Victims or perpetrators? With Jews it depends who is telling the stories, the Jews or their victims. Palestinians are liable to tell about the mass murders, torture, slaving, harassment and the deeply sincere, in depth, wide ranging evil of Brer Yid. There is smoke and plenty of fire to go with it.

Alhambra Decree - Ask Jeeves Encyclopedia

QUOTE

The Alhambra Decree (also known as the Edict of Expulsion) was an edict issued on 31 March 1492 by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon) ordering the expulsion of Jews from the Kingdom of Spain and its territories and possessions by 31 July of that year.

The edict was formally revoked on 16 December 1968,[1] following the Second Vatican Council. [ Is the Pope a Catholic? Some people wonder. - Editor ]Today, the number of Jews in Spain is estimated at 50,000[2].

Beginning in the 8th century, Muslims had occupied and settled most of the Iberian Peninsula. Jews who had lived in these regions since Roman times, considered 'People of the Book' (dhimmis), were given special status, and thus thrived under Muslim rule, although persecutions were not unknown, such as the pogroms in Cordoba (1011) and Granada (1066). The Jews supported and sometimes even assisted the Muslim invaders due to the harsh treatment of the Jews by the Visigothic rulers of the Iberian Peninsula[citation needed]. The tolerance of the Muslim rulers attracted Jewish immigration, and Jewish enclaves in Muslim Iberian cities flourished as places of learning and commerce. Progressively, however, living conditions for Jews in Al-Andalus became harsher, especially after the fall of the Omayyad Caliphate.

The Reconquista was the gradual reconquest of Muslim Iberia by the Christian kingdoms and had a powerful religious flavor: Iberia was being reclaimed for Christendom. By the 14th century, almost all of Spain and Portugal had been taken back from the Moors.

Overt hostility against Jews became more pronounced , finding expression in brutal episodes of violence and oppression. Thousands of Jews sought to escape these attacks by converting to Catholicism; they were commonly called conversos or New Christians. At first these conversions seemed an effective solution to the cultural conflict: many converso families met with social and commercial success. But eventually their success made these New Christians unpopular with the church and royal hierarchies.

Many of the ruling Spanish, both secular and religious, viewed Jews with deep suspicion. The Jews were also seen as being collaborators with the Muslims[citation needed].

These suspicions on the part of Christians were only heightened by the fact that some of the coerced conversions were undoubtedly insincere. Some, but not all, conversos had understandably chosen to salvage their social and commercial prestige by the only option open to them - baptism and embrace of Christianity - while privately

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