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National Book Award in nonfiction goes to Gaza polemic ‘One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This’
(JTA) — A provocative essay collection about the West’s response to the Gaza war and a children’s book about young Iranians helping a Jewish refugee in World War II were two of the big winners at the National Book Awards Wednesday evening.
“One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” by Egyptian-Canadian journalist and author Omar El Akkad, won the evening’s nonfiction prize. Based on a viral tweet El Akkad sent early into the Israel-Gaza war, the book maligns Western liberalism for, in El Akkad’s telling, turning its back on Palestinian suffering.
“It’s very difficult to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide,” El Akkad said in his acceptance speech. “It’s difficult to think in celebratory terms when I know my tax money is doing this, and many of my elected representatives happily support it.”
He later continued, “And it is difficult to think in celebratory terms when I have been watching people snatched off the streets by masked agents of the state for daring to suggest that Palestinians might be human beings” — a likely reference to cases like student activist Rumeysa Ozturk. El Akkad thanked what he said were “writers who have spoken out,” as thousands of authors have pressured literary organizations like PEN America to take a harder line against Israel.
El Akkad’s book is one of several conversation-starters that have been published as Israel-critical reflections on the war, a crop that also includes Peter Beinart’s “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza.” The nonfiction judging panel included Jewish journalist Eli Saslow, who has written extensively about the rise of antisemitism and white nationalism. Jewish public radio host Ira Glass, who introduced the category in a prerecorded voiceover, noted that it is among titles that “indict the Western world in the ongoing destruction of Gaza.”
Elsewhere, Daniel Nayeri’s “The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story,” a young-reader novel following two orphaned Iranian children in 1941 who help a Jewish boy evade a Nazi spy, won the award for young people’s literature. The plot of the book involves the siblings deciding whether to help their new Jewish friend flee for Israel.
The novel is rooted in the little-told history of the approximately 6,000 Polish Jewish refugees from the Nazis whom the Soviet Union sent to Iran, many of them children. Nayeri’s family are Iranian refugees who converted from Islam to Christianity. The title won over another Jewish-interest finalist, Kyle Lukoff’s “A World Worth Saving.”
The musician Laufey, introducing the book as a nominee, said it taught “the value of cross-cultural understanding and education.”
A third award winner of the night also concerned the Arab world. Lebanese author Rabih Alameddine’s novel “The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)” won the National Book Award for fiction. The comedic book charts several generations of a Lebanese family. In his acceptance speech, Alameddine discussed the recent bombing of a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.
“I kept thinking, they make desolation and call it a ceasefire,” the author said. “Sometimes as writers we have to say, enough, enough.”
The National Book Awards are among the many institutions in the literary world that have been rocked by the Israel-Gaza war — as well as broader allegations of antisemitism. In 2023 a Jewish sponsor withdrew from the ceremony over concerns that some authors planned to make a statement urging a ceasefire. Last year the organization’s executive director defended the awards’ decision to grant its lifetime achievement prize to influential Black publisher Paul Coates despite his history of publishing antisemitic texts.
The post National Book Award in nonfiction goes to Gaza polemic ‘One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This’ appeared first on The Forward.
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UK PM Starmer Says There Could Be New Powers to Ban Pro-Palestinian Marches
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer gives a media statement at Downing Street in London, Britain, April 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jack Taylor/File photo
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government could ban pro-Palestinian marches in some circumstances because of the “cumulative effect” the demonstrations had on the Jewish community after two Jewish men were stabbed in London on Wednesday.
Starmer told the BBC that he would always defend freedom of expression and peaceful protest, but chants like “Globalize the Intifada” during demonstrations were “completely off limits” and those voicing them should be prosecuted.
Pro-Palestinian marches have become a regular feature in London since the October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel that triggered the Gaza war. Critics say the demonstrations have generated hostility and become a focus for antisemitism.
Protesters have argued they are exercising their democratic right to spotlight ongoing human rights and political issues related to the situation in Gaza.
Starmer said he was not denying there were “very strong legitimate views about the Middle East, about Gaza,” but many people in the Jewish community had told him they were concerned about the repeat nature of the marches.
Asked if the tougher response should focus on chants and banners, or whether the protests should be stopped altogether, Starmer said: “I think certainly the first, and I think there are instances for the latter.”
“I think it’s time to look across the board at protests and the cumulative effect,” he said, adding that the government needed to look at what further powers it could take.
Britain raised its terrorism threat level to “severe” on Thursday amid mounting security concerns that foreign states were helping fuel violence, including against the Jewish community.
“We are seeing an elevated threat to Jewish and Israeli individuals and institutions in the UK,” the head of counter-terrorism policing, Laurence Taylor, said in a statement, adding that police were also working “against an unpredictable global situation that has consequences closer to home, including physical threats by state-linked actors.”
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War Likely to Resume After Trump’s Rejection of Latest Proposal, Says IRGC General
Iranians carry a model of a missile during a celebration following an IRGC attack on Israel, in Tehran, Iran, April 15, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
i24 News – A senior Iranian military figure said that fighting with the US was “likely” to resume after President Donald Trump stated he was dissatisfied with Tehran’s latest proposal, regime media reported on Saturday.
The comments of General Mohammad Jafar Asadi, one of the top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, were relayed by the Fars news agency, considered as a mouthpiece of the the powerful paramilitary body.
“Evidence has shown that the Americans do not not adhere to any commitments,” Asadi was quoted as saying.
He further added that Washington’s decision-making was “primarily media-driven aimed first at preventing a drop in oil prices and second at extricating themselves from the mess they have created.”
Iranian armed forces are ready “for any new adventures or foolishness from the Americans,” he said, going to assert that the Iran war would prove for the US a tragedy comparable with what was for Israel the October 7 massacre.
“Just as our martyred Leader said that the Zionist regime will never be the same as before the Al‑Aqsa Storm operation [the name chosen by Hamas leadership for the October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel], the United States will also never return to what it was before its attack on Iran,” he said. “The world has understood the true nature of America, and no matter how much malice it shows now, it is no longer the America that many once feared.”
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Trump Says US Navy Acting ‘Like Pirates’ to Carry Out Naval Blockade of Iranian Ports
A view of Iranian-flagged cargo ship M/V Touska as the US Navy Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer USS Spruance conducts its interception in a location given as the north Arabian Sea, in this screen capture from a video released April 19, 2026. Photo: CENTCOM/Handout via REUTERS
President Donald Trump said on Friday the US Navy was acting “like pirates” in carrying out Washington’s naval blockade of Iranian ports during the US and Israel’s war against Iran.
Trump made the comments while describing the seizure by US forces of a ship a few days ago.
“We took over the ship, we took over the cargo, we took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business,” Trump said in remarks on Friday evening. “We’re like pirates. We’re sort of like pirates but we are not playing games.”
Some of Tehran’s vessels have been seized by the US after leaving Iranian ports, along with sanctioned container ships and Iranian tankers in Asian waters.
Iran has blocked nearly all ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz apart from its own since the start of the war. Trump has imposed a separate blockade of Iranian ports.
The US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. Iran responded with its own strikes on Israel and Gulf states that host US bases. US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed thousands and displaced millions.
The war has raised oil prices and led to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for about 20 percent of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.
Trump, who has offered shifting timelines and goals for the war that remains unpopular in the US, has faced widespread condemnation over his comments on the conflict, including when he threatened to destroy Iran’s entire civilization last month.
Many US experts said last month that American strikes on Iran may amount to war crimes after Trump threatened to target civilian infrastructure.