Catharsis Journalist and novelist Omar El Akkad castigates complacent liberal responses and western hypocrisy over the war in Gaza

'Where's the Palestinian Martin Luther King?" Journalist and novelist Omar El Akkad has heard this question a lot lately, "the implicit accusation [being] that certain people are incapable of responding to their mistreatment with grace, with patience, with love, and that this incapacity, not any external injustice, is responsible for the misery inflicted upon them".

- Dina Nayeri

But far more than loving or patient, King was eloquent. Palestine has many eloquent defenders, and El Akkad is one of them. Born in Egypt, raised in Qatar and Canada, and now a US citizen, he has reported from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. His new book is a response to events in Gaza after 7 October 2023. It is his voice spilling out after decades of having to keep quiet for the sake of journalistic neutrality or artistic show-don't-tell.

He turns his back on these old strictures and tells the world what's wrong as himself, not just reporting but processing all that he has seen and heard. It is a deft, broken-hearted, rhetorical savaging of comfortable people who say nothing (or pay lip service) but care only about preserving normality, convincing themselves that these things only happen "to certain places, to certain people".

Organised as a series of linked essays, One Day is powerful, angry, but always compelling in its moral logic. I devoured it in two quick sittings, and by the end my heart was drumming.