Genocide at Cyprus

By OBSERVER

TEL AVIV, NOV. 26 (By cable)–Cyprus is paradise and hell in one. Lofty mountains covered with trees, with many silver-toned springs, with a cool breezy summer–in one half of the island. A salty dry and dusty plain, with barely a tree, an oven for six months of the year– in the other half of the isle.

The British caught in the open sea those who in the days of the mandate over Palestine tried to come to their national and legal home; and when they caught them, they dragged them to the Island of Cyprus; and there they placed them in the barren plain of the salty desert; and they corralled them with barbed wire; and they kept them there summer and winter; and in the glowing oven of the unbroken 106 degrees Farenheit, in barracks of tin, and under tattered canvas, in view of the green mountains, with silver-toned springs, with shade trees and breezy winds.

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The mandate is over. The British have nothing to say about Palestine and about immigration there. But they keep the human cargo of many vessels, 12,000 persons in thirst, in sickness, swarms of flies, without any legal right to detain these people. They caught free men and they enslaved them. They did not place the imprisoned on trial; did not accord them the right of habeas corpus, and they deprived them of liberty and of all other civil right. They gave them food of starches; they let them wait hours under blistering sun for a bucket of water in the summer. And now when the stormy rains tear the tattered canvas and thunder on the tin roofs of the barracks, the pirates’ captives shiver in wind and rain.

Were it only a measure of impartiality on the part of the British who, unable to stop the hundreds of ships sailing to Palestine, to try to keep back these 12,000 who were luckless enough to be hunted down by the British Navy; were it only a measure of impartiality, then the British were obliged to let the detainees be guests of the crown in this crown colony, and they should have let them go free to Europe, whence they came.

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But the intention is to avenge on these twelve thousand for the British failure in Palestine. And they chose a slow genocide. The Germans also for years kept their slaves behind barbed wire before they destroyed most of them morally or physically. The British are keeping men separated from their wives or unable to marry, with the intention of destroying their manhood. Women who did not leave their husbands and remained with them on the island must see their children die unprotected from flies, cold and heat. Those who protest are put into prison cells and put to hard work; and when on the Holy Day of Jewish New Year they refused to work they were punished by two weeks of additional hard labor.

Let American Congressmen go there. Let this nest of shame be erased. Let it be known that in the pirate isle of Cyprus 12,000 human beings, one hour’s fight from Palestine, are kept bereft of all human rights.