Not Soon Enough

There are some books that stick with you long after they are finished and one of my 25 of 2025 books, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, by Omar El Akkad is one of them.

From the National Book Foundation:

On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.

As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage.

The way that El Akkad writes, it is like you are walking with him through what is going on, and parts of this book still stick in my mind over a year after reading. El Akkad provides a harsh look at the reality of what has happened to Palestinians, and everyone needs to read this. The title of this post, “Not Soon Enough” comes from my personal view of not understanding the long history of apartheid, and other horrors Palestinians have endured.

Something I want to be very clear about is, the country of Israel that has been around since 1948, Judaism, and the ancient Israel of the Christian and Jewish Bibles, are not the same thing. I have spent most of my professional life in ministry working to weed out the anti semitic remarks, theology, and general view that Christians I cross paths with have unknowingly adopted. This is true in my writing, and academic pursuits as well.

I state this because what is happening in Gaza, and Palestine in general is atrocious, and the fact that my tax dollars are helping fund this genocide makes my stomach turn. If like me, you had spent time in the group of believing that supporting Israel was not only the most moral thing, but what God required of you, but no longer feel that way, this book is for you. Like I said previously, it is not an easy read, but one worth doing.

10/10, you can purchase it here.