They Celebrated on Oct. 7. What Did We Expect?

Sitting in my flat in Nicosia, Cyprus, on the evening of Oct. 7, 2023, I watched, like so many others, in disbelief as the outside world was flooded with images of Hamas’s atrocities in Israel.

At some point, a friend sent me a video showing a group of Arabs at Finikoudes in Larnaca, singing and dancing under Palestinian flags and handing out sweets.

The bodies in Israel were not yet cold. Families had been butchered. Children had been burned alive. Women had been raped. And in my own country, some were celebrating.

I felt shame and rage. Not only because of the barbarism of the spectacle, but because it was happening in a country that had taken these people in, sheltered them, fed them, provided benefits, and offered papers, tolerance, and protection — only to be repaid with public jubilation over the murder of Jews.

I posted the video on Facebook, tagging the authorities and asking how such a disgrace had been allowed to unfold in Larnaca. The man who appeared to be leading the celebrations began threatening me in public, swearing that my “coffin will be shining”. Others of his kind joined in.

A few weeks later, I was formally informed that the authorities had reason to believe I could become the target of a criminal act.

It was already a difficult period in my life.

For months, my routine had become almost absurd in its bleakness. With COVID still circulating and my immune system compromised, I was allowed to go out once a day to the Oncology Ward. I would check the car, as I had been instructed. I would get in, put the key in the ignition, and as I turned it, wonder if I would meet my end.

Nothing sad here. I constantly joked about it. There are moments when one either jokes or breaks. I am hardly the breaking kind.

So I did not stop writing. I continued to post facts on social media because I refused to accept that, even before the war had begun, the machinery of Arab propaganda had already revived the old “genocide” blood libel — a fiction circulating since 1982.

The only “genocide” in recorded history, apparently, that was accompanied by rapid population growth.

After the 1948 war — launched amid openly declared Arab intentions to annihilate the Jews — the Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza stood at roughly 960,000. By Oct. 7, 2023, the Jews accused of “genocide” had somehow allowed that number to reach 5.48 million. After the latest “genocide” in Gaza, it stands at 5.56 million, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

As the war in Gaza progressed, many people I had considered friends – colleagues and acquaintances – simply drifted away.  I consider it a blessing. Life is short.

I gave several statements to the police back then. Even today, I do not know whether we were dealing with one case or two, as I was told at one point – a case also involving foreign elements in the occupied North.

I was assured that the necessary steps had been taken. Nothing followed.

And here we are today.

That individual who led the celebrations over the Oct. 7 massacres and the threats against me is now reportedly among those arrested for terrorism in this alleged ring of Hamas terrorists, which is said to be spreading to six countries, or even more.

However, the authorities possess evidence that this major attack would have taken place in Cyprus.

The local representative of the Palestinian Authority on the island — a man who publicly lectures the Cypriot government, bullies journalists and, of course, never condemned the Oct. 7 massacres — had urged us at the time to consider the “historical depth.”

Whether it was the massacres or the rapes he had in mind, he did not explain.

But the people who would have been killed with the explosives found in the suspect’s orbit — as a thank-you for the school Cyprus built for Palestinians in the West Bank only the year before last, on top of benefits, naturalizations and everything else — would they, too, have been part of that historical depth?

Or perhaps the historical height?

There is more. Out of respect for the presumption of innocence, I will not write it yet. Some were friends of others. Some were presented as representatives. Some moved with the ease of people long accustomed to being indulged by a political and media class determined to see only what flatters its prejudices.

At some point, all this whitewashing must end. The transformation of monsters into victims, of Islamist terrorism into “resistance,” and of murderous fanaticism into an acceptable political cause has become not merely obscene but extremely dangerous.

Cyprus has done more than enough. It owed none of this to anyone, least of all to those who never miss a chance to stand with Turkey and never utter a word of support.

If Uncle Tayyip is their moral and political refuge, let them go to him.

Why are Cypriots to be their hosts, their paymasters, and potentially their targets?

And why, one might ask, do they not plant their bombs in Turkey?

As for those in Cyprus, Greece, or elsewhere, useful idiots, who are obsessed with virtue signaling instead of seeking help from a mental health professional, there are plenty of genuinely persecuted people in the world.

Ukrainians, for one. The people of Iran, for another.

But somehow, the grand humanitarian hearts of our local and international saints rarely seem to have any room for them.

One can only wonder why.