation behaves in keeping with the scrappy righteousness of the underdog" while ignoring that the "most powerful nation in human history is no underdog, cannot possibly be one." El Akkad notes that the "immense violence implicit in the contradiction will always be inflicted on someone else"—those designated as outside the protected circle of humanity. Horrifically, he observes, "the same people who did the killing and financed the killing and justified the killing and turned away from the killing will congratulate themselves on doing the right thing... there will be those who say it was all the work of a few bad actors... to avoid contending with the possibility that all this killing wasn't the result of a system abused, but a system functioning exactly as intended." Even so, he concludes on a note of possibility: "Even during the worst of things... courage is the more potent contagion... it is always possible to stop looking away."
In this memoir emerging from experiences as a wartime journalist, El Akkad eloquently exposes the intricate justifications employed to maintain power amidst contested claims to moral high ground. He reveals how power structures craft narratives that legitimize their actions while dehumanizing others, creating a framework where violence becomes not just acceptable but necessary. As these justifications grow increasingly transparent, ordinary people begin to see through the duplicity. The contradiction between proclaimed values and actual behaviors becomes impossible to ignore, leading to an erosion of trust in the entire system. This loss of trust represents not just disillusionment with specific policies or leaders, but a fundamental questioning of the moral framework that allows such contradictions to persist. El Akkad suggests this moment of recognition—when people refuse to look away—contains the potential for transformation, as the courage to confront uncomfortable truths can spread more rapidly than the willingness to accept convenient falsehoods.
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Diana
5.0 out of 5 stars A must
Reviewed in the United States on 11 April 2026
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This book is a must have
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Elizabeth
5.0 out of 5 stars Humanity?
Reviewed in the United States on 26 February 2026
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For starters there is a sentence” it is unfortunate that thousands of children are dead, but” he asks how do we sleep at night?
I do not sleep at night! I’m sick with rage with fear with sadness that pours through my soul Wtf?? Why are we as a country we as human beings are we not coming together to make this dreadful horror stop. I’m ashamed of humanity I mean what does that even mean anymore?
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QED
5.0 out of 5 stars A painful read but I gained a lot from it.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 February 2025
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
What’s described so well in this book is a hideous betrayal I think - and it not only wounds people like the author who put their faith in the western liberal promise and altered their lives for the better existence they believed it would afford them, but also affects people like me, born western and white into devout Christian families with doctrine and values instilled into them that now seem brushed aside for a different interpretation of text that’s considerably at odds with what they always believed was central to the teaching. Were we always being played or is it that post-WWII shock and rebound empathy has now petered (or indeed died) out and the western world has abandoned right and good and reverted to how things were before? Whatever the explanation, I now feel like an alien, wandering amongst westerners and political evangelists who choose to shut their eyes and cover their ears.
What do you do and where do you go to when what you’ve put your faith in as some comfort in existence has been blown to smithereens before your eyes and yet life goes on as normal around you as if nothing has changed at all? Although necessarily painful to read, this book has given me a strange sort of comfort, a place to be where I feel connection to a humanity that I embrace, and I’m indebted to Omar for that. I concur - having my illusions shattered and my moorings sliced through is but nothing compared to pain, suffering, death and destruction so immorally inflicted on innocent people. “But it hurts” (see page 179) and this book has helped me stop uselessly screaming (see page 87).
That Omar attaches no blame to any particular religion is to his credit, I think, and helps his message chime right across backgrounds and experiences and mark out that better place. How long will it be before those I thought I knew will have always thought that this was an abomination? I’m not sure I’ll ever find out, but if we ever meet again I can’t imagine it being a particularly sunny day for me.
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Hobslayer
5.0 out of 5 stars An outstanding, beautifully written argument
Reviewed in the United States on 12 March 2026
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In under two hundred pages Omar lays out a beautifully written, robust, and painful rebuke of our societal inaction (and actions). Other reviews have praised the book in more detail, but I needed to add my own endorsement to the praise this book rightfully receives.
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Bryan
5.0 out of 5 stars Proud to be an American?
Reviewed in the United States on 27 January 2026
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Many are talking about the brutalization of the Palestinians (as they certainly should be).
Fewer are talking about the betrayal of values that is supporting it. This book is a blistering account of Western (especially American) sell-out.
While reading this book I wanted to say, ‘Nah, that can’t be.’ Unfortunately, the book is too well written and its arguments too well supported to honestly permit that response.
Don’t read this book before a vacation or a child’s graduation or anything else happy. You’ll feel pretty bad after reading it. You’ll also feel like you finally looked at something that, in the back of your mind, you already knew was there.
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Fred D.
5.0 out of 5 stars A slap in the face of the West
Reviewed in the United States on 14 March 2026
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In 2024 I made the mistake of voting for Harris, thinking that Trump needed to be stopped at all costs. He was elected anyway. I will never make that mistake again. This book will tell you why.
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Mr. X
5.0 out of 5 stars Wow
Reviewed in the United States on 31 March 2026
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A very good book.
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Donald Bullard
5.0 out of 5 stars Flying through the mire.
Reviewed in the United States on 8 March 2026
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I went into this really expecting something different. A lesser writer might have failed to handle the subject with less humanity. We live with blinders on. This book lets us know how dark it is.
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ZinaS
5.0 out of 5 stars An Urgent and Necessary Challenge to Complicity
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 February 2026
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
A powerful, deeply informative and personal account of a genocide that unfolds in real time while the West turns away. The book challenges readers to reconsider media narratives, political hypocrisy, and their own position within systems of power. It demands to be read.
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The Reader
5.0 out of 5 stars a must read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 February 2026
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This book is one everyone must read. It will open eyes you want to close, will make you question your own morality. It will make you do something, no matter how small because small rebellions all add up. I cannot te immediately this highly enough
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