Blue Ibis
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The Problems Of Palestine -The Problems Of Cyprus
I. G.
Signs of the Times
Fri, 20 Jul 2007 19:04 EDT
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| ©Signs of the Times |
Today I read the article Overcoming the conspiracy against Palestine, and I began thinking about the "Cyprus problem" and the "Palestinian problem", the sad stories behind them and the conditions that currently prevail in each country.
You see, when an army invades a country, confiscates the land and kills and imprisons the people, suddenly the whole sum of these people that have been killed, imprisoned and kicked out of their homeland become a "problem". The psychopathic leaders that caused the suffering have the gall to claim that the oppressed and beleaguered people of an invaded nation are the "problem". These psychopaths fume at the idea that their victims would dare to demand their rights, dare to talk of freedom and raise up their voices and arms towards their oppressors. Apparently those that survived the onslaught of the psychopaths in power should be grateful that their lives were spared.
Ah, this anger I feel today! You see today at 5:30 am, the sirens woke me up in Cyprus where I live. 33 years ago to this day, at this time, the Turkish army was illegally invading the island of Cyprus. They started by bombing via sea and air, the area of Kyrenia (Northern Cyprus, close to Turkey), and I swear, after all those years, I haven't got used to that sound. The average Cypriot old enough to remember might even get up and run to the window to check the skies with their heart beating like crazy, only if briefly, until they realize the date, until they realize that that was years ago.
But not in Palestine.
There, the sirens mean the prospect of death for all who hear them. In Palestine, the first thing that a child recognizes is this sound. The sirens are a daily occurrence for them, weekly at best. But it doesn't stop there: they know that another sound is sure to follow: the sound of bombing. And the little Palestinian children put their little hands over their small ears and curl up in the corner. Will they be the target this time? Will this latest missile destroy their house, kill their mother, father, sisters, brothers, friends? What is known is that every time - because the IDF and the Israeli government are committing genocide against all Palestinians - someone does die, houses are destroyed, and often, whole families are murdered. Can any of us even imagine living in such a hell every day? I can't imagine even that anyone could ever get used to the sound of the sirens and the sound of the bombs falling heartlessly to destroy their lives.
Try to picture your entire life to date in your mind, everything that comprises the life that you know... and then... Boom! It's gone.
Palestine is so close to Cyprus, but sometimes so far away...
For 33 years now, every 20th of July, Cypriots wake up to the sound of the sirens, but we never truly wake up on this island. Why is there no resistance in Cyprus like there is in Palestine? The answer is so simple: it is by design that there IS resistance in Palestine, and there IS NOT in Cyprus. In Palestine, Israel's plan is to kill all Palestinians. So they need the Palestinians to resist, to give the IDF the excuse and the "right" to kill them, in a massively one-sided war or rather "turkey shoot". Soon after the Turkish invasion and occupation of Cyprus, the Cypriot government received international aid and lots of money. The message was clear: "here's some money, now keep quiet! Ok?"
A year later, the refugees from the Northern cities of Cyprus had houses built for them. The Palestinians, 60 years later, still live in tents. Not long afterwards, Cyprus began to prosper economically. On this one, the Cypriots will say with pride: "It's because we are not afraid to work hard!" and I won't take it from them because it is true. But ... it is much easier to work and prosper when your primary needs of adequate food and shelter are already met by way of millions in International aid is it not? When you have no money, no roof over your head, no food, no medical aid, no water, no jobs - nothing! - how do you work? How do you prosper?
Yet the devil is lurking in there again. This financial "prosperity" in Cyprus, has brought about a strong materialism, blindness and self-centrism: the large majority of people in Cyprus now only care about what they own, how they look and how much of a "good time" they can afford. The recent history of Cyprus - the "Turko-Cypriot question" - is just another worn out story on the evening news for most. Not even the locals care about the history of their own small island sanctuary. And despite their ignorance of the FACTS of history, especially recent history, Cypriots have the audacity to lay claim to having "educated opinions" and "nationalistic sentiments", even while they exhibit their racist dumbed down beliefs, these "cosmopolitan" people with their Prada, their PhDs and their new Mercedes.
And there's still Palestine, where children die malnourished... geographically so close to us here, but yet so far away from our reality...
And in our ignorance, how can we recognize the enemy from our friend? We can't of course! Just as Abba's Fatah party has collaborated with the Zionist enemy against their own people, so too did EOKA B in Cyprus, with inspiration and support from the Athens junta and International forces, in a coup to overthrow Makarios, the democratically elected first president of the Cyprus republic, which was the event that gave Turkey the "excuse" to invade.
On the 15th of July some of us woke up by sirens again to commemorate that sad day of betrayal of the Cypriot people by a minority of deviants and the deluded. But who remembers anymore? Just as in Palestine where the collaborators now hold power, sotoo in Cyprus, the descendants of the traitors are in positions of power, enjoying the privileges of high office when they should be in jail. Those who truly care for Cyprus and the Cypriot people are defamed locally and Internationally, like Hamas is in Palestine. Palestinians know it though; Cypriots don't, they are sound asleep, and in their sleep they can't recognise friend from foe.
On August 15th, the sirens might disrupt some of our sleep again. We might even get irritated: "not again, let us sleep!" we will say, as we forget again that it was on August 15th in 1974 that Famagusta was taken, and the Cypriot troops who tried hard to fight the Turkish troops (a sad uneven battle lost from the start, considering the size of Turkish army, that of Cyprus, and the fact that the invasion was financed and applauded by the US and the British) were forced to withdraw.
My grandmother locked the door and took the key, upon leaving her house in Famagusta. "We'll return", she assured her 8 children, and kept assuring them during the months that they lived in the tents. A few years later my grandma died. My family have never returned. Cypriots have yet to acknowledge the wounds from that summer of 1974, wounds that still scar their hearts, wounds that they unwittingly pass on to their children .
And the distance becomes so small sometimes: here is Palestine, here is Cyprus, just a little piece of the blue Mediterranean between us. The same "act" being re-played, as it has been for centuries: psychopathic individuals, to meet their goals, find those among a nation with matching personality or characteristics, and together they to destroy a nation. And then the task is to silence the majority of people of the nation, by putting them to sleep with "gifts" or by exterminating them, little by little, so that they lose the will or energy to resist. And so it goes.
Seferis - a greek poet and diplomat who loved Cyprus - in his poem 'Eleni' - one from a collection dedicated to that island - using characters of the Trojan war to illustrate the act that replays again and again through the centuries, wrote:
[...] some other Teucrus* years later, or an Ajax*, or a Priam*, or a Hecuba*,
Or someone else unknown, anonymous,
Who however has seen a Scamander* full of dead corpses,
Has it in his fate to hear heralds who come to say
That so much pain
So many lives
Were lost in abyss
For an empty shirt, for one Eleni.
This is what the pathocrats sell, and the masses eagerly buy the lie that all suffering happens for a "grand cause", for "an ideal", for the beauty of Eleni, when in truth, it is because some "empty shirts" (psychopaths) got together and made a plan long ago on how to bring the whole world under their control. And the Cypriots still don't resist because they are infatuated with their slavery; and the Palestinians do resist, but they won't achieve anything until many more of us join them and all of us together decide, once and for all, to resist the rule of the psychopath.
Meanwhile, the sirens will keep sounding, and the bombs will keep falling, bodies and hearts will continue to be blown to pieces, lives will continue to be shattered, nations exterminated, the earth destroyed... and all FOR NOTHING!
*Teucrus: Ajax brother who did not return home to Salamis in Greece after Ajax was killed in Troy, and created Salamis in Cyprus
*Priam: King of Troy, father of Paris and Hector
*Hecuba: Wife of Priam
*Scamander: river of troy where the biggest battles took play
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