Yes, many of the leaders were Normans. So what? I can't see why this makes any difference.
Yes it actually does, i dont know if you are to foolish to understand certain things or have a big part of your brain blown away, read my posts again and do not just skim through it. Reflect on each sentence and even maybe search it up. Normans were brutal, and they started to be highly involved in politics, if not for the normans, europe wouldnt have colonized a big part of the world. The normans were the head leaders of these crusaders and hated everything which was actually monetheism.
What are you talking about? Hide what identity from who?
The Normans were indeed very aggressive and successful warriors who conquered England, Sicily and southern Italy (from the Byzantines no less). This was one of the reasons why they had a difficult relationship with Alexios I. But none of this has any Jewish connection.
Again you missed a big part of my posts, the normans were the vikings, but now they were mixed with the european populations so they simply started to call themselves normans.
No they did not and they made many attempts to recapture lost territory. They would undoubtedly have retaken Jerusalem if they were able.
Alexios asked the Pope for assistance when he was under further pressure from Muslim raiders. He expected a few hundred professional soldiers, not the mob that descended on Constantinople a couple of years later (by which time the Muslim threat had diminished again anyway). Plainly he was very nervous of what they might do.
In a series of difficult negotiations the Crusaders agreed to continue into Asia Minor with Byzantine support. In their view, they would be taking lands to hold in their own name. In Alexios's view, they would re-take land as his vassals.
The subsequent refusal of the Crusaders to accept Alexios as their overlord, after they had successfully regained Jerusalem, was the single decisive factor which led to their later defeat - because it meant their support had to come all the way from western Europe, not Byzantium. None of this has anything to do with the Jews.
Instead of reinstating Byzantine rule in Palestine, it broke the association once and for all. In fact (if you wanted to be provocative) you could portray the First Crusade as the illegal seizure of the Holy Land by Normans not from the Muslims, but from the Byzantines.
Also - before you start constructing grand schemes around the crusade - one of the most notable things about the First Crusade is how extremely unlikely it was that they would win. Neither Alexios nor the Muslims took them seriously. They really should have lost, especially at the gates of Antioch and Jerusalem.
The only reason they won for a while was their blood line, the normans were always experienced warriors and they attacked with such brutal force, let me say that it was a 'blitzkrieg' tactic and it was. They ruined it by starting to attack muslims which broke the peace treaty. The byzantines accepted their defeat in syria and egypt, atleast the king heraclius did. His succesors would always try attempts to regain territory but they failed over and over again.
They were superstitious. You're moving into Dan Brown territory.
not a theory, they were and have found the magic tablets, and they started to practice it. Do you know why William Wallace spoke numerous languages which nobody could've learned in a short time. William wallace was a crusader and after he returned he led the war against the monarch of england for the independence of scottland.
What is the point of showing a map of successful conquests but ignoring unsuccessful ones? For example, the 7th crusade under Louis IX was a major attempt to take Egypt which might well have succeeded if the luck had gone with them.
You are attempting to confuse me but you fail. You simply dont understand my point so i suggest you to move out of this discussion and read my posts from the start again. with the map i explained the goal of the crusades, it wasnt egypt, it was the land of palestine.
What is the difference between Muslims invading Christian Palestine and a Christian return attack to retake the land from Muslims? Why is one a 'colonisation' but not the other? This is just the regular ebb and flow of military history. And there is absolutely no evidence the Crusaders wanted to give anything to the Jews, quite the reverse.
The muslims invaded palestine because they were in a state of war with the romans. After the romans started to oppress the muslim converts in damascus and made threats against the muslims. So yeah, they simply brought it upon themselves. Colonization is not the right word to use for this. Colonization is conquering the land and make it adopt to your culture, to spread your domination around this by oppressing the native population and supress any rebellions.
This attack was by a maverick Christian leader, Raynald de Chatillion, who acted against the explicit instructions of the King of Jerusalem. Raynald had spent 17 years as a captive of the Muslims and the experience seems to have turned his head. He was borderline insane.
He was treated well, but his lust for more war brought him to this act. However he led a team of templar knights.
Because the purpose of the First Crusade was to seize Jerusalem and secure it for Christian pilgrimage. Whether the stories of Christian pilgrims being abused was exaggerated or even made up from the start is irrelevant. When the topic of discussion is the motivations of the crusaders, the only thing that matters is what they belived, not whether what they believed was actually true.
The christians were safe and protected by the muslims during their pilgrimage, so that wasnt the obvious reason.
The known historical facts don't support your assertion that it was a pre-planned initiative by Christian rulers. Had they actually wanted to protect Constantinople, it would have happened, or at least start being prepared, immediately after the Battle of Manzikert in 1072 when Alparslan's Turks overran Asia Minor. Yet, the Byzantine plea for help was utterly ignored by Western Europe. Pope Urban II had spent his entire time as Pope to agitate for Christian holy war against Muslims - first against Al-Andalus, and after 1072 against the Turks. Yet, he had been utterly ignored until the very last decade of the 11th century, when a spontaneous popular mass movement of crusading fervour arose in Europe in response to the stories of abuse of Christian pilgrims. The grassroots nature of the movement is proven well enough by the fact that what's usually known as the First Crusade actually wasn't the first. It was the first endorsed by the Pope, but a few years before it, the People's Crusade had taken place all on its own without any official support. The reason we don't hear much of it is simply that, due to its disorganized nature (as grassroots movements tend to be) and due to being mostly made up of peasants without much military training, it was defeated almost as soon as it arrived in Muslim lands.
HAH! You said it yourself: ''Yet, he had been utterly ignored until the very last decade of the 11th century, when a spontaneous popular mass movement of crusading fervour arose in Europe in response to the stories of abuse of Christian pilgrims''
And why? Why the massive propaganda and why the sudden revival (Mainly from western europe, under rule of the normans). As i mentioned a couple of time, trace the lineage of the normans and you will know why. If not for them, europe wouldnt have conquered most of the world.
And, had the real goal of the First Crusade actually have been to protect Constantinople, it would have attacked some Muslim state that actually constituted a threat to it, like one of the Turkish sultanates, or even Fatimid Egypt. But instead they went for Palestine, which was relatively poor and scarcely populated in comparison to either Syria, Iraq or Egypt.
You dig yourself in, infact you have only proved that i am right in this matter. Now you need to ask yourself, why jerusalem? And not the territories which posed a threat to europe? independent also failed to answer this, so do you. Infact they felt fine in jerusalem, they werent really bothered to go further. And even if they managed to conquer egypt - it wouldnt be their real goal, it would be jerusalem. Trace the movements of the last colonization and you will know why.
An utterly absurd suggestion. Why would medieval Christian rulers support the resettlement of Palestine by Jews? This was the Middle Ages, when supersessionism was a universally accepted Christian doctrine: The Church was considered to be the new Israel and the inheritor of the Chosen status of the Jews, with the Jews being considered no different from any other people at best, or evil Christ-killers at worst. Christian Zionism would have been utterly absurd to any medieval Christian.
Christian zionism is a product of the crusades. The judeo-christian alliance existed at that time, now comes another question: Wasn't it also their attempts to try to rebuild their temple? The jews actually provided from these crusades, since jerusalem was now under crusader control, and some jews wanted to destroy al-aqsa and rebuild the temple. The crusaders in this case, would've agreed with it.
And if a great deal of Jews, disguised as Christians, really went to Palestine along with the First Crusade, what happened to them? The First Crusade was a success, so if there was this significant contingent of secret Jews among it, why didn't it cause a large increase in the Jewish population of the area? Before the Zionist enterprise began in the late 19th century, the Jewish population of Palestine stood at a few thousand, a population which was utterly apathetic towards the Zionist enterprise. If they were sleeper agents implanted there to facililate a later Jewish takeover, they must have fallen asleep and forgotten about it
The jews were undercover, they started to pose themselves as christians. So they didnt built synagogues or anything related to judaism. If you pose as one of groups of people you will eventually become one of them. During that time, the very idea of rebuilding the temple was already considered. Remember that there were numerous attempts in the past, and they achieved their goal with the colonization of the muslim world. The destroying of the caliphate, this actually paved the way for the creation of 'israel'. So if they achieved their goals 1000 years ago, the same thing would've happened, but now things were easier because they brought up a new tactic: divide and conquer, to make the muslims divided and they wont pose any threat.
And their superior technology was also one thing they were 'faster' now. And also because this was planned in advance.
The occupation of palestine was always their goal, the colonization paved the way for it. Now they have managed to conquer it, brought the jews in it, and control the state of 'israel'.