To antisemites, Israel and the Jews are the reason for everything

The least surprising aspect of last week’s astonishing spectacle in a Spanish enclave on the coast of North Africa was who was blamed for it. Within hours of a crisis caused by as many as 60,000 Moroccan citizens swarming into the port of Ceuta, a technically autonomous city that belongs to Spain, Jew-haters on the right and the left, in addition to social-media accounts around the world, began spreading the claim that the entire thing was a plot hatched in Jerusalem.

Antisemites in the 21st century, just like the ones who perpetrated the Holocaust in the 20th century and persecuted Jews for two millennia before that, have the same belief system. When it comes to the world’s problems, no matter what the question, the answer always lies with the Jews. This set of conspiracy theories was quickly debunked and dismissed as nonsense by all but the most extreme and paranoid Israel-haters. But the exercise was nevertheless illuminating.

That’s because we have seen the same sort of ill-informed thinking, dubious dot-connecting, obvious prejudice and online algorithms at work in the 34 months since the horrifying atrocities of the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab assault in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. In that time, the same lying activists and influencers spread blood libels about Israel committing “genocide” and being an “apartheid” state. They have been put to use to create a narrative by which the side that actually intends to commit genocide—the Palestinians—was depicted as the innocent victims of the war that followed and the Israeli victims of Oct. 7 were painted as genocidal monsters.

The fact that a left-wing activist and inveterate Israel-basher like actor Javier Bardem would promote the notion that Israel had hatched a plot to somehow induce tens of thousands of Moroccans to push their way into Spanish Ceuta without legal permission makes sense only if you see the whole world through the lens of Jewish conspiracy.

His reasoning, if we can dignify it with that term, is rooted in the fact that the Spanish government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is the most anti-Israel in Europe, and given the hate for the Jewish state on the continent, that’s really saying something. Anything that embarrasses Sánchez or points out his hypocrisy must have an Israeli origin. Fellow leftist Ana Kasparian, co-host of the far-left “The Young Turks” podcast, agreed.

The same kind of motivation led American podcasters and antisemitic conspiracy theorists Candace Owens and Alex Jones to chime in, backing up claims about the Israeli origin of the incident. They pointed to a seven-year-old tweet by Yair Netanyahu, the 35-year-old son of the Israeli prime minister, when he pointed out and poked fun at the Spanish government’s hypocrisy in opposing the right of Jews to live in their ancient homeland while claiming that parts of Africa were integral to the Spanish republic.

And to show how far the rot has spread, they were joined in pointing to that tweet by Sean Davis, CEO and founder of The Federalist (where I used to be a senior contributor), in claiming that the younger Netanyahu was guilty of encouraging Moroccans to invade “Spain.” Davis, who was once supportive of Israel, is now so twisted by his opposition to the war on Iran and his support for Vice President JD Vance’s refusal to disavow the antisemitism of his friend—former Fox News host Tucker Carlson—that he, too, thinks that the Jewish state is somehow behind events in North Africa. Later, he also blasted Israel as somehow not caring about the Islamicization of Europe, which is nonsense.

This is a time when opposition to Israel has become the organizing principle of the ascendant left wing of the Democratic Party, and is serving a similar role on the less powerful but very noisy far right. Both factions and their foreign counterparts are therefore unsurprisingly resorting to the traditional tropes of antisemitism. In this way, they both see, as their medieval and 20th-century totalitarian forebears did, the Jews and now their state as the scapegoat and the secret key to understanding all the woes of the world.

That this would be the way so many people reacted to the news from Ceuta is both appalling and ironic.

Ceuta has been a source of tension between Spain and Moroccan people for centuries, with the latter claiming that one of the last vestiges of Madrid’s African empire (along with the separate enclave of Melilla 140 miles to the East) belongs to them.

In the centuries after Islamic invaders were finally expelled from their last principalities on the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, both Portugal and Spain waged wars to maintain their hold on the parts of the North African coast closest to their nations. Spain controlled part of Morocco from the late 16th century on. They fought a bloody war—known to history as the Rif War—to suppress anti-colonial Moroccan forces in the 1920s and were on the verge of losing it until France, which itself controlled even more of that country as part of its then vast colonial empire, joined forces with them to suppress the rebels.

It was from Spanish-controlled Morocco, including Ceuta, that Gen. Francisco Franco launched his rebellion against the country’s republican government in 1936. That began the Spanish Civil War, which his right-wing Catholic and fascist forces won with the assistance of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. After the Second World War, Spain lost most of its Moroccan colony, as well as the Saharan possession, to its south after Franco’s death in 1975. They managed to hold onto Ceuta and Melilla. But Morocco still claims sovereignty over both and considers Spanish rule there to be an anachronistic vestige of a bygone era of European imperialism.

The policies of the current leftist government of Spain have, in principle, been welcoming to immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa. That has continued even as other Europeans, like the Italian government led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, have sought to end the flood of migrants that is altering the culture and identity of their nations. Indeed, in a shot fired over the bow of Sanchez’s government, Meloni claimed that what happened in Ceuta was both “shocking” and “striking evidence” that uncontrolled illegal immigration poses a direct threat to Europe’s border security.

She’s right about that, though as the Moroccans who swarmed into Ceuta soon learned, there was nothing for them in the enclave and no easy path to get into Spain, where they had hoped to find jobs and a more prosperous life than that available to them in their native land.

What happened to the anti-imperialists?

But though Sánchez, like most other European leftists, has encouraged the swamping of Europe by millions of mostly Muslim migrants from the Third World, even he has been adamant in reasserting that Ceuta is an integral part of Spain. The spectacle of that many Moroccans overrunning the border into Ceuta caused him to fly there and assert that Spain will not give it up—and that all the illegal immigrants must go back where they came from.

We don’t know what set off the rush into Ceuta, though as The New York Times reported, Moroccan authorities at the border appear to have let it happen rather than stop it. But the assumption that somehow Israel must be behind it as part of an effort to undermine Sanchez is far-fetched.

Morocco signed the Abraham Accords with Israel in September 2020, and its government has treated the remnant of the once numerous Jewish community there well. The regime led by King Mohammed VI has diplomatic and security ties with Israel. And that makes it suspect in the eyes of anti-Israel fanatics. You have to be a devotee of antisemitic conspiracy theories to believe that this makes it an Israeli puppet.

Morocco has its own agenda with respect to Ceuta and Melilla, which it occasionally deploys to deflect domestic criticism against the government. You would think that those who claim to be against imperialism and colonialism would normally be expected to support Morocco’s claims. Yet in a world in which the only thing that matters is whether you are part of the international crusade to destroy the Jewish state, Spanish sovereignty over these enclaves—like the illegal occupation of Northern Cyprus by Turkey—cannot be criticized or exposed by stunts like last week’s incident.

It’s true that Israelis and friends of Israel have engaged in some schadenfreude over Sánchez’s discomfort. Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, did just that when he wrote on X that “Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis over its immigration policy. Maybe before it continues lecturing us, it’s time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa.”

Danon’s barb was spot-on, even if some argue that Israelis should refrain from comments in the hope of not alienating the right-wing Spanish parties hoping that events in Ceuta will help defeat Sánchez in elections in 2027 and bring to power a government that is more sympathetic to the Jewish state.

The notion that anything Danon said now or Yair Netanyahu commented on nearly a decade ago serves as proof of an Israeli conspiracy says more about those obsessed with the Jews as the puppet masters of world events than it does about anything Jerusalem does.

But as mad as all the conspiracy-mongering about Israel and Ceuta may be, it illustrates what is driving commentary about Israel. Much like the big lies about famine or “genocide” in Gaza or the equally libelous claims about Israel being an apartheid state, the allegations about it being behind the ancient dispute between Morocco and Spain don’t have to be true for vast numbers of people to believe it or for false claims to spread like wildfire on the internet.

A detailed report about the Ceuta border crisis published by the Combat Antisemitism Movement explained how this worked. Some 173 high-impact posts published on X in the 72 hours following the July 30 incident that spread lies about Israel being behind it had a reach of 103.1 million accounts, and accumulated 57.5 views and 1.9 million “Likes.” What’s more, these were not the work of isolated lunatics but of monetized influencers, backed up by celebrities like Bardem and faux experts like the antisemitic Kenneth Roth, the Israel-obsessed former head of Human Rights Watch.

While this is just one fake story, the “genocide” blood libels that are believed, as if it were revealed Divine truth by millions of Americans on the left and the far right, were produced in the same way with the same bogus sources and magnified by professional hate-mongers.

What makes this big lie even worse is that Ceuta points to a broader European problem—unchecked Muslim immigration from the Third World—that has materially altered the politics of many countries on the continent. The red-green alliance of Marxists and Islamists driving the post-Oct. 7 global surge in antisemitism is rooted in that development that journalist Douglas Murray wrote about in his prescient 2017 book, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam.

Rather than focus on threats to the West that the question of the preservation of Europe presents, instead the world seeks a Jewish or Israeli explanation for something that has nothing to do with them. That they do so is neither an innocent mistake nor the result of a misunderstanding. It is pure, unadulterated prejudice put forward by unabashed bigots like Owens and Jones, as well as those posing as defenders of human rights like Barden and Roth. And it filters into the thoughts of more mainstream figures like Davis, who ought to know better, though seems to have been drawn by the likes of Carlson into a conspiratorial rabbit hole.

This makes it clear that the argument Americans are having about Israel isn’t really about the merits of a war on Iran or what the best policy is for combating Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran’s genocidal terrorist proxies. The discussion about “genocide” or the fabrications about Israel manipulating America are examples of the kind of antisemitism that ought to be confined to the fever swamps of the far right and left in the same way people should treat the conspiracy theories about Ceuta. Instead, they are now mainstreamed by the media and embraced by powerful and loud voices that are having an impact on both our discourse and elections.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS. Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.

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