S J Pearce in the Washington Post

The medieval fantasy that fuels Israel’s far right

Issue 03 — Spring 2020 — Session 01 — Iberian Connections and Public Humanities
By Sarah Pearce | Published on February 6, 2020

"This week saw the formation of a new electoral ticket in Israel, part of a run-up to the parliamentary elections in April. The ticket represents a collaboration between the far-right party Jewish Home (Bayit Yehudi) and the even-farther-right Jewish Power (Otzma Yehudit). The Jewish Home platform opposes immigration from African countries, supports annexation of Palestinian territories and characterizes Israel’s Arab citizens as a fifth column. The Jewish Power platform calls for even greater territorial seizures in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and for the deportation of Arabs from Israel.”

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S J Pearce published this article on March 1st, 2019. Combining her expertise in Near Eastern Studies, Iberian poetry, and contemporary politics, Pearce offers a reading on how the far-right used medieval Iberian thinkers and poets.

“Ibn Naghrila was, in many ways, the archetype of a certain class of Jews living in medieval Spain: a native speaker of Arabic and Spanish, well-educated and well-read, religiously devout, respected by his coreligionists. He was a civil servant working at the highest levels of a government led by a Muslim emir, to whom he displayed loyalty even as he came under attack by other Arab and Muslim political interests. He also wrote a brand of secular poetry dealing with everything from love to the highs and horrors of war and laments over a Jerusalem that was, during that period, in many ways seen as off-limits to Jews.”

S J Pearce in the Wash­ington Post

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S J Pearce in the Washington Post