In light of recent events in the Middle East -- in which it seems nearly impossible to avoid a mutually exclusive choice to support the cause of either Palestine or Israel -- it's interesting to recall much older wars in which "The West" -- which pretty much meant "The Church," which, before the 16th centuty at least, pretty much meant the Catholic Church -- brought its intolerant wrath to bear on Muslims and Jews alike.

On March 12 [2000], the first Sunday in Lent, Pope John Paul II apologized to God for assorted bad things done in the name of the church over the past 2,000 years. Although he employed carefully vague language, he seemed to be saying that he was sorry about, inter alia, the Crusades, the Inquisition, forcible conversions in South America and Africa and the denial of equal rights to women...

from: Regrets Only by Katha Pollitt
source: The Nation, 3 April 2000
via: HighBeam Research
Copyright © 2000 The Nation Company L.P.

Where the Crusades went primarily after Muslims, the Inquisition started with the Jews, as documented by B. Netanyahu in The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain.

A century after their entry into society, strong animosity built up against the "Conversos" (the integrated former Jews) accused of secretly continuing their Jewish practices. Recent scholarship has suggested that the accusations of crypto-Judaism were unfounded (Netanyahu, 1995; Roth, 1995). But the Church and society moved to nullify, in many ways, the incorporation of the Conversos. The integrated Jew had become the pernicious, inner enemy of Christianity. In 1478, the Spanish Inquisition was created to extirpate the invisible Jews, and the Conversos as a group came under suspicion, not for their actions, but for who they were. Statutes of "purity of blood" were promulgated to keep the New Christians out of many public offices. Professing Jews, easily identifiable, were expelled in 1492; Conversos were burned at the stake.

from: The essential "other" and the Jew: from antisemitism to genocide by Henri Zukier
source: Social Research, 22 December 1996.
via: HighBeam Research
Copyright © 1996 New School for Social Research