This: A Review

A review of Omar El Akkad's new memoir by David Roochnik. "I believe anyone who reads this book may find a way to feel, to know, and possibly even to speak before it is too late."

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
By Omar El Akkad
New York: Knopf, 2025. 187 pp.

This, in the title of Omar El Akkad’s remarkable book, refers to the slaughter of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza; a slaughter perpetrated by the state of Israel and unconditionally supported, and funded, by the United States of America. For El Akkad, the most persistently horrifying feature of this has been the killing of countless, utterly innocent children. The book opens with the story of a little girl who, miraculously still alive, is pulled out of the rubble that was her home before it was destroyed by a missile. Nine of its ten chapters begin with a brief bit of reportage featuring a child. “An eighteen-month-old with a bullet wound to the forehead” (27); “a girl whose jaw has been torn off” (47); “a child still in diapers, pulled out of the tents after the firebombing, his head severed from his body” (47).

El Akkad’s book, however, is not simply a work of journalism that exposes the atrocities suffered by the people of Gaza, although it surely does that. It is in addition a beautifully crafted series of reflections of a thoughtful, keen-eyed, compassionate man who is being driven nearly mad, not only by the “world’s first livestreamed genocide” (165), but by the many who avert their gaze. It is replete with astute observations about American politics, modern journalism, the legacy of colonialism, immigration, and Western Liberalism. It is a cri de cœur, an elegy for those who are starving to death in Gaza, and a tribute to those who have courageously voiced their opposition. And it is a memoir.