(ThyBlackMan.com) News outlets are reporting that Israel has surrounded Gaza by land and sea in an historic blockade as it prepares to launch a living hell on Hamas, the governing body of Gaza. The US and other nations sit paralyzed as they give silent witness to what is expected to be the mother of all retaliations. Paralyzed and silent just as they were unable to speak, see and act during the horror that resulted in the deaths of six millions Jews during the Holocaust.
Because of that the Jewish state of Israel is privileged to do as it must and none may dare to question, urge restraint or ask for proportionality. The US and other nations lost that right when the doors of the barbed wire fences, ovens and crematoriums were ripped open at Auschwitz and Dachau.
So the US and other nations are compelled to see no evil, or speak no evil or do anything which would imply moral responsibility while Israel prepares to turn Gaza into what some are calling a current day Warsaw ghetto.
There are those who may be infuriated seeing the word Gaza in the same sentence with Warsaw ghetto. That to do so is unthinkable, perhaps even antisemitic. One is forced however to ask, does any of that matter to the mother regardless if they are Israeli or Palestinian holding their 8 year old son or daughter as their child’s blood flows from their body while taking their last breath?
The graphic images and stories on front pages, news stations and internet sites continue to confound those with conscience and compassion. We hear the stories of young girls and older women being brutally raped. Of babies being ripped from the arms of mothers and then beheaded.
We see and hear of the weapons of war being unleashed destroying not soldiers but innocent people and good people on both sides. There was a time when wars were basically fought one army of soldiers against another army of soldiers, brutal and barbaric nonetheless, but civilians were usually spared such brutality and barbarism.
In more modern times, however, as witnessed by recent war on the people of Ukraine and the dropping of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulting in between 129, 000 and 226,000 people dying, the overwhelmingly majority civilians, acts of war nowadays results in more civilians, more innocents than combatants dying. That is the way it is.
We have heard of the savage brutality inflicted on the innocent by Hamas. We have seen the images of the brutal bombing by an unrestrained Israeli government.
The death toll of innocents in Israel and Gaza continues to rise. Bullets,missiles, grenades and other weapons of war continue to be used against the enemy, against the others.
The bodies pile up in the streets. But they are just bodies. Just part of a number that will continue to grow.
They ceased being human if they ever were human because others refused to see them as human, refused to see their humanity. They refused to see in them their own reflection.
They are just another number. Another statics. Another footnote to mankind’s inhumanity, savagery, brutality and bloodlust.
There will be no winners in the current upheaval in Gaza and Israel. Nor will there be peace in that area of the world until Palenstinans and Israelis are both able to sit in their backyards under their own fig trees and none be afraid.
I am not sure how the current conflict will end. However, I am certain that it will not end. Thousands have already died. Thousands of new soldiers on both sides are being born.
What is surprising is that there seems to be surprise. Today it is Gaza and Israel but the day before and the day before that it was Ukraine. It was Central Africa. Central America, Mexico, Haiti, Yemeni, Syria, Nigeria, South Sudan, Myanmar, Somali, Iraq, Afghanistan, Buffalo, Uvalde, Charleston, Pittsburgh.
Yes, what is surprising is that there is surprise. The images that we are seeing from Gaza and Israel are who we are. Make no mistake about it, this is us. This is who we are.
We might want to believe that we have evolved light years from our earliest days sitting around fires outside of caves. We look at our smartphones and marvel at how technologically advanced we are. How far we have evolved.
We have used our collective minds to visit the depths of the deepest ocean. To explore the wonders of distance solar systems.
Through science and technology we have been able to replace the fables of gods and goddesses. We have advanced so far from the earliest days of our primitive existence to the point that we are no longer mere mortals but gods and goddesses ourselves. We have created our own world in our own image.
But, unfortunately, we fool ourselves. Despite all our technological and scientific accomplishments we have not advanced, have not evolved outside our primitive caves. We remain just as barbaric, primitive, blood thirsty, brutal, fearful and timid.
Yes, we have created the world in our own image. But it is a very ugly, a very barbaric image. We may attempt to sugarcoat, dress it up and present ourselves differently. Yet, the truth is that we are still cavemen and cavewomen despite our smartphones, electric cars, skyscrapers, laptops, trains, planes and rockets.
We are just as afraid of our world as the primitives were. We try to cover up our fear and timidity of our world and mortality. But we are just as weak, just as fragile and just as barbaric as the earliest primitive.
Like the cavemen and cavewomen we create our group, our clan, our faction. We established city-states, nations. We created our sects, cults, religions, denominations, political parties and nationalist and ideological movements.
Our flags, crosses, banners, pennants, symbols reflected who we are. Idol gods which we give allegiance while sacrificing our brothers and sisters and whatever humanity that we have.
We take up our flags, banners and pennants pin our representations on our lapels as we march into battle. We kill, we rape, burn, lynch, bomb all in the name of our unholy name. Always us against the others, us against them. We attack the others, the them, with our guns and bombs. Weapons that travel thousands of miles with precision to hit targets.
Weapons that are capable of unleashing germs and biological agents that hurt, main and kill the enemy, the others, the them. Make no mistake about it, this is who we are.
When we are not using guns and bombs to destroy the enemy, the others, we use our keyboards and keypads to hurl words, ugly, hateful words at the enemy, at the others. All the time refusing to see the reflection of ourselves in those who we determine are not us.
We have stained the earth with blood in battles and wars, massacres, pogroms, slaughters, crusades, genocides, jihads, ethnic cleansings, holocausts, final solutions, racial exterminations.
Yet we want to pretend these things never occurred. Ironically, however, in schools and classrooms children are fed the history of the nation and the world focussing not on scientist inventions, music or cultural developments, but battles and wars.
Battles and wars fought to promote the right of sovereignty, the extension of manifest destiny, geopolitical expansion and other concepts which in their simplest equation is us versus them. The history lessons taught to the children in their schools and their classrooms highlight valor, honor and rightfulness. However, to protect their innocence the lessons are whitewashed and sanitized to remove the horror, the inhumanity, brutality and barbarism that is the extension of us against the others.
But despite what we teach to the children, the history of mankind from its outset to the present has been a history of unrelenting bloodletting. Collectively and individually, from Cain to Gaza to Israel to Ukraine to city streets, school classrooms, church, temples, mosques, synagogues, playgrounds, fields and valleys the blood seeps from rocks, stones and caves.
That’s just the way it is. This is who we are.
Yet, we believe, we celebrate how advanced we are. How far we had come from the days of the caves. The evolution of humans, of mankind.
Yes, we have evoluted. We have become more efficient in our killing. Efficient in killing others and ourselves. That is who we are.
Social scientists and others who study the human condition are hoping that with the advanced development of Artificial Intelligence or AI, humans may one day develop a world where war, poverty, hunger, diseases are eradicated. A world where there will be peace in the valley, the lion will lay down next to the lamb and nations will study war no. It remains to be seen if the nations of the world and various special interests will allow for such to occur.
Artificial Intelligence will have the ability to look into the distant future. It will also be able to look back into the past to the days when cavemen and cavewomen sat outside their caves while looking with fear and wonder into the stars. It will perhaps have the ability to discover the very beginning of life itself.
Artificial Intelligence will hold the history of the planet. It will also have the ability based on the trends of humans, other life and the earth itself to predict the future.
Based on its historical knowledge of humans, Artificial Intelligence might be forced to initiate the only rational and intelligent choice left to it. That choice will be in order to protect the very existence of the planet, animals, plants, Artificial Intelligence and life itself, humans the greatest danger to the existence of all life must be eliminated.
Staff Writer; Al Alatunji
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