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Spain Should Think Twice before It Lectures Israel about Genocide

(Jerusalem Post) Daniel Friedman - When Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez accuses Israel of committing "genocide" in Gaza, it is the height of historical hypocrisy. Spain has committed genocide against the Jewish people three times. With the rise of the Almohad regime in the 12th century, the golden age of Spanish Jewry came to a violent end, as Jews were given the choice to convert to Islam, flee, or die by the sword. In 1492, under Ferdinand and Isabella, some 200,000 Jews were forced to leave the country they had called home for centuries. Tens of thousands who had converted to Christianity were hunted down by the Inquisition, tortured, and burned at the stake for "heresy." Jewish identity was systematically erased from the public sphere. Jewish books were banned. Synagogues were converted into churches. This was physical and cultural genocide in its most thorough form. The third time was when Spain turned its back on the Jews during the Holocaust, when Europe's Jews desperately sought refuge from Nazi annihilation. Spain even closed its doors to its own citizens. Of the 4,000 Jewish Spaniards in western Europe, only 800 were readmitted into their country of birth. The rest were sent to the gas chambers, making Spain a complicit partner in the genocide of its Jewish citizenry. The writer is a professor of political science at Touro University.
2025-05-22 00:00:00
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