Koukaki and us

"This is Greece. A constant civil war where each side alternates in inflicting pain on the other." If one considers that this phrase was uttered by a man tied up by members of the Greek Police's counterterrorism unit, EKAM, on the roof of his home, without resisting - as he is heard saying in a video that emerged after a police raid to clear a squat next door - it is probably time to pause for a while; we need to think things through again.

That is because, the way things are going, only the extremists on each side are rejoicing, overflowing with certainty, revising reality and the truth. Neither society nor politics nor, of course, public order and security will benefit from this in the long run.

The man, director Dimitris Indares, who is the owner of the house in the central Athens neighborhood of Koukaki next door to the squat that the police operation targeted on...