Downstream: Gaza Has Exposed the Hypocrisy of the West w/ Omar El Akkad

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

It's time to talk about China. I'm Richard Haynes, and I'm the host of Do Your Own Research, a show from Novara Media. In the first series, I tried to make a map of everything in the world that had ever mattered and ever would. And did I succeed? Yeah, why not? This time, I'm tightening my focus. The second series is all about China, the most interesting place in the world. And particularly for the left, it's the site of all manner of hopes and fears for the 21st century. Are those hopes legitimate? I'm going to find out.

I'll be covering everything I can. From China's endlessly dramatic and often catastrophic history, like the time in the 1840s, that a man declared himself to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ, and triggered a rebellion that ended up with anywhere between 20 and 70 million people dead. I'll be gawping, like so many have, at its dazzling modern skylines, and astonishing innovations in high-speed trains, drone shows and online shopping. I'll be diving into its internet culture, by turns funny, acerbic and despairing, and asking whether or not we will one day wake up and all somehow be Chinese. Because if we're really going to be China-maxing, pitching our hopes to what is likely to be the defining superpower of the 21st century, we should know what it is.

So watch or listen to Do Your Own Research with me, Richard Hames, on Novara Media's YouTube channel, or right here in this podcast feed. And the maps that I'm making, which will, yes, eventually, depict everything that has ever mattered, are available anytime at novaramedia.com/d-y-o-r.

That's do your own research.

Steven Methven (2:01)

In the West, our governments would like nothing more than for us to forget their hypocrisy, their complicity and their cowardice in the face of Israel's genocide in Gaza. My guest today has done his best to ensure that that will never happen. Three years ago, just weeks after the genocide began, he posted a tweet attached to some footage showing the extent of the ruin that Israel had already visited on Gaza. And he wrote about it, 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. The compelling thought crystallized in that tweet would go on to become this book. One day, everyone will have always been against this.

It became a best seller. It's astonishing combination of intellect and raw emotion, frictionlessly capturing the world's pain and anger at Israel and the Western states that backed it. Omar El Akkad joins me today while I sit in for Aaron Bastani, who is on parental leave. And I can't think of a better time to speak to him. Around the anniversary of October 7th, when war is spreading and when the violent rhetoric and actions of US President Donald Trump appear to have no end.

Omar El Akkad, welcome to Downstream. We're here today to talk about your book. One day everyone will have always been against this. Came out in 2025 Got a lot of questions about it, about what you were thinking while you were writing it, the experience of encountering the genocide and then turning it into this wonderful mix of emotional and intellectual prose. But I wanted to start with a question about absence in the book. There are a lot of moving parts. There's obviously the victims of the genocide in Gaza, the Palestinians. There's the US and their complicity in it, a democratic party. There are lots of minor small heroes as well, people who make sacrifices and show extraordinary courage.

But something that's a ghost is the state of Israel itself. And I was wondering why that was.

Omar El Akkad (4:14)

Thank you for having me, first of all. It's a pleasure to be here with you. It's an interesting question. It's one I've been asked a couple of times, and it's forced me to sort of rearrange my thinking about the book a little bit, because one of the first things that this book does is acknowledge in detail the events of October 7th.

I think that overwhelmingly, at least to me, and obviously readers might disagree, this is not a book about Palestine. It's not a book about Israel. It's a book about the West. And one of the reasons it's a book about the West is because that is the place that I have oriented myself in the direction of since I was about five years old. It's the reason I sound like this. That's the reason that when I go into a coffee shop, I'm usually treated better than most of my relatives, even though they're far better people than me, because they don't have this accent, right?