One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

by Omar El Akkad

In the weeks to come, virtually no correspondents from these outlets will be able to see what happens inside Gaza. They will instead report from hotel room balconies in Tel Aviv or go on guided tours with the same military whose own killing spree they are prohibited from covering firsthand. But this story, of beheaded babies, will in the early days of the genocide come to define an essential unburdening. Almost a quarter century earlier, reports of phantom uranium helped garner support for a war that killed upward of a million people. Now, once more, an essential truth of calamity journalism is made clear: In the earliest days, in the chaos that precedes systemic annihilation, it is not what the party deemed most malicious has actually done that matters, but rather what it is believed capable of doing.