Shemaine Bushnell Kyriakides
A friend called me early this morning and said, “I’m really starting to hate the world.” It was the caffeine kick I needed to jolt me wide awake. She had just read the headlines. Starvation in Gaza. Trump ranting about white genocide in South Africa. A shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., where a young Jewish couple was killed by a pro-Palestinian gunman. The world just felt darker today.
And then came the gut punch: Cyprus, my own country, decided not to support an EU proposal to review relations with Israel, hoping to pressure them into allowing more humanitarian aid into Gaza. Seventeen EU countries backed it. We didn’t.
We also declined to sign a statement from dozens of nations calling for unhindered aid access to Gaza. These countries said it clearly: this isn’t politics. It’s about food, medicine, and survival. The people in Gaza are starving. Famine is already here. Yet Cyprus stayed silent.
Seriously? Have we lost our minds? Or worse, our humanity?
Now, to be fair, Foreign Minister Kombos said Cyprus’s objection was about "procedure," worried the report on the situation wouldn’t come directly from EU personnel on the ground, that it might get tangled up in EU bureaucracy, and that the decision might not get unanimous approval. In other words, a lot of fancy diplomatic words that sound important but really boil down to “we’re not convinced this is the right process right now.”
Weren’t we the country that insisted we’d be the bridge for aid to Gaza? That launched the “Amalthea” humanitarian corridor to prove it? Was that just for show? A way to score political points with the US, the EU, Israel? Because I’m confused, what kind of bridge lets people starve on the other side?
Look, I get it. Cyprus is in a tough geopolitical spot. We’ve worked hard to position ourselves diplomatically. But refusing to take even a symbolic stand while children are dying of hunger? That’s not diplomacy. That’s complicity dressed up in silence.
Some say the blockade is meant to starve out terrorists; that’s the point, they claim. But what about the children? The mothers, desperately trying to feed their babies? If you were a mother who lost a child to starvation caused by this blockade or a child who lost a parent to this violence, how would you feel? Angry? Heartbroken? And wouldn’t that anger only deepen the hatred and make peace even harder to reach?
So what exactly is the goal here? Ending the war? Bringing peace?
Because from where I’m standing, innocent people are paying the price, starving, afraid of losing everything. And Cyprus’ silence only makes it worse.
I’m not here to score political points. I’m just a Cypriot asking, is this really who we are? Do we agree with this silence? Because if this decision was made in our name, I want no part of it.
I want to believe we’re better than this. That if enough of us speak up, our leaders will hear us. Because while wars may have two sides, starving children don’t. And neutrality in the face of suffering? That’s not neutrality. That’s abandonment.
