Front Burner - Omar El Akkad on Gaza, and 'breaking up' with the West

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

On October 25th, 2023, after weeks of Israeli bombardment on Gaza, Canadian novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad posted this on X:"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."Israel had declared war on Hamas after the Oct 7 attack. On top of the bombardment, there was a full siege in place – civilians in Gaza were cut off from water, electricity, and food. As Omar witnessed the destruction from afar, he kept track of how the war was being framed and talked about by Western media and governments. He spoke to host Jayme Poisson about how his frustration with all of that prompted, in part, his latest book: "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This".For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Hey friend, do you ever find it hard to keep up with pop culture? Well, from the latest Apple TV shows on everyone's mind to difficult conversations about protecting Canadian culture in this moment, that is where commotion comes in. We are tapping to what's going on in the worlds of arts and entertainment, so you'll find out which movies you need to catch in theaters, or the albums that you should be streaming, or other stories affecting the culture. You can catch commotion every weekday on YouTube, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast.

Hi, everyone. It's Jamie. On October 25th, 2023, after weeks of Israeli bombardment on Gaza, Canadian journalist and novelist Omar Al-Aqad posted this on X. 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. Israel had declared war on Hamas after the October 7th attack. On top of the bombardment, there was also a full siege in place. Civilians in Gaza were cut off from water, electricity, and food. Omar was witnessing the

destruction there through live streams, images on social media. He kept track of how the war was being framed and talked about and his horror and frustration with all of that prompted in part his latest book. It is called One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. Omar is the author of novels like American War and What's Strange Paradise. He also worked for years as a reporter for the Globe and Mail. Omar, it's a pleasure to have you on Frontburner. Thank you so much for being here. Omar El-Khattabani Thank you for having me. Lylea Kovach So you were born in Egypt. You start this book by talking about your father who grew up there.

And why was that important to you to start the book that way? I think a lot of the book, you know, it sort of barges in through the door, pretending to want to pick a series of fistfights. But really for me, a lot of the book is about this kind of uncertainty. You know, I've been oriented towards this part of the world my entire life essentially and after the last year and a half, I don't feel that way anymore and I don't know who I am on the other side of that. And so I had to go back to the beginnings of all of this which is my dad leaving the Cairo Sheraton one night and being hassled by a bunch of soldiers

and deciding on that day, I think anyway, that he had to get out. And that was the beginning of our sort of unrootedness. I've been a guest on someone else's land ever since. But the other reason I wanted to start there is because a lot of what I write about when I write about these things is actually just luck, just dumb luck. My dad was originally going to go take a job in Libya of all places, but there was someone on the Libyan terrorism watch list with the same name. And so by the time they figure all of this out, he's not allowed into the country. And then he ends up getting another job in Qatar. And so I end up growing up in one of the richest countries on earth instead of Libya because

of a random coin flip at the airport. And that's had more effect on my life and my success or lack thereof than anything I've ever done or achieved myself. So it felt like the correct starting point both in terms of the beginning of that unrootedness but also trying to interrogate this idea that so much of our lives is essentially just chance. When you say you don't know who you are anymore, or, you know, like just tell me more about what you mean by that. Well, there's a reason I sound the way I do.

And I often say there's a reason that if I called you up and told you my name was John Smith, you'd probably believe me. Like, I learned this language and I you my name was John Smith, you'd probably believe me. I learned this language and I attuned myself to this culture so much so that I now help create it. I mean, that's what I do for a living. And in almost every sense, I've sort of aligned myself with this part of the world. And not only that, I've been greatly rewarded for it. I'm sitting here having this conversation with you on the public broadcaster, that is not a small thing. And so over the last year and a half,

I've been waking up every day and opening up my computer and seeing evidence of the worst things human beings can do to one another. And I know that by virtue of the country I live in, I am doing this. My taxpayer money is paying for this. And those two things can't live together anymore. There's a kind of breakage there. And so I've become unanchored from the kind of orientation I've had for the entirety of my life, essentially. But I don't know who I am on the other side of that yet. Was it breaking before October 2023? I think so. I mean the way I've come to describe it is similar to how Hemingway's characters go bankrupt, you know, the little by little and then all at once. I was a journalist for 10 years and

it was my education and I would end up in places like Afghanistan during the invasion. I was in Guantanamo Bay for the military trials. I was in Egypt after the Arab spring. Um, and, and you see certain things that, that cause you to question the underlying fabric of the society or part of, or part of its ideologies, of its sort of orientation. For example, we were in Afghanistan and one of the stories I always go

back to is the Kandahar airfield which had an inner wire and an outer wire. The inner wire protects the base proper, the outer wire is the interface with the highway. So if there's any attack, suicide bombings, car bombings, they're happening at the outer wire. And without fail, the inner wire is protected by the NATO troops and the outer wire is protected by the Afghanistan troops. And so you see that and you know that these people are all supposed to be on the same side, but there's a hierarchy of whose life is worth more. And you see little moments like that over and over again, but I was able to compartmentalize them. And I haven't been able to do that over the last year and a half. And so a lot of this book is going

back and interrogating these moments, not as isolated incidents that I could compartmentalize in my head, but rather as part of something bigger. In a way, this book is sort of like a breakup letter, right, with the West? Is that fair for me to say? You know, my publisher put that in the synopsis of the book, and I don't think it's wrong. I just think it needs an element of specificity on my part because as incredibly disillusioned and cynical as I've become about the West's load-bearing institutional beams, political, academic, journalistic,

cultural, you name it. I've been so incredibly inspired by what people are doing individually and in solidarity with one another. And so one of the really interesting things about the early reaction to this book is that it seems to line up with how much that individual who is reading the book feels that those systems were created to serve them. Because if you feel like those systems were created to serve you then an attack on a system is an attack on you. And so when I get the sort of, you know, go back where you came from type stuff, it is coming from a person who is deeply aligned with those systems. But for me, I mean, I know this is a weird thing to say about this kind of book, but I think of it as an incredibly hopeful book. And in large part, it is hopeful because

of what I've seen individuals do in the face of those systems. So in terms of a breakup letter, it is kind of a breakup letter, but not with the West as this kind of holistic entity, but rather with its systems of power. I want to talk specifically about some of the real problems that you bring to light in the book. Let's talk a little bit about media coverage of the war in Gaza. You write a lot about the use of language to describe atrocities and how often that language is passive. For example, last March, one publication described a massacre on civilians waiting for flour

as food- related deaths. Israeli forces had opened fire on the people waiting and at least 112 people were killed, hundreds more injured. What do you think a description like that, food aid related deaths, says to the person reading it and how widespread did you find that kind of passive language to be in news stories about the war in Gaza? I mean, I came up as a journalist, right? And I admire the vast majority of journalists. These are the people who taught me everything I know. And I also know these people to be incredibly hard working. I know that it's difficult work. And I know most journalists try their best to do it in a manner that is honorable and in

keeping with what journalism is supposed to do. The thing that I can't help thinking about, especially over the last year and a half, is the gap between the story as it would be written or it would be told in a vacuum without external pressure and the story as it is told under those conditions with the external pressure. And when I talk about external pressure, I'm talking about the risk of losing advertisers or losing access to somebody important because they don't like your story or your career getting sidetracked and you're no longer allowed to write on this beat or just someone yelling at you in an angry email. And I think for me, one of the glaring things about this kind of use of language is

that there's no doubt in my mind the person who wrote that headline knows exactly what they're doing. They know that they're engaged in the opposite of meaning making. You know, when I watch a British TV anchor talk about a girl who's been shot by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint and he uses the phrase, bullet finds its way into van and collides with four-year-old young lady, I don't know what the hell a four-year-old young lady is. And so I think of the use of language as less a sort of standalone entity and more a symptom of this massive gap between what that reporter would report in a vacuum absent those pressures and what they report under those pressures.

The bigger that gap, the more I'm inclined to think that there's a form of journalistic malpractice going on. As the war went on, do you think it got better at all or did it get better in some places? Do you think it got more sophisticated or evolved? I mean, I think that there was such an outpouring of rage that you started to see, if not change, at least acknowledgement. One of the really interesting things about traveling outside of North America over the last little while, which I've gotten a

chance to do, is that you see a level of anger that is unlike anything I've seen in my lifetime. And a lot of it has to do with this idea that you know, you open up whatever social media platform and you see what it looks like when a little girl starves to death. And there is something just visceral about that that extends beyond any kind of narrative. And then you turn on, you know, the news in this part of the world that night and either, most likely you hear nothing about it or you hear it put in a kind of narrative container that is so jarring with the basic human instinct to recoil at something this horrific. And that just can't hold. It just can't. And so the level of anger that I've seen, it leads me to believe that if this book is remembered, which I don't think it will be, but if it is remembered, I think it will be remembered as one of the tamest of its kind.

I don't know what's coming next, but I see an immense anger as a result of that incredible discrepancy. You also talk about the use or the lack of the use of the word genocide to describe the war in Gaza, to describe what took place and is still taking place in Gaza. You wrote about the danger of avoiding that word and tell me more about that. Yeah, so a few months ago I was asked to write an op-ed for a paper and it was on this subject. It was actually it wasn't on the subject of genocide, it was on what was happening in Gaza. And I emailed the editor back and said, listen, I'm going to save you some

time. You're not going to run this because I'm going to call it a genocide and I'm going to say that Western governments are complicit. And he rode back and said, yeah, you're right. And we went out, you know, at least it was honest, right? At least that discussion didn't, we didn't have to sort of waste each other's time. And then a few months later, he asked me again. And I said, listen, I'm, I'm, I don't want to waste your time. I'm going to call it a genocide and I'm going to say the Western governments are complicit. And he said, yeah, go for it. Huh. And it was fascinating to me.

What do you think changed? I suspect somebody braver than me probably pushed harder than I did. But I don't know. I don't know what changed. Maybe enough bodies piled up. I don't know. Maybe the exchange rate on Palestinian lives is such that we hit a certain number and it was okay. I have no idea. I genuinely have no idea. I think there are two reasons that come to mind as to why institutionally that there is so much reluctance to use that word. The first is I think the people being slaughtered are of an ethnicity and of a place in the caste system of the world such that it doesn't feel applicable to them, which I find to be plainly horrific. But I think the second reason is because genocide is not a word that exists in a vacuum. From its founding, it was tethered to an obligation.

You are required to act. You are required to act to stop this. You are required to act, you are required to act to stop this, you are required to act to prevent this in the first place. And I think that obligation is the reason not just in this case but in so many other cases governments in particular are so reluctant to use that word because the second you do, well you have a basic obligation to do something about it. Music I'm Nicola Coughlin and this is history's youngest heroes, Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope. I think of home a lot. I think of running into Vancouver and running into where I'm going to finish on the ocean. And all you got to do is take another step and keep on going. He planned to run 5,300 miles across the second largest country in the world. Makes you believe in the human race again. Join me, Nicola Coughlin, for History's Youngest

Heroes, wherever you get your podcasts. So just to pick up on what you're talking about there, this apathy for hypocrisy in the West, lack of action. You're part of a group of authors who pressured the Giller Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in Canada to cut ties with Scotiabank, its former lead sponsor, because of its ties to an Israeli arms manufacturer. cut ties with Scotiabank, its former lead sponsor, because of its ties to an Israeli arms manufacturer. The Giller Prize did eventually do that last month,

but a lot happened in between, right? Some writers withdrew their books from consideration, many in the industry boycotted the event last year, but there were many authors who decided to submit their work. And just I'm curious to hear what you make of how that all unfolded. Yeah, I mean, there's two things that I try to mention every time that subject comes up. The first is that I did the bare minimum. I signed a couple of letters, I gave a couple of interviews but because I'm closely associated with the award on account of being fortunate

enough to win it a few years back, I've drawn a lot of the attention. But really activists have been working on this for a very long time and that result is their work. They don't get the credit for it. Most people have no idea who they are. Some of them have suffered mightily for it, including sort of with the legal system, but they did this. I just showed up and signed a couple of letters. The second thing is that essentially every interview I do in Canada somehow works its way back to the killers. And I'm honestly not trying to be passive aggressive here. I promise you that.

It's a valid conversation topic. But because I try to answer any question I'm asked, it looks like I'm obsessed with this award. Every interview eventually sort of works its way there. Yeah. You know, it didn't start out antagonistic. It started out with a bunch of us trying to do every little thing we could to stand in the way of what we believed was an ongoing genocide. And this was such a minor part. We had a relationship with this organization.

The initial discussions were incredibly cooperative and then it got sour. It got real sour to the point where I don't think I'm ever going to have a relationship with that organization again, but that's fine. We'll get over it. I know that there's going to be relationships in the very small, very incestuous world of Canlith that aren't going to be repaired after this, right? There's writers who picked a side, there's writers who picked no side at all. There's writers who have decided to keep

their head down and I get that, right. Do you? Yeah, I mean, there's all these schools of thought on what it is we do because writer is basically most of the time just shorthand for unemployed. Nobody has any idea what the hell a writer does beyond the obvious thing implied in the word. And I think for some writers they have taken the position that this political stuff is sort of down here in the gutter and what I do is up here. I don't necessarily have to agree with that, but I get where they're coming from. Also, when you look at the list of writers who have done the

most work on this, it's these young writers, it's writers at the beginning of their careers, it's the ones with the most to lose. I won the damn thing. I was never going to win it again anyway, regardless of what happens, right? These folks are out there and they are risking their careers at the earliest stages of their careers. It's an incredibly brave thing to do. But it's not even at the best of times incredibly lucrative work. To deliberately get into a situation where you are forming bad blood with an organization that probably helps sell more copies than any other in this country, that's not a particularly smart thing to do just from a pragmatic sense. So I can see why a lot of writers would want to sit this

out. And I can see why a lot of writers will want to come out with a statement that they think will get everybody on board from all sides and will be uniting. I understand the impulse, I just don't think it's going to work. It's not going to work on something that myself and other writers firmly believe is a genocide. We've just gone to a different place at that point which is why when I say there's going to probably be no relationship between me and the Gillers, that's not something I'm proud of, but also relatively speaking, we'll be fine. It's light to ask you about the new administration in the U.S. So you write in the book that the Biden administration supplied arms to Israel while at the same time making speeches or statements of concern about Palestinians.

You talk again about that hypocrisy. In recent weeks, US President Trump has proposed that Gaza should be turned into an international beach resort under US control, that Palestinians would no longer have a right to live there, which would be illegal under international law. He's also talked about cutting funding for universities that allow, quote, illegal protests, a year after massive student protests against Israel's war in Gaza took place across the country. What do you make of the rhetoric around the war in Gaza coming from Trump?

If apathy and hypocrisy were keywords used to describe Biden, what is this to you? Oh, it's plain horror. I think it's a horrific administration. I know it's a horrific administration because I had to live through the previous iteration of it. I was watching that state of the union, um, speech and like everything this administration does,

it was equal parts sort of nightmarish and also just cartoonishly stupid. And you're watching this and you're thinking this administration runs the most powerful nation on earth. I mean this is real dystopian stuff. But one of the things I saw was I guess there was a bunch of democratic lawmakers who decided that their statement of resistance was going to be wearing pink suit jackets and someone wore a resist shirt or something. If you believe that this administration is an existential threat to American democracy and the world order in general. And your response is to believe that wearing a resist shirt or whatever the hell they were

doing is the appropriate level of concern. You are uniquely unqualified for this moment. It's not that I have any kind of affinity for the Republican Party, I think it's a deranged cult. My fury, maybe irrationally so, is in part directed towards the people who are supposed to prevent this. If you went up against this and you thought the best way to oppose something so existentially disastrous was to send me emails about how bad Donald Trump is and then a few weeks after the election I see the leaders of the Democratic Party cracking jokes with him at Jimmy Carter's funeral, then you are deeply unsuited to resist anything at all. It's not that the Republicans are better, the Republicans are far, far worse

in almost every respect. It's that I had at least basic expectations of the other party. And they were expectations that party failed to meet spectacularly. And so I know it's an irrational kind of rage, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Before we wrap up today, I want to come back to the title of your book. One day everyone will always have been against this. Do you think that might be overly optimistic? Do you believe that one day will come? You know, I have had a few conversations now about this book because it's still in early days, right? It came out like two weeks ago. And one of the things I've

realized is that a lot of people I talk to particularly about that title seem to be of the opinion that I mean two things with it that I don't. The first is that I mean this is going to happen next week and I don't mean that at all. I was thinking along much longer timeframes. But the second thing I realized is that some people believe that when that moment comes and I am a deeply uncertain person but that is one of the few things I am certain about that that day is coming, maybe not in my lifetime. But that when that day comes, it will be a celebratory thing. And I think quite the opposite is true. You know, one of the most infuriating things about this moment and living through this moment is that I don't really believe any of this was necessary, that it had to be this way. And we can talk about

a decades long occupation, we can talk about this terrorist attack and this state response because it's always an instigation by one side and it's always a response by the other and I get it fine. But it's not a preemptively celebratory title. In fact, quite the opposite. I don't think this many people had to die before we get to this place. But I mean, it's also an incredibly presumptuous title, right? I can't not be. And one day or another, it will be either proven correct or incorrect. Okay. Um, Omar Al-Aqad, thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. That is all for today. Front Burner was produced this week by Matthew Amha, Ali Janes, Lauren Donnelly, Joytha Sengupta, Mackenzie Cameron, and Marco Luciano. Our video producer is Evan Agard and our YouTube producer is John Lee. Our music is by Joseph Shabason. Our senior producer is Elaine Agard and our YouTube producer is John Lee. Our music is by Joseph Shabason.

Our senior producer is Elaine Chao. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe Locos. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you next week.