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Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA)

Strategic Alliances for a Secure, Connected, and Prosperous Region
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Author: Norman Berdichevsky

Norman Berdichevsky holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1974) and is the author of The Danish-German Border Dispute (Bethesda, MD: Academica Press LLC, 2002) and Nations, Language and Citizenship (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing, 2004) and one of the contributors to Best Jewish Writing 2003 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004).
The Age-Old Iberian Rivalry and the Jews

The Age-Old Iberian Rivalry and the Jews

March 21, 2004 | Norman Berdichevsky
Psychiatrists use the term "sibling rivalry" to express the jealous and sometimes resentful feelings between brothers and sisters in the same household and apparently this applies to nations as well as individuals. This rivalry has had the unintended consequence of benefiting the Jews on four major occasions - the temporary refuge offered by Portugal from 1492 to 1497, the Portuguese twenty-year moratorium on the activities of the Inquisition in the early 1500s, the Spanish policy dur