Written by Konstantinos Konstantinidis Amphiktyon
In light of the events that unfolded with the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with the murder of 1400 people and the cowardly kidnapping of hostages as a bargaining chip, I will explain how the ancient Greeks viewed the dead. It should be noted that the detention of the hostages and the dead was the cause for the complete destruction and land conversion of Gaza. Others consider it the reason for the expulsion of the Palestinians from the region. However, be that as it may, Hamas’s behavior towards the prisoners and then towards the dead was inhumane and shameful. Plato in the Republic 5 (469d) writes: “And don’t you think that the dog-fighting of the dead is proof of unfreedom and avarice, and that it shows a feminine and small soul, to consider the body of the dead an enemy, since the enemy has already flown away and left only the instrument he used to fight? Or do you think that those who do such an act differ from dogs that bite the stone that hit them and do not touch those who threw it … Not at all, said Glaucon Therefore (our warriors) must leave the cadaver dogs and not prevent the enemies from collecting their dead to bury them” “In a previous article we said that the souls of the dead have the power after death to take care of human affairs….If therefore things by nature are made in this way, first of all we must fear the heavenly gods, who have a direct perception of the abandonment of orphans, then the souls of the dead, who by nature are made to take great care of their children and who are favorable to those who take care of them and unfavorable to those who despise them” Commentary
1/Hamas committed a grave crime with the unprovoked attack and the handling of prisoners and dead and was rightly punished However, the victim was the Palestinian people who suffered collective retaliation without being to blame
2/ The word “dog” of a dead person came from Plato’s phrase “the enemy is like a dog that instead of hitting the enemy bites the stone that was thrown at him”
3/ During the civil war, the captain of ELAS Aris Velouchiotis, on the same day that the KKE expelled him for unknown reasons, was as if he had signed his death sentence. It is said that he refused to lay down his arms based on the Varkiza Agreement, the reason for his expulsion from the Party. He was killed on 16 June 1945, as he had been surrounded by National Guard groups in Mesounda Acheloo. According to the archives of the General Staff, he was killed in battle, while others say he committed suicide. They cut off his head while he was dead, put it on a stake and paraded it around the city before setting it up in the square of Trikala in public view as an example. It was one of the many horrific acts we experienced during the civil war, on both sides. 4/Hundreds of innocent Athenians died a horrible death by torture by the KKE’s OPLA in Ulen during the December uprising (Among them was my uncle, the headmaster of the N. Ionia High School, Dim. Simonis)
5/The Turks hold a patent on torturing the living and on the mutilation of the dead. We have many examples from our centuries-old slavery, such as the impalement, flaying, impalement, walling in, etc. of the living and the mutilation of the dead, such as that of Rigas Feraios, whose body after horrific torture was thrown into the Danube tributary Sava, . A recent example is the disappearance of 1850 Greek Cypriots and Greek missing persons who were arrested and transported to Turkey during Attila’s invasion in 1974. Since then, neither the living nor their bodies have returned and no one has been bothered.
6/ The oldest mutilation is that of Hector, when Achilles killed him in battle, he tied the corpse to his chariot and dragged it to his tent in retaliation for the murder of Patroclus. Finally, he handed it over to his elderly father Priam with royal honors.
7/ On 14 Sept. 1943 at dawn the Germans surrounded Sidirokastro in Trifylia. As it is built amphitheatrically between two mountains, they killed with a machine gun from the opposite slope the hero of the national liberation wars my father Christos Konstantinidis (Macedonomachos, Bizaniomachos, of the battles of 1912-13, of the First World War Skra, Crimea and Asia Minor Campaign) outside his house. And as if that were not enough, the commanding officer came on the spot and gave him a shot for good measure, without us ever knowing if he was dead or half-dead at the time. (The shells were found by the mother of Lieutenant General Pan Georgakopoulos and are preserved in the museum of our village). (24/11/25)
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