{"id":64758,"date":"2026-08-02T15:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T15:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/64758\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T15:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T15:12:14","slug":"cam-research-x-turned-spains-ceuta-crisis-into-a-global-antisemitic-conspiracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/64758\/","title":{"rendered":"CAM research: X turned Spain\u2019s Ceuta crisis into a global antisemitic conspiracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

An analysis<\/a> by CAM\u2019s Antisemitism Research Center<\/a> (ARC) found that 173 posts from 119 influencer accounts on X<\/a> recast a European border emergency as a Jewish plot, reaching an estimated 103.1 million people in 72 hours.<\/p>\n

Between 50,000 and 60,000 migrants crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on July 30. Spain declared a state of emergency. The causes were a matter of public record: a Spanish domestic legal ruling, the state of Spanish-Moroccan relations, and a decade of strain on Europe\u2019s asylum system.<\/p>\n

That is not the story that spread. Within hours, the ARC found that the dominant explanation on X named the State of Israel and the Jewish people as the architects of European destabilization<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ARC analyzed 173 high-impact posts published in the 72 hours after the crossing, drawn from 119 influencer accounts. Together they generated 57.5 million views, an estimated reach of 103.1 million, 1.9 million likes, and 368,400 shares in two days. The average post alone reached an audience the size of a national newspaper\u2019s circulation.<\/p>\n

The data points to three clear conclusions.<\/p>\n

This Was Not the Anonymous Fringe<\/p>\n

ARC does not track bot clusters or low-reach anonymous accounts. Every account in the sample is named, followed, and monetized. The highest performers hold paid verification, which X prioritizes in replies and recommendations. A user searching for information about Ceuta was statistically more likely to find a conspiracy theory than a verified news report.<\/p>\n

One account called \u201cForbidden HQ,\u201d viewed 5.3 million times, depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a line of migrants filing from his open mouth onto a Spanish beach. A reply beneath it falsely labeled Ceuta and Melilla as Moroccan territory. \u201cForbidden HQ\u201d answered its own quote tweet by declaring Morocco an Israeli puppet state.<\/p>\n

A fabricated image shared on X falsely portrays Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as orchestrating the migrant surge into Spain\u2019s Ceuta enclave.<\/p>\n

Dan Bilzerian, whose post drew 2.7 million views, told his followers Prime Minister Netanyahu had warned Spain would pay \u201cthe ultimate price\u201d for condemning Israel. The quote appears nowhere outside Bilzerian\u2019s own post. What he built it around was real: an Israeli Foreign Ministry message wishing Morocco a happy holiday, posted that same week. He fused a real coincidence in timing with an invented threat and let readers draw the conclusion themselves.<\/p>\n

Dan Bilzerian falsely attributed a threat to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, using an unrelated Israeli Foreign Ministry post about Morocco to lend credibility to the fabricated claim. (Photo credit: social media)<\/p>\n

Audiences Forwarded Rather Than Questioned<\/p>\n

Shares outnumbered comments by more than seven to one across the sample. Users amplified the claims and rarely challenged them.<\/p>\n

An account calling itself \u201cChina Times,\u201d unaffiliated with any Chinese news outlet, claimed Israel had \u201cadmitted\u201d engineering the migration through Mossad. Its evidence was a labeled parody account. The post still drew 11,000 retweets against 786 comments, a ratio near fourteen to one.<\/p>\n

A widely viewed post falsely alleged that Israel and the Mossad orchestrated the Ceuta border crisis, citing a parody account as evidence. (Photo credit: social media)<\/p>\n

The Theory Crossed Every Ideological Line<\/p>\n

Far-right \u201cGreat Replacement\u201d accounts, far-left anti-imperialist accounts, and radical Islamist accounts posted materially identical claims within the same news cycle. All of them concluded that Zionists caused the crisis. Antisemitism was the connective tissue between audiences that share no other political ground, and X\u2019s recommendation engine treated the overlap as an engagement signal worth amplifying.<\/p>\n

The ARC report found the same antisemitic conspiracy framed through far-right, far-left, and Islamist narratives.<\/p>\n

On the far right, one account invoked the Kalergi Plan, a decades-old antisemitic theory holding that Jewish elites are engineering the ethnic replacement of white Europeans.<\/p>\n

A widely shared post promoted the antisemitic \u201cGreat Replacement\u201d conspiracy by falsely linking Spain\u2019s criticism of Israel to the Ceuta migrant surge. (Photo credit: social media)<\/p>\n

On the far left, author Susan Abulhawa told her followers the crossing was \u201ccompletely engineered by the US, Israel, and Morocco\u201d to force Spain back in line with \u201cwestern imperial objectives.\u201d<\/p>\n

A meme account linked Spain\u2019s stance on Palestine, its refusal to aid the Iran war, and the migrant wave as proof of a coordinated Israeli plot. (Photo credit: social media)<\/p>\n

The overlap showed up in humor as much as argument. One meme account listed Spain\u2019s pro-Palestinian stance, its refusal to aid the Iran war, and the migrant wave as connected facts, captioned with a declaration that the pattern was no coincidence. The post reached 1.1 million views.<\/p>\n

A widely shared post falsely claimed that the United States, Israel, and Morocco engineered the Ceuta border crisis to punish Spain for its criticism of Israel. (Photo credit: social media)<\/p>\n

Fabrications also attached themselves to real people who never spoke. 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 it to her own followers anyway, adding 906,700 more views to a claim with no source at all.<\/p>\n

A viral post amplified the false claim that Israel orchestrated the Ceuta migrant surge in retaliation for Spain\u2019s criticism of Israel. (Photo credit: social media)<\/p>\n

The narratives became progressively more elaborate. One thread pointed to Morocco\u2019s documented military cooperation with Israel as evidence of who orchestrated the crossing, then concluded that an unnamed party wanted control of the Strait of Gibraltar now that the Red Sea is closed to Israeli shipping. The thread stopped short of naming Israel directly. Its readers did not need it to.<\/p>\n

This post falsely portrayed Morocco\u2019s cooperation with Israel as evidence that Israel orchestrated the Ceuta migrant surge. (Photo credit: social media)<\/p>\n

The report also traces the revival of the medieval \u201cfifth column\u201d myth, casting Muslim migration as a tool Jewish people are using to erase European civilization. Moroccan sovereignty disappeared inside the same narratives. Posts repeatedly described the kingdom not as a state making its own decisions, but as a \u201cZionist stooge\u201d or an \u201cIsraeli puppet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA humanitarian emergency at Europe\u2019s border was turned into a global antisemitic campaign in under 72 hours, and X did nothing to slow it down. 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,\u201d said Sacha Roytman Dratwa, CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement.<\/p>\n

CAM is calling on X to take three actions.<\/p>\n

Introduce algorithmic friction on keywords tied to established antisemitic tropes during declared humanitarian emergencies.Disqualify accounts that spread those tropes from the ad revenue program and from verified distribution priority.Deploy expert Community Notes, built in partnership with subject-matter organizations including CAM, to supply historical context in real time.<\/p>\n

X is functioning as an engine for the demonization of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.<\/p>\n

Read the full ARC report,\u00a0The Weaponization of the Ceuta Border Crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An analysis by CAM\u2019s Antisemitism Research Center (ARC) found that 173 posts from 119 influencer accounts on X…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[668,26007,17,15309],"class_list":["post-64758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-antisemitism","tag-combat-antisemitism-movement","tag-spain","tag-x"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}