The tourist agency in Jamaica said that one of the tourist sites that has become very popular recently is the Jewish cemetery there. Visitors come from all over the world. Among the graves there are some purported to be of religious Jewish pirates who attacked Spanish ships entering the seas surrounding the island in retaliation for the Spanish expulsion of Jews in 1492.
This chapter of history is not well known to the public. The period is 5291, the year that Jews first began settling in Jamaica, having been expelled from Spain by the Inquisition. America had just been discovered forty years earlier by Christopher Columbus.
The flow of immigrants was new. Jews arriving in Jamaica hoped to establish a Spanish city but for Jews only. They turned to the British government seeking aid in attacking Spanish ships sailing around Jamaica as revenge against the Spanish Expulsion of Jews. These Jewish pirates would attack the ships and appropriate the loot of its passengers.
The cemetery came to the attention of the authorities in 2008 when researchers surveyed the site in Kingston. They found many markers with Jewish symbols, but some of these also were marked with skulls and crossbones, the mark of pirates. Some researchers believe that the pirate markings were added later by anti-Semitic residents.
