By Hermes Solomon
Have you begun your Christmas shopping? I went over to the other side last week and bought several designer scarves – probably fakes but of seemingly excellent quality. Vanity drove me to buy Hermès, its saddler’s logo splattered for all to see.
Bringing them back was easy; I wore one under my jacket and my wife tied the other around her handbag strap, dangling a la mode.
It’s turned cold. Winds from Syria – night time temperatures below ten degrees and the concrete block we call home has cooled to fruit preservation temperatures. We’ve ignited two of the five storage radiators and the metre swirls madly. We are cosy.
And that’s what brings me to my Christian roots – a sense of guilt. Just how are the two million refugees managing in tents on the Tukey/Syria border? Just imagine the size of the camps – redolent of Arbeit macht frei, n’est-ce pas?
What the hell have we done – no, not ISIS, but allied powers fighting for different causes?
The Cyprob talks have become inconsequential when one considers the much wider picture of the Middle East. We’d better accept what we are served by negotiators or we could easily become another Syria.
Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov is in Cyprus to discuss what exactly? US Secretary of State John Kerry follows.
Why Cyprus? Is it because we are the only absolutely neutral zone in the Middle East and won’t/can’t take sides? Are we acting as a broker between the two great powers? Have we survived thus far as an independent half republic simply because we are not seen to be taking sides? Or is it because the truth of whatever passes between the brokers and great men will never reach our ears?
Only recently, our president shook hands and smiled at leaders from Jordan, Israel and Palestine and held endless energy meetings with Egypt’s President Sissi.
In Brussels this week he pecked Chancellor Merkel’s cheek, hugged President of the European Commission, Jean Claude Juncker (mind you, Juncker hugs everybody like a madame at a brothel) and was seen to actually talk to a beaming Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who seems to have won the hearts of EU bankers and politicians with his demands for support for Syrian refugees, which sounds more like blackmail or protection money to me.
Will part of the three billion euros allotted to Turkey by Brussels install storage radiators in tents, provide Christmas fayre for Syrian refugee tables, doctors, nurses, hospitals, schools, etc.? Or will the three billion evaporate into offshore bank accounts and the refugees spend a miserable winter imprisoned in camps, where the media is not permitted entry or comprehensive reportage?
Having seen in 1967 many Turkish Cypriot refugees held in enclaves (tented roadside ditches) until Turkey invaded Cyprus to liberate them, I am appalled by what the West has done to Syrians, Iraqis, Palestinians, Afghans, etc.
There is a groundswell of discontent mounting in Germany – refugees are increasingly treated with contempt and distaste. Germans are worried about the Islamification of their country – most of Europe is worried, and perhaps reasonably so when one considers the suffering the West has inflicted on Middle Eastern countries. Do we subconsciously feel guilty about our benign culpability and thus instinctively reject refugees? But revenge is mine sayeth the Lord!
The US is made up of all races and religions. Why not Germany, and for that matter, why not Cyprus? Apple is tomorrow’s religion and Facebook today’s congregation. The world is binding together as a single faith faster than we think – electronics! And nobody says so…
Integrating refugees into our broad variety of western societies could be easy – just like bringing (fake) designer scarves over to the south from the north. All it needs is for us to stop pretending we care about our fellow man, when we do not.
Fake promises and fake politics must end. Climate change or not, most of us have seen the light of day and know where the planet is headed; endless war, disruption, polluting armament factories, car producers, chemical companies, etc. continuing to burn an excess of fossil fuels for mega-profit at the expense of mankind.
Christmas street lights festoon the city. The festive season has begun. Let’s share it…
