On several occasions between 1490 and 1492, Sultan Bayezid II of the Ottoman Empire sent a fleet under the command of Kemal Reis to the Andalucia region of Spain to save the Sephardic Jews from the oppression of the Spanish Inquisition and allowed them to settle in the territories of the Ottoman Empire. Albert Einstein, who believed Jews and Muslims could live together and opposed the Zionist project to establish Israel in Palestine, wrote in 1939: “There could be no greater calamity than a permanent discord between us and the Arab people. Despite the great wrong that has been done us [in the Western world], we must strive for a just and lasting compromise with the Arab people… Let us recall that in former times no people lived in greater friendship with us than the ancestors of these Arabs.”
Posted on: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 21:42:04 +0000