Morocco-Spain Issues Aren't About Israel
Let's Be Serious
Spain is doing pretty well. As a sort of recognition of the country’s World Cup victory on July 19th, Ruairi and I decided to do a deep dive on the country and how it’s one of the happier stories in Europe right now. As sometimes happens when there is a 12 day gap between recording and publishing, a very relevant news event has occurred that didn’t make the episode.
On Thursday June 30th Morocco allowed (encouraged?) a massive surge of migrants to spill into a Spanish enclave on the coast of Africa. Ceuta, like the other Spanish controlled enclave, Melilla, has been in European hands since the 1400s. These cities on the coast of Morocco were meant to be beachheads for a larger European conquest of North Africa, with an eye towards a further reconstitution of the Roman Empire. Those energies ended up being diverted to the Americas, yet the enclaves persist.
The Spanish government quickly resolved the issue. Even the most left wing of major European governments has traveled pretty far to the right on migration issues over the past decade. There were no niceties about asylum applications or humanitarian concerns from Spain’s socialist government. Healthy migrants were offered no food or shelter and marched back into Morocco.
The long-term effects on Ceuta, Spain and the migrants that didn’t drown or get trampled on their scramble over the border are negligible but the visuals were pretty appalling. Migrant haters from Elon Musk to European governments used the imagery to castigate Pedro Sanchez and his Spanish government for exactly the pro-immigration policies we celebrate in this week’s podcast.
The behavior of Elon Musk and his hordes of paid racists on Twitter is unfortunate but expected. What I’d like to do today is a little policing of people I often to agree with, from Hasan Piker to Glenn Greenwald. Many took to Twitter to portray this clear attack on Spain’s sovereignty, and its migration policies as a coordinated attack by forces aligned by Israel. I think that goes way too far, and risks straying into the antisemitic territory that anybody who wants to successfully confront Israel’s horrific crimes should avoid.
You can listen to Ruairi and I celebrate Spain’s success in the podcast below, or you can read on to find out why last week’s unpleasantness between Spain and Morocco has very little to do with Israel.
Israel & Spain Have Problems
There’s no question that Spain and Israel’s relationship has fallen apart. Spain was a poor country under a neutral dictatorship during World War II. It feels none of the guilt that Germany feels for crimes against Jews, or even the guilt that Britain or the US feels for not doing enough to help ameliorate the Holocaust. This has always left Spain a little freer to condemn Israeli crimes.
In the aftermath of October 7th, and Israel’s mounting genocidal actions against Gaza, Pedro Sanchez’s Spain was not shy in issuing condemnations. Sanchez initially looked like a risky outlier in condemning Israel, but now he seems like a moral leader and a trend-setter. Israel obviously doesn’t like any of that.
In the Trump era, Morocco is the most serious country that has been willing to trade Arab solidarity for Israel-related geopolitical advantage. Of the four initial signatories to Trump’s Abraham Accords with Israel, Morocco is the only country with both independence and a degree of stability. Bahrain and the UAE’s security and very existence are dependent on a US security umbrella. Sudan has fallen to pieces since signing on to the Accords.
Morocco signed up in return for very clear geopolitical carrots. Since the 1970s Morocco has claimed the territory of Western Sahara. The United States and the United Nations had held those claims to be illegitimate for around half a century. In return for signing on to the Abraham Accords, Trump recognized that annexation in 2020, outraging generations of US public servants, including renowned Republican Secretary of State James Baker.
US policy towards Morocco is a clear example of traditional US principles and positions being sacrificed for Israel’s benefit. Israel is angry at Spain. Morocco just caused an international incident that humiliated Spain. I can see why a lot of people I agree with would want to blame last week’s troubling scenes on Israel.
I don’t think it holds water though.
Morocco Has Never Been Happy About Ceuta
Ceuta and Melilla are not new issues. Morocco has long been very clear about how much they hate the fact that strategic locations on its coastline are controlled by Spain. If I were the sort of person who ever thought border revision was a good thing, I’d be sympathetic. Just as I would be sympathetic to Spain’s very similar anger about Britain’s control of Gibraltar on the Spanish coast. British enclaves in Spain and Spanish enclaves in Morocco are a remnant of colonialism, and a world of war for position that is no longer relevant, and we should be working to make less relevant.
For 600 years, over and over again, under a variety of regimes, Morocco has fought to remove these enclaves. This isn’t even the first time that Morocco has tried to embarrass Spain’s Sanchez government with a migrant surge. They pulled a similar stunt in 2021.
Morocco’s position since Spain’s EU accession in 1986 has been more complex. They’re still angry about the enclaves, but they also derive massive benefit from Spain’s transition into a fully developed economy in recent decades. Spanish and European investment in Morocco is massive. So Morocco seeks a degree of deniability and ambiguity when challenging Spain’s African enclaves. Wanting to get rich off of Spain does not mean Morocco has given up on Ceuta and Melilla entirely, however.
I suppose it’s possible that Morocco felt emboldened to act against a European country this way, in 2021 because of the Abraham Accords, and in 2026 because of the more open rift between Spain and Israel. Dumb US policy, and Trump in particular, often warp the expectations and permissions for action of many countries.
But critics of Israel are going way too far in the “It’s all for Israel!!!!” direction. Some suggest that Israel has a deep strategic reason for caring about Ceuta in particular. Ana Kasparian in particular has been championing the idea that the Morocco-Spain issue is all about Israel. Does Israel dislike Spain? Yes. Have a variety of Israel supporters long tried to use Ceuta and Melilla as a whataboutist point to somehow make the Gaza genocide look acceptable? Of course. Does that mean that Morocco has no reasons to do this itself, and only acts in service to some Zionist directive? Absolutely not.
The two smoking guns that have been on offer by the conspiracy theorists get colder the longer you look at them. Glenn Greenwald has suggested that a passage from an American Enterprise Institute nut job might have something to do with last week’s events. The more context you have, the less this looks like. Michael Rubin’s job is making silly, unworkable suggestions against the US and Israel’s perceived enemies. Morocco’s actions last week do bear some resemblance to what Rubin suggested earlier this year, but that’s because Morocco has repeatedly taken similar actions for fifty years. As is often the case with Washington, DC nut jobs, Rubin vastly underestimates Spain’s capability to deal with provocations by US allies.
The other supposed “smoking gun”, popularized by soon to be former US congressperson Thomas Massie, is a provision signed into law by the Israel-loving US congress just two weeks ago!
This is a classic Massie-ism. His heart is probably in the right place, but he plays pretty fast and loose with the facts. Massie implies that the US congress somehow arbitrarily changed the Spanish border in Africa. Nothing of the kind took place. There was some Spain critical language in the bill that passed. But it was in a much larger bill, that included a bunch of vague, aspirational US imperial bullshit.
With both the AEI scholar’s piece and the legislation, critics of imperialism are mistaking half-assed glomming on to an already existing issue for orders to the Moroccan government. It’s kind of imperialist of them, actually. Morocco cares about Ceuta because it has always cared about Ceuta. It’s not a sinister Zionist plot that the Moroccan government decided to push this issue last week. I think you can make a case that the timing may have something to do with feeling that they had Trump’s permission. But you’d have to make that case, and the direct connection to Israel is pretty tenuous.
Washington, DC doesn’t like Spain’s Israel policy. But it doesn’t approve of Spain’s policies towards NATO funding either. When seeking to confront Israeli crimes, it’s important to not fall for conspiracy theories that exaggerate the level of Israeli responsibility for broader geopolitics. I don’t even think the United States was primarily responsible for Morocco’s actions last week, and I blame the United States for everything.
You can check out this week’s podcast on Spotify, or on YouTube below…