Today is the 435th anniversary of the victory of an alliance of Christian navies against the Turks off the coast of Lepanto. 1571, like 1683, is one of the significant dates in the struggle of European Christendom to roll back the Islamic conquests.I blogged about it more fully last year, so this year I’ll point you to Miss Kelly’s post on the topic.
14 comments:
Good job we had those Spaniards at hand!
And imagine. The same unit still exists today... I wonder...
A nice anniversary present from Sweden?
Well I thought it was interesting... ;)
This may interrupt the party, but I am sure that in 1571, Jews were rooting for the Ottomans, who were far more tolerant than the Spaniards, who spent 100 years massacring, burning and focing conversion upon Jews before finally kicking them all out in 1492.
I despise modern Islam more than most people, since it has vowed and second and final Holocaust, but 400 years ago, they were definitely the better side.
No, they appeared to be the better side, but look how jews were treated east of the ottoman empire, in lands that Islam had held for a longer period. The treatment of jews in christian lands was terrible, but it was an attitude that was becoming less prevalent as the christians became more enlightend, whilst it was becoming more prevalent in Islamic lands, proportional to how long those lands had been held by Islam.
The spaniards were obviously a holdover but even they eventually got with the message.
Archonix:
You are (to put it a little more gently than you put it to me on your blog) talking out your posterior.
No, they appeared to be the better side, but look how jews were treated east of the ottoman empire, in lands that Islam had held for a longer period.
The Ottoman Empire was founded in 1302, most of Anatolia was Ottoman in 1400 (and it was already populated with Seljuks before that), Constantinople fell in 1453 -- 118 years before this battle - plenty of time for the Ottomans to Islamicize.
The treatment of jews in christian lands was terrible, but it was an attitude that was becoming less prevalent as the christians became more enlightend,
Read Martin Luther's "The Jews and their Lies" written in 1543 -- a more vile, Nazi pack of Jew-hatred has probably never been written by a Christian clergyman. This is the man who was the catlyst for "The Reformation", part of the European "Enlightenment". The secular enlightenment did not come until 2 centuries AFTER this battle.
Let's also look at some wonderful examples of post-Lepanto Christian enlightenment toward the Jews:
In 1648-9, the Cossacks and Poles massacred 200,000 Jews, the largest genocide of Jews until Hitler.
Britain did not allow Jews back in until 1656, 85 years after Lepanto. Sweden did not allow Jews in until 204 years after Lepanto. The Pope's Jewish ghettoes in Rome were not torn down until il Rissorgimento in the 1850s.
The spaniards were obviously a holdover but even they eventually got with the message.
This shows that you REALLY don't know what you're talking about. While the Spaniards allowed some Jewish refugees to pass through in WW2, they did not revoke the edict of expulsion until -- are you ready for this? 1964! You read that right.
And poll after poll shows the Spaniards to be among the most rabid haters of Israel and the Jews in Europe (which in itself is saying a lot), with an intense, genocidal hatred rivalling that of the Islamonazi world.
In other words, the Spanish have never "got with the message" and never, ever, ever will.
I know it's heresy, but a civilization's attitude toward Jews is not the sole measure of its worth. If Lepanto and Vienna had not happened, and Europe had been overrun by the Turkish Muslims, would the world be a better place? If you ask Greek and Balkan Christians about their lovely experiences under the gentle hand of the Prophet, you might get another point of view.
I deplore anti-Semitism, and I pretty much a Zionist, but it's myopic to use this one yardstick.
usmale
I know it's heresy, but a civilization's attitude toward Jews is not the sole measure of its worth.
Actually, in Western culture, the attitude towards Jews is one of the most accurate barometers of the spiritual, moral, political, economic and psychological health of a nation.
Ever notice how totalitarian regimes have almost invariably been not only anti-semitic, but often genocidal toward Jews?
The most democratic, enlightened and prosperous nations of the Western World are in the Anglosphere -- the USA, Canada and Australia (Britain really does not qualify anymore) -- and they are probably the three nations in the world most hospitable to Jews.
When Europe has been good to Jews -- 1950 to 2000, it prospered. Now that Europe is in permanent decline and headed toward the black hole of Islamofascist rule, the Europeans have reverted to being their old, rabid anti-Semitic selves.
Zero, why do you persist in turning every post into a forum for snivelling about historical mistreatment of the Jews? Believe it or not, history consists of more than an unending string of pogroms, evictions, and Jew-baiting pottymouth.
This kind of vociferous whining creates more anti-Semitism than all the Mein Kampfs and Protocals ever written. Please give it a rest.
Scottsa:
Zero, why do you persist in turning every post into a forum for snivelling about historical mistreatment of the Jews?
Uh, maybe because Jew-hatred is at the CORE of Islamonazi ideology? It is at the CORE of why Europeans let Islamist terrorism grow on their soil?
This kind of vociferous whining creates more anti-Semitism than all the Mein Kampfs and Protocals ever written.
So, Jews standing up for themselves causes Jew-hatred, and Jews not standing up for themselves causes Jew-hatred. What do you want Jews to do? Continue going quietly to their deaths?
Please give it a rest.
I will post about anti-semitism here when I deem it appropriate. If Jews pointing out and being fed up with anti-semitism bothers you, maybe you can go to a website run by someone like Pat Buchanan, Justin Raimondo or Joe Sobran, all Paleocons who think the Jews are the cause of all evil.
Spanish Diplomat
Most Jews converted during the pogroms of 1391 - when the choice was conversion or DEATH, not in 1492. The Inquisition was instituted to ferret out conversos forced to baptism at the sword in 1391, and later those who were forced to convert under threat of death by King Manuel of Portugal in 1497, when he did NOT give Jews an option.
Your assertion that Israel did not attempt to achieve diplomatic recognition from Spain is at best, a severe distortion. Full diplomatic relations with Germany were restored in 1966, a full 20 years before they were restored with Spain (and a decade AFTER Franco's death). Further, Spain was not looked upon with the horror of Germany, Austria, or even Poland, despite Franco's Fascism; Israel knew of Franco's efforts to allow about 20,000 Jews passage to safety. Why would Israel not want to establish diplomatic relations with Spain after she had already done so with Germany?
Franco's opposition to recognition of Israel was based on two factors:
a) The old-fashioned, pre-Vatican II view of the Jews as Christkillers, and the fact that (taking its lead from the Vatican) that the evil, accursed killers of Christ could not be recognized as the keepers of the Holy Land. Spain was of course, an intensely Catholic nation until 35-40 years ago.
b) Franco was a precursor to DeGaulle, Pompidou and the "Euro-Arab dialogue" in claiming a special relationship with the Arab World, precisely due to the long Moorish occupation of Iberia. Spain's traditional hatred of Jews made this an easy alliance for Franco to manage.
Uh, maybe because Jew-hatred is at the CORE of Islamonazi ideology? It is at the CORE of why Europeans let Islamist terrorism grow on their soil?
I can agree with the first part of that statement, but the second simply reveals your own ignorance.
Your posts reveal you for what you are, my friend. You accuse others here of anti-semetism when they are on your side. You demand that we follow your way of thinking and resort fo ad-hominem attacks and racial slurs when we don't agree with you 100%. You, sir, are no better than the muslims. Simply put, you are a racist, beligerent and hateful man, unwilling to look past his prejudices and apparently unable to take the other point of view. I can only thank God that I have met enough jews over my lifetime to know you are completely unrepresentative of them. Were you the first Jew I had met, only God knows how I might have reacted and what I might have been willing to believe... maybe that'll give you something to think about.
Archonix:
For you to compare me with Muslims, when I have never called for a Jewish Jihad nor for Jewish world domination, nor have I ever called anyone here a name (which is more than we can say for you), nor threatened any poster shows that you have imbibed too much of Europe's own moral inversion when it comes to the Jews. You have the same double standard -- a Jew reacting to hate is as bad as the one who hates the Jew to start with.
As a European, you simply cannot stand Jews who tell it like it is. British Jews have a reputation for being extraordinarily passive in the face of the growing anti-Semitism. In America, we are not like that.
If you cannot see the double standard, if you cannot accept the extent to which hatred of Jews has warped Europe, then I do not see you as being on my side.
Nor would it bother me if you are not.
Look, would you guys please take your flame war someolace else? It's a real turd in the punchbowl.
Zero, I will agree that the Jews have been horribly oppressed for centuries across all of Europe.
Archonix, I will agree that Zero doesn't know what he's talking abbout.
Okay? Now we're done. Go fight somewheres else.
Let's think about constructive coemments instead...
If Philip II had spend the plunder he extracted from the mines of Mexico and South America on fighting Islam instead of trying to reconvert 1,500,000 recalcitrant Dutchmen in a war that lasted 80 years. Europe would be in a stronger position than it is now. But he was always fighting on two front first the Dutch and then the Turks, and for good measure lets have a go at the English. Spain at the time was very much like the Arab oil Kingdoms are now, flushed with un earned wealth, and could have done anything he liked. Instead of myopically concentrating on the real enemy Islam, he myopically concentrated on the Dutch, and like the Generals in the First World War could not find an answer to the Dutch defence system which so resembled the defence system of the First World War, instead of barb wire the Dutch had liquid barb wire, the vast system of rivers and canal instead of Bunkers fortified towns along the edge of the rivers and if he did make breakthrough the Dutch could quickly re-enforce their weak points with men and materials with the thousands of boats that plied their inland waterways, in exactly the same way the Germans and the Allies did in the First world war with the use of the Railways. To Philip Lepanto was a distraction, it is a pity he was such an ardent dogmatic Roman Catholic.
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