Orphic Hymn just does not get it! By Rachel Salomon

A) Have you not accused the H/C of teaching to their youth hatred? You did, so where is my requested quote or name of a poem? All you have provided is some ill comparison to the Lydra Street grafitti that is a condemned event.

I shall once again reprint this quote from the Greek Cypriot author, Antonis Angastiniyotis, who wrote:“The majority of the Greek Cypriot youth know very little about the events that led to the island's division. The tragic events of 1974 have been used as a huge curtain to cover up the real events that led to the division of the two people. In our schools it has always surprised me that while talking about the heroism of EOKA, they skip 15-years and continue with 1974. Either nothing happened between 1960 and 1974, or no one wants to discuss this. While researching the events during this period (1960-74), I realized that the second choice was right. When I started to write this research, my cousin from Greece and her two daughters came to visit me and we started to discuss the events of 1963-74. The daughters knew nothing and what their mother knew was very confusing. At one stage of the discussion I mentioned some of the Greek Cypriot leadership's mistakes and all of a sudden this brought out the nationalist monster in my cousin who said: "Makarios' biggest mistake was not to have killed all the Turkish Cypriots in order for us to be comfortable". This sweet and pretty woman, who couldn't even kill an ant, had suddenly turned into a killer who could carry out mass murders. She wanted a whole race to be wiped out. This is what I said to her: "In other words, do you mean taking out all the children from school, all mothers with their babies and all the men from their work places and taking them to a big hole in Messaria and murder them…Do you want to be one of the murders or the one of the persons using the bulldozer to cover the mass graves…" There was silence. The example I gave helped her to understand the meaning of what she said. Then I started to speak again. "We tried this before in Ayvasil, Murataga, Atlilar, Taskent, but the only thing we succeeded in was soughing the fruits of our efforts". During our childhood we were taught that the Turks were barbaric dogs. My aunt used to say to me that they smelled because they weren't baptized. Whereas according to the Bible, we are modern Christians who love their environment. Then, why did our religious leader Makarios in 1964 say that 'If Turkey comes to intervene to protect the Turkish Cypriots, she will not find a single Turkish Cypriot to save…' The answer is clear. In Cyprus there is a saying, 'another priest's sermon'. In certain situations this enables us to hate. This book will deal with some of these special situations.”

Also, according to the US government’s 2005 Country Report on Human Rights practices in Cyprus, “The government continued to use textbooks at the primary and secondary school level that included inflammatory language derogatory of Turkish Cypriots and Turks. This was a particularly serious concern with history textbooks.”

b) Have you or have you not directly attacked the Hellenic people by titling them xenophobic and racist in a topic that is totally unrelated. And since you DID, do explain for what reason exactly did you resort to this totally unrelated to the topic, slander???

First of all, I quoted from a credible source, the Jerusalem Center for Strategic Studies. I did not just make these accusations up out of this air. Here is the report:

http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=381&PID=470&IID=640

It is in this report that I get the findings of the 2000 Eurobarometer survey, which found that 38 percent of Greeks were troubled by the presence of non-Greeks living in their country. According to the Jerusalem Center for Strategic Studies, this makes Greece the most xenophobic country in the European Union. This is not an attack. It is just a mere fact that I just backed up with this academic source citation. The only reason why I even brought up this fact is because Argyrou said the following: “When Salomon refers to the Ottomans giving the expelled Jews of Spain a home in the Ottoman empire she neglects to mention that this was at the expense of the Greeks of Thessalonica who were deported by the Turks so that the Jews could take their homes.” I have never heard this in my entire life. As a child, I was taught that the Jews of Spain moved to Salonika because they were welcome with open arms by Sultan Bayezid II. Argyrou sounded to me like he was mocking the home that this Turkish Sultan gave to the Jews, namely my ancestors. I got offended. Naturally, I responded, for I found this comment to be very anti-Semitic.

c) You claim to have not manipulated the Guardian quote, when not once but twice you attempted to relate it to T/C deaths. I want to see a specific Stephen's article that does relate it to T/C and not to the coup.

Michael Stephens report called “The Cyprus Question,” published by the British Northern Cyprus Parliamentary Group, quoted the Guardian, which reported on December 31, 1963, that “it is nonsense to claim, as the Greek Cypriots do, that all causalities were caused by fighting between armed men of both sides. On Christmas Eve many Turkish Cypriot people were brutally attacked and murdered in their suburban homes, including the wife and children of the Turkish Cypriot head of army medical services----allegedly by a group of forty men, many in army boots and greatcoats.” This is a direct quote. It can be found on page 15 of the report. This was the quote that I published in Israel Insider in my second article. It has absolutely nothing to do with the coup. As you can tell by the date, it was a good eleven years before the coup.

e) You totally manipulated the events of Aug. 95' and 96'. WHY distort the second that has been officially condemned by the UN and there are literally hundreds of links that could provide you with accurate info, so WHY the distortion especially when a H/C was killed??

To my knowledge, what I said about August 1995 and August 1996 is the truth. Here is what Michael Stephen had to say about the whole event, pages 38-40.

On 7th October 1995 a Turkish Cypriot farmer, Erkan Egmez, was snatched from his fields, and tortured by Greek Cypriot police. On 5 March 1996 the US State Depart report on human rights in Cyprus said: Egmez, appears to have been severely beaten in the period during and immediately after his arrest and eventually required ten days of hospitalization. According to some eye-witnesses hooded police officials continued beating him even as he was being admitted to hospital.

On 8th November 1995 hundreds of schoolchildren were given permission by Greek Cypriot officials to be absent from school. They participated in a violent riot under the guidance of teachers, in which Greek Cypriots seized a UN observation post and hoisted a Greek flag in the buffer zone. It is worth noting that it is almost always the Greek flag, not the Greek Cypriot flag, which is used on these occasions.

On 3rd June 1996 at 6:30am a Greek Cypriot National Guardsman in uniform was shot when he violated the buffer zone and refused to stop when challenged by Turkish Cypriot sentries. On 6th August 1996 armed Greek Cypriots tried to abduct a Turkish Cypriot shepherd from the buffer zone.

On 11th August 1996 several thousand young people, many on motorcycles who were organized to ride from Berlin, were encouraged to break into the UN buffer zone and confront the Turkish Cypriots on their border. They rampaged in the buffer zone, in defiance of the UN forces, setting fire to vegetation, brandishing knives, and throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. They tore down the UN barb-wire fence near Dherynia, and one was beaten to death in a violent struggle with Turkish Cypriots. Another was shot when he broke through the Turkish Cypriot line and tried to desecrate their flag. Instead of regretting these incidents and apologizing to the UN and to the Turkish Cypriots, the Greek Cypriots have treated the two hooligans as national heroes.

Neither of these men should have been killed, and the Turkish Cypriots must exercise greater restraint in future, whatever the provocation, for there are those on the Greek Cypriot side who are deliberately putting the lives of their young people at risk for political purposes. The Greek Cypriot motorcyclist leader Hadjicostas was asked by Selides magazine whether he had not thought that there might be victims. “Of course I did,” he said, “approximately 40 bikers die on the roads each year. Let some of them die for the country.”

The Greek Cypriot leadership must take ultimate responsibility for the death of the two men. They should have called off the incursion before it was too late, and should not have allowed them to cross into the UN Zone. Interviewed by the press immediately afterwards UN envoy Gustav Feissel said, “It was the responsibility of the Greek Cypriot government to ensure that the cease-fire line was not violated.”

Nor should the Greek Cypriot leadership have encouraged the organizers in the first place. The Greek Orthodox Church made a large financial contribution and Archbishop Chyrisostomos declared in September on Greek Star TV “The time has come to launch a full-scale struggle against the Turks-----it does not matter how much bloodshed there is or how many victims there are.” Many people may be surprised by such remarks from a senior clergyman. Also, the leader of the Greek Cypriot motorcyclists told Periodiko on 21st August 1996, “We were promised that the Greeks would provide transfer back to Germany in a Hercules transport plane of the Greek Air Force.”

Immediately after the riot, President Denkas called upon President Clerides to meet him. He said, “there is more need than ever for talks. I am ready to meet immediately, but Clerides may use the incident as an excuse not to meet.” He did refuse to meet. In a letter to Clerides on 22nd September 1996 Denkas said, “It is upon us, the leaders, to tell our peoples that there is no other way in Cyprus except coexistence as good neighbors under separate roofs, or as co-founders partners under one mutually agreed bizonal, bicommunal roof. Rushing our borders claiming the right to come and sweep off our properties and demanding submission by brute force, waving Greek flags and telling us that Hellenism will be victorious in Cyprus is surely not the way to a negotiated settlement.”

On 13th August 1996, the Greek Cypriot Cyprus Mail wrote that “The government’s handling of the whole matter has been naïve, indecisive, and irresponsible,” and quoting Clerides as saying that the bloody clashes had “given the message abroad that the two communities can not live together, and that the presence of Turkish troops in Cyprus was necessary.”

Orphic, I recognize that some Greek Cypriots died. But you have to ask yourself, what did they do to get themselves in that situation? Not that I am condoning that they were killed. I am just pointing out that they were encouraged by their leadership to harass Turkish Cypriots and violate a UN buffer zone.