In the summer of 2025, as the world once again erupted in protests over Gaza, marches clogging city streets, flotillas defying blockades, and endless UN resolutions condemning Israel, the scars of my homeland, Cyprus, festered in utter silence. Five elderly Greek Cypriot pensioners, who simply sought to visit their ancestral lands, were abducted by Turkish occupation forces on July 19 in the village of Trikomo, in the illegally occupied north of the island. These innocent souls were branded “spies” and thrown into dungeons by a regime propped up by Ankara’s iron fist. Their trial, a farce delayed yet again to mid-October, drags on amid reports of inhumane treatment.

Where were the chants? The banners? The viral hashtags demanding their release? The streets of London, New York, and Paris, so quick to mobilize for Gaza, remained eerily quiet. No flotillas sailed for Cyprus. No celebrities penned open letters. The UN issued vague reports on peacekeeping, but nothing that pierced the veil of indifference. The EU Parliament offered a tepid condemnation and a call for release in September, but it was drowned out by the roar of other headlines. US lawmakers urged Secretary Rubio to intervene, yet the hostages languish. This is not oversight; it’s a pattern. No Jews, no news.

As a Cypriot who lost beloved family members to the barbaric Turkish invasion of 1974, a blitzkrieg that partitioned my island, displaced 200,000 Greek Cypriots, and claimed thousands of lives, I see this hypocrisy for what it is, a selective outrage that weaponizes suffering to fuel hatred against Israel, while ignoring atrocities that don’t fit the narrative. The Gaza protests, riots, and flotillas? They’re not about Palestinian lives, they’re a global theater for anti-Semitism, cloaked in humanitarian rhetoric. If these “activists” truly cared about human dignity, their placards would demand justice for the forgotten.

Consider Nigeria, where Boko Haram and Fulani militants have slaughtered thousands of Christians in a genocide-by-proxy. Villages razed, churches burned, families hacked to death, yet the world’s streets stay empty. No boycotts, no celebrity fundraisers. In Ukraine, Russia’s unprovoked invasion has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, and turned cities to rubble since 2022. Protests flared briefly in 2022, but where is the sustained fury now? No endless encampments on campuses, no “Free Ukraine” flotillas braving the Black Sea.
The terrorist attacks against innocent Israelis by Hamas on October 7, two years ago, where were all these useful idiots to protest? Where were all these politicians who are sanctioning Israel? Where was the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants against Hamas leaders in Qatar?

Syria’s Christians, once a vibrant community, face eradication under Assad’s remnants and Islamist militias. Persecution, forced conversions, beheadings, the echoes of ancient martyrdoms ring out, but the megaphones of the Gaza crowd fall silent. And then there’s Cyprus, 51 years of illegal Turkish occupation, a scar on Europe’s conscience that the continent pretends not to see. The 1974 invasion wasn’t a skirmish, it was ethnic cleansing, with mass graves still yielding bones today. Anniversaries come and go without marches in London, Paris, Brussels.

These useful idiots cherry-pick their causes. Gaza gets the spotlight because it offers a villain du jour, Israel, the eternal scapegoat. It’s easier to scream “Zionist oppressors” than confront the complexities of Islamist extremism in Nigeria or the Kremlin’s imperialism. It’s simpler to romanticize Palestinian resistance than to acknowledge Turkey’s stranglehold on my island, where even visiting your own property can land you in a Turkish jail.

I know this pain intimately. In 1974, as a young boy, I remember watching Turkish tanks roll through our villages, my family’s home looted, my relatives vanished into the fog of war. The invasion claimed my loved ones, uncles, cousins, swallowed by a conflict the world shrugged off then, just as it does now. The abduction of those five pensioners in July? It’s a microcosm, ordinary people punished for daring to remember. The Cyprus government has condemned it fiercely, but without international uproar, it’s just another footnote in Ankara’s playbook of provocation.

So, to the protesters thronging for Gaza: If you weep for civilians under blockade, why not for those under occupation in Famagusta’s ghost town? If you rage against “genocide,” why ignore the slow erasure of Cypriot culture? The answer is stark: Your cause thrives on hate, not humanity. True solidarity doesn’t discriminate by headline or ethnicity. It demands justice for Nigeria’s massacred faithful, Ukraine’s bombed-out mothers, Syria’s hidden faithful, and Cyprus’s enduring prisoners.

Cyprus will rise again, free, whole, and unbowed. But until the world sheds its selective tears, we’ll keep fighting alone. No Jews, no news? Perhaps. But for us Cypriots, every silenced voice is a call to arms. Join us. Or at least, be honest about why you won’t.

Harry Theocharous is a dedicated activist for a free Cyprus, passionately advocating for the island’s liberation and sovereignty. He is also actively combating antisemitism, promoting tolerance and understanding.
A retired pilot, he presently does consultations in the aviation industry.