Eisenkot, Cyprus and the outrage that wasn’t

How much “outrage” has there really been in Cyprus over Gadi Eisenkot’s billboards targeting Israeli tourists?

For those unfamiliar with the story, Eisenkot’s campaign rented billboards featuring his photograph alongside an Israeli flag.

One reads: “Israelis, enjoy! You deserve it.” The other, facing travellers returning to the airport, reads: “Landed? Had fun? Now come back and win!” Both in Hebrew.

There has indeed been some reaction in Cyprus—the country where I was born and raised, where my father is from, and where I came from Israel to cover UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s visit. Yet another attempt to revive talks on the Cyprus problem.

I have never found Guterres particularly likable, certainly not after October 7 and his inconceivable conduct since then.

Having to run around in the endless heatwave to cover an initiative that will almost certainly lead nowhere—apparently so that he can claim some sort of public-relations “success” after ten years presiding over the worst period in the history of an increasingly dysfunctional UN—has not made him any more endearing, I do admit.

Driving from Larnaca to Nicosia today, I spotted one of the posters. Frankly, I thought it was very clever. What it lacked was any element of surprise.

Cyprus has a political party founded by Russian-Cypriot citizens but openly Russian in character. Russian-language advertising is scattered across Limassol; one even sees Chinese signs in Paphos. A couple of decades ago, Larnaca also tried to lure Iranian property buyers—mercifully, with little success.

Nor, in fact, was this something unprecedented. Benny Gantz did the same during Israel’s previous election campaign. Eisenkot’s advertising team probably borrowed the idea from him.

Nobody would have cared had the newspaper of Cyprus’s communist party not published a brief, toxic comment about it. This is the same newspaper that recently interviewed the son of terrorist Marwan Barghouti, an honored guest at the party’s youth festival this month. They increasingly cross the line into contempt for Jews and Israel.

The “reactions” that followed came largely from party supporters, believers in conspiracy theories about Jews planning to “buy Cyprus,” the far left, the far right and assorted xenophobes—all operating at roughly the same pitiful intellectual level.

Then Fidias Panayiotou weighed in, predictably twisting the story into yet another attack on Israel. He is the YouTuber-turned-“politician” who was elected to the European Parliament and admits, even now, that he knows little about the Cyprus problem—the occupation of the country where he has spent his entire life. His own village, Menoiko, lies less than five kilometers from the UN Buffer Zone.

Interestingly, most of the sane responses appeared only after the dummkopf’s intervention, and they focused on him rather than the billboards.

Critics asked what exactly his problem was, which “friend” (sic) financed the €10,000 “gift” trip to Brazil that he took with his wife, and whether he felt proud of staying at a hotel in occupied Cyprus—at whose expense remains unclear—while posing indoors in a bathrobe and smoking a cigar.

Cyprus is not immune to the anti-Israel hysteria.

It is, however, less affected than most countries. The overwhelming majority of Cypriots know Israel, and the relationship with the Jewish state goes back a long way.

The problem, as elsewhere, is that reasonable people remain silent while social media is colonized by the loudest cranks.

The media also bear responsibility when a comment in a party rag is elevated into a national controversy and exported abroad as evidence of widespread “outrage.”

And Cyprus has an additional political problem. The saner part of its political establishment—the part that does not publicly claim, as the communist party leader has, that Jews are buying the country—starts counting votes whenever Israel is involved, fearing attacks or the loss of supporters.

The government, despite being the most unequivocal in its support for the alliance with Israel, has a broader communications problem: it tends to wait until matters reach a breaking point before speaking.

None of those, surely, can serve as an excuse.

Protecting what Cyprus, Israel—and Greece—have built is everyone’s responsibility.

Without it, what remains of Cyprus faces a serious existential danger, while Israel risks losing a critical gateway to the West.

It’s not just a win-win. It’s a matter of survival.

Economic and strategic relations between the two nations have soared. Both countries benefit enormously from this natural alliance between the only Western democracies in the region.

So next time an “uproar” of any kind is reported, we could both check the facts more carefully.

It’s quite simple actually. If we allow antisemites and assorted fools to destroy what has been built, we will fully deserve whatever fate awaits us.