Christopher Columbus and Jews

I've been sent links to this news item by seven different Jewish friends from around the country this week: http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/20/opinion/garcia-columbus-jewish/index.html
While I always thank all my friends for sharing items of interest to Jews I have great misgivings as a Jew as to how these discoveries are being reported. I feel such a strong gut feeling that this will be used as new fuel for hate propagandizing. I think this will be claimed as evidence of Jews believing we have entitlement to do and say whatever we can for gain to justify abuse of other peoples. Please read on to see why I say this and share if you'd like with anyone else who you think might be find equal cause for concern.

I say this because how Jews react to this news is very important. This history of the atrocities Christopher Columbus perpetrated is likely as little known by many Jews as the possibility he is a Jew. Before Jews begin to embrace Christopher Columbus as some kind of Jewish hero whose mission was really to save the Jews in secret, we cannot ignore or dismiss that his journals and the history of others writings of his life and travels clearly reveal that he treated the indigenous peoples horrifically and was not living the ethics of Judaism in his encounters with them. If he had desire to save Jews as his own people, he did so demonstrating a worldview that came from being assimilated into the sense of entitlement prevalent among the empires of Europe of the day to abuse others and use the profits deriving from torture of others to save Jews at the expense of the lives of innocents. That is clearly not a Jew that Jews want to hold up as any sort of hero. I just now "Googled" a few key phrases and here is just one article that addresses his horrific treatment of a people he noted displayed innocence, beauty and generosity
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kasum/columbus-day-a-bad-idea_b_742708.html
I hope this is not dismissed because if it is, this will make the Jews who hold him up as a hero (even in ignorance of his atrocities) to be just as lacking in compassion for others and WILL be used as additional "evidence" to support a current common propagandizing lie that the Jews do to the Palestinians like the Europeans did to the Indians. If Columbus is **embraced as a hero among Jews** that will be a massive feather in the cap of the Islamofacist propagandist.

There has already been far too much propaganda being spread by Islamofacists and their supporters to try to equate Jews and the State of Israel with lies that Israel treats Palestinian Arabs the same way the Europeans treated the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas. An online Lakota friend informed me more than a decade ago they have even had people come to their tribal elders at both the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota and present lectures seeking their nation's support to speak out against the State of Israel with the lie that Israel was committing genocide to the Palestinians as the European and the U.S. government had long been doing to the Indians. Thankfully, he and others did not fall for this propaganda, but he said many of their younger people did. I was so shocked and at first I just couldn’t even believe anyone would fall for this. I then went to the Native American chat rooms of Yahoo and if any of the people there had seen anything like that. It gave me an even sicker feeling when several Indians of other nations replied that they had also "learned" about what Israel was doing to the Palestinians from people coming to their tribal gatherings.

So based upon this and what I have seen displayed in Yahoo Answers in the past 4 years, I cannot deny or dismiss the fact that they are the targets of propaganda for the purpose of legitimizing the lie that Jews treat Palestinians like the European invaders and the govts of countries in North and South America treats the Indians and feel entitled to do so.

It is interesting to know if Columbus was a Jew if for no other purpose than to set the history straight if the facts support this. It is just as important to make it equally clear and keep straight that his treatment of the indigenous people was not displaying the values, ethics, goals or beliefs of Judaism. He is no hero to the Jewish people. If he was a Jew he was a bad Jew.

Jewish history shows that Jews value getting the history right, no matter what it reveals. From what we show in our own Holy Scriptures, the Tanakh onward we've never shied away from the honest history about our own or calling out the bad Jews for being bad. Lessons are learned from understanding the good, the bad and the ugly...Jews don't need to be embracing him as a *Jewish hero* or a hero of any kind.

He did not embody the ethics of Judaism even if he did leave money to the poor as a Jewish custom or wished to keep some aspects of Jewish heritage and connection. If he was indeed a Jew, he definitely wasn't one of our good guys.

That needs to be in the news, too.

=====================EDIT=====================
I thought the following email I received a short time ago from a young man had enough interesting points to share here. He doesn't have a blogger account to post this himself under comments. He gave me permission to share his email here. This is from my friend "Feivel" as I will identify him by screen name, a 24 year old Orthodox Jewish Israeli American studying to be a Rabbi. He brought up some interesting points especially regarding Tomás de Torquemada (1420–1498), prominent leader of the Spanish Inquisition and the liklihood that Columbus fled as a Jew....then RETURNED to Spain.

Here is what he had to say:
"I have heard before that he was Jewish or a converso but you didn't hear this before the real nature of the man came about. When he was "the hero" no one said he was Jewish now that his legacy is being looked at honestly, he is all of a sudden a converso.

I have seen or read about some of that evidence and dots in his will as a way for his sons to say Kaddish? I doubt that. He left money to a Jewish man. Ok. That does not mean he was Jewish. Two Jews paid for the Armada? Well, ok but Isabella would NEVER have given him the green light if he was Jewish or even remotely suspected of it and if it it so obvious to scholars today then it would have been REALLY obvious to church officials back then who would have imprisoned his family upon seeing the will (which the church would have seen).
I think you are right. It is a way to not bash Columbus's reputation (he doesn't need any help in that category as his actions do that themselves) but a way to bash us.
Torquemada had the queens ear (110%) and if he had even hinted that he thought Columbus was a converso then Columbus would not only have not been given money and a green light but he would have been thrown in prison and maybe executed. They would have searched for and found the will with the "Jewish symbol" on it. That would have been enough.
I just don't put much stock in the fact that he was Jewish but I will admit that Simon Weisenthal's assertion that he was Jewish.....makes me not totally discount it...
I have the utmost respect for Weisenthal and his research so I keep an open mind. Clearly there were thousands of people who chose Catholicism over death or expulsion and a guy like Torquemada going against a guy like Columbus, expulsion would not have been an option I fear. So how can he keep it sooo secret in his own time but in our time its "obvious". If he was going to find a new homeland, then why sail back to Spain where he knew persecution might still await him. If he was found to be Jewish after the expulsion, hero or not, he would have been executed (probably quietly). Whatever we do, unless my time frame is off, we MUST put Torquemada in the picture and he was so evil and so vicious that he would not have allowed Columbus to live. Historical records have it that Torquemada could actually enter the king and queen's chambers without knocking and it is recorded that he stormed in one day and berated them when they contemplated allowing the Jews to remain in Spain or at least a few Jews. They listened to him and did as he "commanded". An odd position for a "simple priest" and oddly, of course, he himself was by Jewish law, Jewish. His maternal grandmother was a converso.
So I think you are 110% correct. To "accurse" Columbus of being Jewish or a Marrano is really going to be used as another tool in the arsenal of the anti-Semite.

My guess is that his being Jewish would have been further removed than Torquemada's heritage would have been and your blog is also right in that we do need to understand history accurately. IF he was a converso or a marrano (which seems to be the actual theory) then I would be interested in how he pulled off staying hidden and not in Torquemada's crosshairs.

IF he was a converso then he was a heretic. If he was a marrano then....well, that's a little more fuzzy but certainly he would have outwardly indicated belief in the trinity which is something most of us would die before we did (or at least I think I would but having never been faced with that dilemma who knows). I cannot imagine worshipping a false deity. We are commanded to preserve life at all cost but obviously there are exceptions and that is the major one. So claiming him as "one of our own" is not something I would do with any relish and would have to say if he was then he was an apostate and therefore, we can distance ourselves from him.

I will say that I think the motivation most people have in researching him is scholarly (as opposed to the "hitler was Jewish" thing that is going on now) but I think their conclusions are coming too quick and based on too little evidence."



ANOTHER EDIT:

For those who have doubts as to the evidence to show that Christopher Columbus was a brutal slave trader and responsible for the enslavement, torture and genocide of at least three million people he wrote were innocents, read this essay and note it's references.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15026955/Thief-Slave-Trader-Murderer-Christopher-Columbus-and-Caribbean-Population-Decline
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Other references of his own words
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/columbus1.asp
http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/01-col.html
http://www.ushistory.org/documents/columbus.htm
http://earlyamericas.wordpress.com/anthology/columbus-letter-from-the-fourth-voyage/

Strange Cruelties: The Spanish Slaughter The Natives, West Indies, c. 1513 Bartolome de las Casas
details the Spanish treatment of the native peoples