Replies

First and foremost, please accept my apology for coming to conclusions, obviously incorrect, too quickly and for the the words I used in my post. Not as an excuse but as an explanation, let me say that I was responding to you right after responding to these words in #13:

There ain't no such thing as "forced conversion." They were offered the choice between voluntary conversion and leaving.

For a moment, your post seamed like an attempt to minimize the unusual nature of the phenomenon. My mistake.

Even the NYTimes can be correct on occasion. In principle, it matters not whether the people described in the article are Jews or Catholics: it's a very uncommon phenomenon for values (of any kind) to survive for that long, is it not?

My point was that the NY Times will hardly ever show Catholicism in a favorable light.

You are absolutely correct, and I am simply appalled at that (yes, I am Jewish). It's not just Catholics --- it's Christians of all denominations that they are after. Actually, they are after all religion, but being bad to minorities such as Jews is too obvious, and they do that only in the form of anti-Israeli propaganda. But their anti-Christian bias is absolutely unopposed and appalling, and that of CNN is of the same extent, I think.

Isn't it terribly unseemly that we're now trying to engage in a pissing contest to become the MOST VICTIMIZED GROUP EVER? "I'm the victim, gotta love me!"

I assure you, I would never participate in such a "contest." In fact, I don't think it is possible to compare misery: what hurts, hurts. But one does have to look at things in proper perspective --- that is all I would suggest. A survival (in the sense of preserving traditions and religion) of a Jewish community in China for 1,000 years is as miraculous as survival of a Catholic community there, if such were the case. If there were a country were Catholics were forced to convert (they were) AND nevertheless preserved as a community their beliefs like Conversos --- that would be equally miraculous, wouldn't it?

I'm surprised the Spanish fear that the Jews were fifth columnists for the muslims hasn't gotten a bit more play here. Such fear even has a contemporary parallel: look at the anti-Israel dhimmi-wannabe secularized Jews on university campuses who side with the Mohammedan pig-dog terrorists in the name of their idols Tolerance and Diversity.

I happen to disagree here. From little I know about history, literally right before the Berber invasion in 712, Spanish Jews were the subjected to a decree calling for forced conversion, slavery, etc. It well may be that they looked to Berbers as saviors (whether they did or not, it was not what moved Ferdinand and Isabella almost 800 years later). But these Jews were Jews and wanted to continue to live as such.

The Leftist scum you are referring to (forgive me for strong words here --- you did not use them --- but, since I am Jewish, I will not be suspected of anti-Semitism) is no longer Jewish. They were born, perhaps, into Jewish families, but they betrayed their core values and abandoned them for socialist dogmas of one variety or another. In that sense, they are not even the fifth column. To me, they are just like those "Jews" in Russia that embraced the communist revolution: born into Jewish families, they were no longer Jewish; those "commissars" burned churches and synagogues with equal pleasure. The leftists on our campuses do the same thing but not to the same degree (yet).

Your adolescent attempt to impute anti-Semitism to me only weakens the value of the charge

Once again, I apologize. I am particularly upset that this happened because I never come to such conclusion without sufficeint evidence. But in this case I did make a mistake, carrying over some emotions from a previous post.

You have all the right in the world to be offended --- as any decent person accused of such a thing should be --- and I thank you for your measured response (I did not deserve it).