Today, the destruction of Gaza and the mass murder of women and children, the aged and the infirm by people from whom one would expect empathy and decency based on their own experiences appalls the decent among us.  But who speaks for those who suffered the same fate over three millennia ago from the ancestors of those today committing genocide?  From those who had purportedly just escaped from slavery in Kemet. 

Who grieves for the ancient but brutally murdered denizens of ancient Jericho? 

Who reflects on the reality that divinely inspired genocide was as acceptable more than three millennia ago as it is today for those from whom, based on their censorious sacred books, one would have expected at least a semblance of decency instead of barbarity, murder and mayhem.

One wonders if there were any descendants of Abram back then who recoiled at the atrocities committed in their names, as so many decent Jews do today.

Evidently though, for too many, the more things purport to change, the more they’ve stayed the same.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.