- This is an extraordinarily powerful book. Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives as a US citizen in the United States. His debut novel, American War, was named by the BBC as one of one hundred novels that shaped our world.
- It is beautifully written in often poetic prose. He focuses on the abject racism and colonialism of the West. His prime focus is today's genocide taking place in Gaza, but he also digs deep into the many issues over the last few decades that have defined the anti-Arab character of much of what the West, led by the US, has done. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the disgrace that is Guantanamo Bay are central.
- The concept of 'terrorism' is examined in depth. As an Arab he feels the abject racism constantly. The supposition is that if you're an Arab then you're probably a terrorist. 'Terrorism as a societal designation...is applied almost exclusively to Brown people.'
- One aspect of the book that impressed me was his hatred of the centrist Democrats, led by Biden, who continued to support Israel at every level as the genocide proceeded. Their vetoing of the UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire for example, their continued funding, the deliberate withholding of aid and destruction of infrastructure, the ordering of residents into 'safe zones' and then wiped out there. The same framing is always used: 'The barbarians instigate and the civilised are forced to respond. The starting point of history can always be shifted'.
- Continuing to support the Democrats when they continue to support Israel’s genocide is morally wrong. It doesn't matter that the Republicans might be worse. What matters is who you vote for. 'There is something stomach-churning about watching a parade of Biden administration press secretaries offer sincere expressions of concern for Palestinians as the same administration bankrolls their butcher'.
- He condemns the media and their management for demanding that 'the journalist cannot be an activist, must remain allegiant to a self-erasing neutrality. Yet journalism at its core is one the most activist endeavors there is. A journalist is supposed to agitate against power, against privilege. Against the slimy wall of press releases and PR nothingspeak that has come to protect every major business and government boardroom ever since Watergate. A reporter is supposed to agitate against silence...So instead, the coverage shifts to a flattened mode, listing claim and counterclaim, measuring the impact on poll numbers...Listing one position and then the other and letting the reader make up their own mind fails entirely..'
- El Akkad's chapters on the cascade of institutional gutlessness in the arts and higher education worlds are superb. The same thing is happening in Australia, as we know. 'There are young people all over the West risking expulsion and defamation, risking their livelihoods, their entire careers, to protest the killing. There are Jews being arrested on the streets of Frankfurt, blocking Grand Central Station in New York, fighting for peace. There are indigenous communities who have suffered the Western World's most unspeakable atrocities and still find the will to stand up for an occupied land on the other side of the planet, who recognise a thing for what it is.'
- An honest, personal, radical assessment of the Western world's sick and violent behaviour over the generations. An essential and inspiring read.
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