An analysis released by the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s (CAM) Antisemitism Research Center (ARC) documented how a humanitarian emergency on Spain’s border with Morocco was transformed into a worldwide accusation against the Jewish state within three days. The ARC identified 173 posts from 119 influencer accounts on X that recast the migrant surge into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta as a Jewish plot, reaching an estimated 103.1 million people.
“A humanitarian emergency at Europe’s border was turned into a global antisemitic campaign in under 72 hours, and X did nothing to slow it down,” said Sacha Roytman Dratwa, CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement. “This is not a story about a few bad actors. It is a story about a platform whose design rewards the fastest and most inflammatory explanation available, and on X that explanation is increasingly a Jewish conspiracy.”
Between 50,000 and 60,000 migrants crossed into Ceuta on July 30, prompting Spain to declare a state of emergency. The documented causes were a Spanish domestic legal ruling barring the summary return of migrants intercepted at sea, the deteriorating state of Spanish-Moroccan relations, and years of strain on Europe’s asylum system. Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska blamed people-smuggling networks for exploiting migrants and spreading misleading interpretations of the court ruling. Morocco’s Interior Ministry likewise pointed to social media misinformation and human trafficking networks. Spanish officials said the death toll from the crossing had reached at least 72 by Sunday.
That was not the story that spread on X. ARC’s 173 posts generated 57.5 million views, 1.9 million likes, and 368,400 shares within 48 hours. The average post reached an audience the size of a national newspaper’s circulation.
Verified Accounts, Not Bots
ARC noted that its sample excluded anonymous or low-reach accounts. Every account tracked was named, followed, and monetized, with the highest performers holding paid X verification that the platform prioritizes in replies and recommendations. A user searching for information on Ceuta was, according to the analysis, statistically more likely to encounter a conspiracy theory than a verified news report.
One account, “Forbidden HQ,” posted an image viewed 5.3 million times depicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a line of migrants filing from his mouth onto a Spanish beach, alongside a false claim that Ceuta and Melilla are Moroccan territory and a declaration that Morocco is an Israeli puppet state.
Dan Bilzerian, in a post that drew 2.7 million views, told his followers that Netanyahu had warned Spain would pay “the ultimate price” for condemning Israel. ARC found no record of that quote outside Bilzerian’s own post. He built the claim around a real Israeli Foreign Ministry message wishing Morocco a happy holiday, posted the same week, fusing an actual coincidence in timing with an invented threat.
An account calling itself “China Times,” unaffiliated with any Chinese outlet, claimed Israel had “admitted” engineering the migration through the Mossad. Its sole evidence was a labeled parody account. The post drew 11,000 retweets against 786 comments, a ratio near fourteen to one. Across the full sample, shares outnumbered comments by more than seven to one, indicating that audiences forwarded the claims rather than questioning them.
One Conspiracy, Every Political Direction
Far-right, far-left, and Islamist accounts posted materially identical claims within the same news cycle, all converging on the accusation that Zionists caused the crisis. On the far right, one account invoked the Kalergi Plan, a decades-old antisemitic theory alleging that Jewish elites are engineering the ethnic replacement of white Europeans. On the far left, author Susan Abulhawa told her followers the crossing was “completely engineered by the US, Israel, and Morocco” to force Spain back in line with “western imperial objectives.”
Fabrications also attached themselves to people who never made any such statement. An account called Land Palestine claimed Spanish actor Javier Bardem said Israel planned the migration to punish Spain over Gaza. Bardem said no such thing. Commentator Mia Khalifa quote-tweeted the claim to her followers, adding 906,700 more views to an unsourced accusation.
One thread pointed to Morocco’s documented military cooperation with Israel as evidence of orchestration, then concluded that an unnamed party sought control of the Strait of Gibraltar now that the Red Sea route is closed to Israeli shipping. The thread stopped short of naming Israel outright. Its readers did not need it to.
ARC’s report also traces the revival of the medieval “fifth column” myth, casting Muslim migration as a tool Jewish people are supposedly using to erase European civilization. Moroccan sovereignty disappeared inside these narratives as well, with posts repeatedly describing the kingdom not as a state making its own decisions but as a “Zionist stooge” or “Israeli puppet.”
CAM is calling on X to introduce algorithmic friction on keywords tied to established antisemitic tropes during declared humanitarian emergencies, to disqualify accounts that spread those tropes from the ad revenue program and verified distribution priority, and to deploy expert Community Notes built with organizations, including CAM, to supply historical context in real time.
Danon’s Post Sparks Its Own Controversy
The conspiracy theories accelerated after Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, criticized Spain’s handling of the crisis. “Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis over its immigration policy,” Danon wrote on X. “Maybe before it continues lecturing us, it’s time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa.”
Spanish Transportation Minister Óscar Puente Santiago responded directly: “Well, things are starting to get pretty clear.” The remark, though vague, was widely read as an endorsement of the theory that Israel and the United States had engineered the crisis. Israel’s Ambassador to Spain, Dana Erlich, subsequently distanced Jerusalem from Danon’s comments, writing in Spanish and English that his remarks did not represent the position of the State of Israel.
Spanish political commentator Carolina Alonso wrote on X that the crisis was “a coordinated attack between Morocco, the United States, and Israel, with the collaboration of the European and Spanish far right,” framing it as retaliation for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s recent trip to Algeria. Gabriel Rufián, spokesperson for the Republican Left of Catalonia party, wrote that “the Moroccan dictatorship, in the service of the US and Israel, is once again blackmailing Spain and Europe this summer by turning its own people into disposable cannon fodder.”
Far-right commentator Candace Owens circulated a seven-year-old post by Netanyahu’s son Yair as supposed proof of Israeli involvement. Far-left Spanish activist Ana Alcalde, known online as “Gaza Barbie,” began posting within hours of the first crossings that the crisis was “a plan to take down a progressive government like the one of Pedro Sánchez.” Alex Jones claimed on the far right that “Israel launched an Islamic invasion of Spain” with American backing.
Former Human Rights Watch chief Kenneth Roth advanced his own version of the theory, suggesting Israel prefers Moroccan control of Ceuta over Spanish control because Spanish control of the Strait of Gibraltar could allow Madrid to block Israeli shipping to the Atlantic, drawing a comparison to Iran’s position at the Strait of Hormuz.
Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, delivered a direct rebuttal. “Nothing in the article you cited supports your bizarre theory,” Neuer wrote to Roth. “There is zero mention of Israel, any Israeli interest in Ceuta or Melilla, the Strait of Gibraltar in relation to Israeli shipping, or any theory that Israel wants Morocco to control the enclave.” Neuer noted that British Gibraltar, not Spain, controls the strait’s northern chokepoint, that NATO and EU members do not mine international waterways, and that Spain has maintained diplomatic relations with Israel far longer than Morocco has. He called the claim “pure Israel Derangement Syndrome untethered from any evidence” and criticized Princeton and Yale for continuing to give Roth a platform.
Diplomatic relations between Madrid and Jerusalem have deteriorated sharply since Hamas terrorists launched their October 7, 2023, massacre and the two-year war in Gaza that followed. Spain formally recognized a Palestinian state in May 2024, with Sánchez emerging as one of Europe’s most vocal critics of Israel’s conduct in the war. That backdrop, ARC’s report suggests, supplied fertile ground for a conspiracy theory that spread across ideological lines faster than the facts on the ground in Ceuta itself.
