Complicity repeats itself

Editor's Note: The Snooze Button Generation originally published "100 Nonfiction Books I Recommend" in 2019. As we read exceptional books, the list continually updates. Today, "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This" by Omar El Akkad enters the Social Conscience category.

"History repeats itself."

I've heard that cliché a zillion times, and most of us feel a sense of sadness, or frustration, when we see horrible, unnecessary "history" play out again. However, the phrase "history repeats itself" is too easy, too overused. Rather, I believe that expression should be changed to this:

"Complicity repeats itself."

When we don't speak up, when we don't acknowledge problems or atrocities or even a genocide, aren't we complicit? Didn't that same situation occur in Nazi Germany in the past century? Why are we so complicit, and why do so many bury themselves in their phone with misinformation, or diversions, that are of little importance or value?

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (2025) by Omar El Akkad eloquently calls out United States hypocrisy as well as that of the Democratic Party and Western liberals in regards to the Middle East. I have soaked in many of El Akkad's excellent points and have multiple takeaways. One obvious one is that the war in Palestine is absolutely morally reprehensible, and it's a sad state of affairs when that truism somehow is not commonly accepted among the masses — although it actually, probably is but conveniently kept out of U.S. media.

El Akkad worked for more than a decade as a reporter for The Globe and Mail based in Toronto, and to me, his most impressive reporting was covering the war in Afghanistan. His journalism informed him write his first novel, American War (2017), and that book garnered numerous accolades.

One Day... is nonfiction and mostly memoir. His book can be emotional, as he examines war atrocities, especially ones involving children. However, I find its strength to be its non-apologetic logic, and simple reporting, of what is happening in Palestine.

I'd argue that the vast majority of Americans are tired of misinformation, echo chambers and unnecessary wars. The era of misinformation has become so widespread that overly biased, wrong info has even crept into reputable publications. El Akkad points out that The Guardian described the Israeli military opening fire on civilians wanting flour as "food aid-related deaths." 

El Akkad also points out: "As with many events in the war between Israel and Hamas," The Economist reports, "the facts are destined to remain fiercely contested."

It is destiny for facts to be fiercely contested, El Akkad repeats. No, no, that cannot be an accepted truth of this war.

One fact I found is that only 16 percent of Americans say Israel's military has the right approach to its war, according to the Pew Research Center. An AP-NORC poll says that 50 percent of Americans say Israel has gone too far in the war. I wholeheartedly believe that number would be much, much higher if more Americans knew the actual facts of what is happening.

Right now, the casualty count is approximately 74,500 Palestinians to 2,000 Israelis. In the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, 1,195 people were killed. Furthermore, in the 74,5000 Palestinian deaths, the majority are civilian. The United Nations estimates that about 21,500 of those deaths are children. Repeat: 21,500 of those deaths are children.

El Akkad explains that on Jan. 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel needed to stand trial for genocide. However, the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and six other nations then cut all funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, one of only a few organizations that was providing relief to Palestine. Subsequently, the ICJ basically did nothing.

Later, on Oct. 10, 2024, a UN Commission found war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israeli attacks on Gaza health facilities and the treatment of detainees and hostages. Israel deliberately targeted health-care facilities, and children bore the brunt of the destruction.

Regardless, the U.S. continued to support, and fund, Israel. I don't know how this doesn't sicken Americans, and I don't know why Hind Rajab isn't a household name.

El Akkad's book pinpoints U.S. hypocrisy so well that I believe it may be in the fabric of what this country actually is. He writes: "A central privilege of being of this place becomes the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts simultaneously. The first being the belief that one's nation behaves in keeping with the scrappy righteousness of the underdog. The second being an unspoken understanding that, in reality, the most powerful nation in human history is no underdog, cannot possibly be one, but at least the immense violence implicit in the contradiction will always be inflicted on someone else."

We pretend we're Luke Skywalker, but, hello, we are globally Darth Vader and the Evil Empire.

For anybody who is pro-Israel, that is fine. But I believe someone can be pro-Israel and against this genocide. In fact, I find pro-Israel protesters of this war to be the most inspiring protesters out there. We have many organizations out there, including Standing Together, Americans for Peace Now and Partners for a Progressive Israel, that promote such a stance.

El Akkad was born in Cairo, but moved to Montreal as a teenager. He is a U.S. citizen and lives in the Portland, Ore., area.

I wholeheartedly believe that one strength of being American is the ability to question, and refute, incorrect policies promoted by elected officials. It's not about blind pretend loyalty, especially when elected officials don't hold up their obvious duty — to act on the best interests of their constituents.

By eloquently pointing out putrid U.S. policy and by articulating what life is like for a Muslim American in a post-9/11 world, El Akkad is what an American hero actually is.