I recently finished Egyptian-Canadian-American novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad’s highly rated book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (2025). In most regards, it unfortunately fell quite short of my expectations.
While the title and even the synopsis may suggest a detailed dive into the history of Palestinian resistance against colonialism, there is little history in this book. The text frankly wanders at times to only loosely related topics.
As another review notes:
The book is a memoir … weaving [El Akkad’s] personal story into what is happening in Palestine and the hypocrisy of the West. … This book feels scattered, jumping across time and stories, saying nothing new except the author's own story. I wish this had more substance to it, created better arguments, and didn't use Palestine to sell a memoir. It fell flat, and I wish it didn't.
Baseless smears of China, Russia
El Akkad dedicates a significant portion of the book repeating what are essentially CIA talking points on China and mainstream Western views on Russia. He criticizes American politicians who baselessly smear China and Russia, then proceeds to repeat similar lines; the way this is done is a clear case of “both-sides” thinking.
In the case of China, he claims that the CPC “mistreats” their Uyghur ethnic minority in Xinjiang, curiously not mentioning the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a terrorist organization with close ties to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda that has been sanctioned by the UNSC since 2002.
The author correctly critiques Western liberalism and capitalism quite harshly and consistently frames the American uniparty as pure theatre.
Yet, he also points out the supposed “hypocrisy” shown by his colleagues who were quick to speak out against Russia but not against “Israel.” This is, ironically, a common liberal position, and one used quite frequently by “pro-Palestine” liberals.
El Akkad describes Russia’s SMO as an “invasion” and claims that Western media pundits’ condemnations of Russian court incidents are correct. So much for Russia’s right to self-governance!1
Ambiguity regarding support for Palestinian resistance groups
The author discusses in relative depth the use of “terrorist” accusations by the so-called “collective West” to sway public discourse against the “enemy,” whomever that may be at the moment. He writes:
While the terrible thing is happening, while the land is still being stolen and the natives still being killed, any form of opposition is “terroristic” and must be “crushed for the sake of civilization.” But, decades, centuries later—when enough of the land has been stolen, and enough of the natives killed—it is safe enough to venerate resistance in hindsight.
So, I was quite surprised at the depiction of Hamas in this book; El Akkad describes the October 7th operation in a negative light and claims Hamas is a “terror organization.” It is as if he believes the Western narrative that “the war is because of Hamas” while also decrying the West and Western liberalism.
Yet, he mostly justifies Palestine’s anti-colonial struggle, seemingly including armed struggle, making for a strange, hypocritical position where he supports these groups in theory while denying their legitimacy in practice. He criticizes the idea that “it’s complicated” but to some degree ends up adopting it himself.
Published by a company that supports “Israel”
In hindsight, I’m quite glad I borrowed rather than purchased this book. A quick search reveals that the publisher, Knopf Publishing Group, is part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group division of Penguin Random House, which has invested “millions in ‘Israeli’ tech, AI, surveillance, and security technologies,” according to The New Arab.
It is certainly a strange decision to publish a book in support of the Palestinian movement through a pro-“Israel” company.
So, there are two options here. Either El Akkad is himself completely fine with this publisher, despite his own discussion of and apparent support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement in this book, or the associated editors and/or reviewers had him alter some of his views, which, again, leads to the question of why he chose this channel.
While the book is obviously well-written given El Akkad’s background in writing, it was ultimately quite disappointing, largely lacking depth, coherence, and political clarity.
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He also touches on the USSR a few times, framing it repeatedly as “the Soviet empire.”