"One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This": Omar El Akkad on Gaza & Western Complicity

[Uncle Joe]

We speak with the award-winning author and journalist Omar El Akkad, whose new book about the war on Gaza is titled One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. The book expands on a viral tweet El Akkad sent in October 2023, just weeks into Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinian territory, decrying the muted response to the carnage and destruction unfolding on the ground. He wrote, “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.” He joins Democracy Now! and says the book explores how people respond to injustice and grapple with their own role in it. “It’s in large part trying to figure out my place in this society,” says El Akkad. “I happen to live on the launching side of the missiles, and as a result, it’s very, very easy for me to look away. And what happens when you decide you’re not going to look away?”

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[Gaugamela]

1. Quoted from the video:

A lot of people in this country and in the west in general have spent the last year and a half feeling like they’re losing their minds, being told repeatedly that this grotesque atrocity after atrocity is something that they have to support, and if they don’t they’re the bad guys. And I think there’s a kind of disconnect that eventually causes you to sever from this idea of “well I’ll just be the centrist and I’ll vote for the lesser of two evils”.

That works up to a point, and I think over the last year and a half that’s sort of fallen apart. . . . Mainstream liberalism has failed spectacularly.

– Journalist Omar El Akkad, Author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

[dutch777]

2. I concur with the notion of Western complicity. But would note more than a little Arab complicity. Arab nations....

...could turn off the oil spigots tomorrow, or just threaten to ala Trump, and twist some serious heads around toward action. And why aren't the?. My guess is they give politically correct moral support to the Palestian cause for their own domestic political reasons while doing almost little or nothing to create meaningful action as it would cost them money and hassle and deep down they are as tired of the Palestinian and Iranian troublemaking as the rest of the world. The West should know better, but the Arab neighbors have much more power and regional interests and choose not to use it.

[Uncle Joe]

3. I believe the author; having grown up in censor ridden Qatar

didn't expect anything better from an autocratic ruled Arab world as they aren't empowered by democracy, free speech and self-government.