As I read Omar El Akkad’s scathing polemic exposing the moral shortcomings of the Western world order, I was reminded of the Fire Next Time by James Baldwin and the Middle East reporting of the late Robert Fisk. Like Baldwin, El Akkad is a novelist (American War and What Strange Paradise), and like Fisk, he worked as a journalist in conflict zones. He has the same righteous anger at the double-standards, obfuscations, justifications, and the evisceration of language employed by the powerful to justify their actions. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This pulls no punches, spares no feelings, and levels its rhetorical finger at those in power, be they politicians, diplomats or the editors of media outlets. El Akkad wants these people to be made uncomfortable for their moral blindness.
Among the dozens of passages that I found compelling, this one reaches the heart of the matter: “In articles about atrocities committed by groups or nations that are not Western allies, nobody ever perishes in a blast. Buildings don’t collapse of their own volition. Civilian victims aren’t ordered by their interviewers to performatively condemn groups with which they have no affiliation. The violence is named, as is its perpetrator. Why this sudden clarity becomes utter fog when the subject is an Arab child torn to shreds by shrapnel or a Black motorist shot dead in a traffic stop or an Indigenous activist beaten at a pipeline protest is a function of preemptive deference to power.”
Military force, financial and diplomatic clout, and control of media are arrayed against the powerless, those without a voice, oil or minerals, or an army equipped with sophisticated weapons. If we cared to look — and many didn’t — we saw these dynamics at work in Gaza, where from October 2023 through nearly all of 2024, pious statements were issued by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and President Joe Biden about the sanctity of life, the duty to protect journalists, aid workers, doctors, ambulance drivers, and hospitals, and yet they refused to use their leverage over Israel. Not at the United Nations, and certainly not by halting the flow of weapons to Israel. Lamenting, but refusing to condemn, the rising death toll, indiscriminate killing of women and children, or Israel’s blockade of food, medicines, and water. Of course they refused to describe what was happening as genocide even as it was being live-streamed. Day after day the administration rolled out the usual passive and sanitizing language about collateral damage and unintended consequences. Despite all the evidence, they insisted that Israel was merely acting in self-defense, and anyone who dissented from this view was trading in anti-Semitism.
The refusal to see Palestinians as human beings, as worthy of living on their own land, is an intractable belief. El Akkad writes, “It is pointless, even, to make the obvious analogies, to imagine the response had almost any other country on earth killed hundreds or thousands of civilians on a hostage rescue mission, or flattened every hospital in a city on the hunt for a terror group, and then bragged about its success.”
This is a brave book at a moment when critics of imperialism are condemned and silenced. Among the questions it asks is how it’s possible for the United States and Israel — alone among nations — to act with both impunity and immunity when it comes to the use of military force? Let’s not forget that in the early years of this century, the U.S. invaded and occupied two countries that had not directly attacked it, causing tens of thousands of deaths and widespread destruction in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel, for its part, has repeatedly attacked Gaza with disproportionate force, and today its political and military leaders make no effort to disguise their ultimate aim. The current American president fantasizes about turning Gaza into the Riviera on the Mediterranean once the Palestinians are displaced. Where they go and what conditions they find when they arrive is of no concern. Unlike Iran, Russia, Venezuela, or Syria, neither the U.S or Israel face sanctions, boycotts, embargoes, demands for reparations or any other penalty. Both routinely denigrate the UN and other international bodies.
Power in service of self-interest. Power absent ethics. Power without morality. Power that mocks international agreements and conventions. Many Western readers might find this book hard to read and even harder to accept. As with wealthy and powerful individuals, powerful nations tend to avoid self-reflection. Likewise, the citizens of powerful nations will never see themselves as outsiders do. We’re conditioned to see ourselves as the good guys, moral and fair.
“The moral component of history,” writes El Akkad, “the most necessary component, is simply a single question, asked over and over again: When it mattered, who sided with justice and who sided with power?”
What I find surprising is that El Akkad maintains the hope that when a majority of people are confronted with gross injustice, they will act to stop it. While I believe this is true, it’s also undeniable that the will of the people is often thwarted by their own leaders and institutions. Millions of people around the world have demanded an end to the genocide in Gaza, but mass death by bombs, starvation or disease continues. Capriciousness, hypocrisy, and cruelty are byproducts of unaccountable power.
This review originally appeared in the California Review of Books.
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