Culture

THE BEST THINGS TO SEE, DO, READ AND HEAR THIS MONTH IN TORONTO

- Anthony Milton

A painful reckoning with Western hypocrisy

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad Out Feb. 25

EVERY MORNING since October of 2023, Omar El Akkad has opened up his computer to witness livestreams, images and videos of the destruction in Gaza. All the while, the journalist—who was born in Egypt, immigrated to Canada at 16 and now lives in Portland—watched world leaders support Israel’s bombardment of the region and critics face retribution. The cognitive dissonance El Akkad experienced between what he was seeing and the mainstream media narrative prompted him to write One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, a scathing account of his disillusionment with the West. We spoke to the author about witnessing the unimaginable, how to preserve your moral soul in dark times and writing a potentially career-ending book.

The title of your book comes from a viral tweet you sent out in the early days of the war. What was running through your mind when you wrote it?

I was watching a group of people be eradicated while the Western world was cheering it on, bankrolling it and telling me that if I opposed it in any way, that made me a terrorism supporter. Everything I knew about history, and everything I’d experienced covering wars and mass injustice as a journalist, led me to believe that one day, everyone would be against this.

In the book, you talk about your slow realization that the West’s liberal self-image is delusional. What led you there?