Navigating today’s neo-McCarthyism in politics

I’m hesitant to even mention this for several reasons.

One is that it involves referencing some really dull prose.

Another is that it involves possibly falling into the “don’t think of an elephant” trap that linguist George Lakoff warned against. That is, if you are responding to an attack or especially to a falsehood by the other political side, you need to avoid responding in a way that reinforces the opponents’ framing. Because if you tell someone not to think of an elephant, it instantly makes the hearer think of an elephant.

Josh Marshall, who is definitely sympathetic to Democrats in general and not in a Joe Manchin or Joe Lieberman kind of way, brings up something I had never heard of before in a piece titled, “Houston, We Have a Problem … What’s Up With the National DSA?” (1)

That would be the Democratic Socialists of America group with which some Democratic progressives like AOC have associated themselves. And Josh is telling us we need to be really concerned about this!

I’ll digress here a bit to recall an incident from Ronald Reagan’s political career when he was challenged on his flirtation with the far-right John Birch Society, a white supremacist group famous for its for its dogmatic anti-Communism who was influential with some rich rightwing Republicans. (2) They thought Dwight Eisenhower was a commie. The Birchers endorsed Reagan in his 1966 campaign for California governor. He effectively dispatched that criticism by saying that if someone endorsed him, it meant that they were buying into his program, not that he was buying into theirs. The Bircher brand was toxic for mainstream voters.

In his 1980 Presidential campaign, which had plenty of racist overtones, Reagan did explicitly reject the endorsement of a Ku Klux Klan group. Which is something in his favor.

Which brings us back to Josh’s recent article. I certainly don’t have anything against today’s social- democracy as such. It’s a quirk of American politics that welfare-state measures like Medicare, Social Security, minimum wage and union rights are considered “liberal,” although those are also the types of programs social-democratic parties support. In fact, the US and Canada are the only countries that I know of that use “liberal” to mean left-of-center. In Europe and Latin America, “liberal” generally refers to parties that support “free market” policies and are even may be considered to the right of “conservatives.”

So if Republicans want to let their Bircher flags fly and say out loud they want to get rid of all this here socialism stuff like Medicare and Social Security – they should go for it!

Since no two Democratic elected officials totally agree on everything anyway, they don’t need to apologize for or denounce positions taken by people with whom they have one or two or three degrees of separation. But the title of Josh’s article alerts his readers to think there is something really dangerous about the “national DSA.” Most of his readers will probably know that DSA refers to a particular democratic-socialist group.

I certainly have no phobia against left publications or groups or podcasts as such. On the contrary. I’m on board with the slogan Sam Seder’s Majority Report podcast sometimes uses: Left Is Best!

So imagine my surprise at reading Josh Marshall in full scold mode over the infamous Red Star Caucus group. (3) Never heard of that? Neither had I until I read his piece. It turns out that DSA, which is an ideological and activist group but not a part of the Democratic Party, also includes a “Red Star Caucus” that has a “points of unity” statement that sounds like something out of the late 1970s in which they identify themselves as Marxist-Leninists who would like someday to have an actual communist system. And who apparently have a fondness for dull sectarian prose.

Josh’s approach seems uncomfortably like naively walking into Lakoff’s “don’t think of an elephant” trap. Look! Some progressive candidates in Democratic primaries have some association to that DSA thing (that most voters probably couldn’t identify what it is)! And some other people who associate with the DSA are actual Marxists!! And these Red Star Caucus people – who most people including hardcore political junkies have never heard of - are spreading “the seed corn of left-wing authoritarianism”!!

Next step in the process is for rightwingers to flag his article with a description like “even the flaming leftwing borderline commie Josh Marshall says the DSA Dumb-ocrats want to take your take your house and your cars away from you and make you work on a collective farm!!”

Unfortunately, rightwing media may see that as an invitation to do that. The New York Post already just last week ran an opinion piece by longtime Republican hack and editor of the National Review Rich Lowry with a headline warning, “the DSA’s communist coup is real.”

Meanwhile, the Republicans have given us a Reagan Revolution, a Gingrich Revolution, and a mob of murderous Trumpistas storming the US Capital on January 6, 2021 to overturn the results of the Presidential elections. And masked ICE Gestapo thugs prowling the streets and exercising literal state terror.

It’s worth noting that DSA is not a party-within-a-party. Harold Meyerson, who has been formally associated with the DSA long before the AOC era writes:

America’s most prominent democratic socialist, the man who stamped that political tendency on the current American map - Bernie Sanders - is not now nor has he ever been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. As a young man, Sanders belonged to some fringe leftist organizations and apparently swore off such affiliations - whether the groups were fringe or not - as he grew older. (4)

That “is not now nor has he ever been a member …” line is an ironic reference to the Congressional witchhunt committees of the 1940s and 1950s, who liked to ask people dragged before their tribunal as a perjury-trap question: “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?”

And, speaking of Bernie, here is his take from August 12 on the current situation: (5)

Notes:

(1) Marshall, Josh (2026): Houston, We Have a Problem … What’s Up With the National DSA? TPM 08/10/2026. <https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/houston-we-have-a-problem-whats-up-with-the-national-dsa> (Accessed: 2026-10-08).

(2) Hill, Gladwin (1966): REAGAN ACCUSED OF BIRCHER LINKS; Democratic Report Calls Him 'Extremists' Collaborator'. New York Times 08/12/1966. <https://www.nytimes.com/1966/08/12/archives/reagan-accused-of-bircher-links-democratic-report-calls-him.html> (Accessed: 2026-10-08).

(3) Red Star (2025): Points of Unity. Red Star Caucus 02/24/2025. <https://redstarcaucus.org/points-of-unity/#anti-imperialism-must-be-at-the-core-of-the-future-party> (Accessed: 2026-10-08).

(4) Meyerson, Harold (2026): Why Have Less Than One Percent of American Socialists Joined DSA? The American Prospect 08/10/2026. <https://prospect.org/2026/08/10/why-have-less-than-one-percent-of-american-socialists-joined-dsa/> (Accessed: 2026-10-08).

(5) Primary Results; Building On Victories. The Majority Report YouTube channel 08/12/2026. <https://www.youtube.com/live/X8TW2t9r8O8?si=3wHTM9kvf8UcpXfh&t=3820> (Accessed: 2026-10-08).

“Hybrid” threats and a mystery drone at the Leipzig Airport

One of the recent events that at least looks like a Russian provocation was the appearance of a drone loaded with explosives at the Leipzig, Germany airport.

Well, maybe loaded with explosives. Because some explosives were found lying on the airport runway at some distance from the drone, that was flying just over the runway. This is one of those stories on which the early reports makes you go, “Huh?” [Corrected 08/12/2026: The drone was not lying directly on the runway when the bus driver kicked it while it was still in the air.]

The Guardian’s early report described it this way:

The discovery of a small drone carrying explosives at Leipzig airport, a leading shipping and military hub, set off alarm and caused flight diversions on Wednesday morning [Aug. 5]. German police deployed a bomb disposal robot to defuse and destroy the explosive device.

In public remarks on Wednesday evening, the [German] interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, said the incident did not appear to be the work of amateurs, and that investigators were treating it as part of a “professional hybrid threat scenario”. (1)

There was also a possibly related incident at the Leipzig airport on the same day, in which a DHL cargo plane “collided mid-air ‌with an unknown object shortly after take-off from Leipzig airport, prompting ⁠an immediate unscheduled landing in Hanover.” (2)

FRANCE 24 reports: (3)

The Interior Minister (responsible for federal security matters) say it “did not appear to be the work of amateurs.” Although as described below, lethal professionalism wasn’t necessarily a part of this incident, either.

The use of the “hybrid” concept gets dodgier all the time. NATO officially defines it very broadly:

Hybrid methods of warfare – such as propaganda, deception, sabotage and other non-military tactics – have long been used to destabilise adversaries. What is new about attacks seen in recent years is their speed, scale and intensity, facilitated by rapid technological change and global interconnectivity. NATO has a strategy for its role in countering hybrid warfare and stands ready to defend the Alliance and all Allies against any threat, whether conventional or hybrid. (4)

Since one of the worst problems in US foreign policy since the Second World War has been threat inflation, a concept like “hybrid warfare” is especially slippery. Invading a country is warfare. A Pearl Harbor sneak aerial attack is warfare. Assassinating the senior leadership of a country is an act of war.

But not everything somehow connected to outright military conflict is war. War includes propaganda, sabotage, espionage, duplicitous diplomacy, and public diplomacy designed to influence domestic and foreign opinion. But putting out some false story or inventing a conspiracy theory is not war. Hacking computer systems in another country is not in itself war. Encouraging refugees to go into another country is not war. (See: Belarus and Poland, and the recent Ceuta incident with Spain and Morocco.)

And if “deception” is an equivalent of warfare, diplomats all over the world are declaring warfare on each other’s countries all the time!

There are certainly grey areas. A foreign hack of computer systems controlling nuclear missiles could legitimately be considered an act of war. Iran’s recent Lego propaganda videos are part of Iran’s broader war effort, but propaganda in itself is not war. (And in any case, we actually are at war with Iran.) Assassinating the head of state or government of another country is a classic example of a legitimate cause of war. Some actions do fall into a gray area. But not every hostile or threatening or even murderous action is a legitimate cause for war. Opting for war is still a choice. Gavrilo Princip assassinating Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand in 1914 was a legitimate justification for war in the abstract. But it didn’t work out so well for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which disappeared from the map entirely at the end of the war. Which Germany had pushed them hard to initiate.

Considering refugee flows as acts of war is especially risky at the moment for Europe. We’ve seen in the US how the Trump Administration went back to a statute from the 1790s, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, as its excuse for unleashing the ICE Gestapo in 2025 to beat, kidnap, and kill people who don’t look “American” enough to masked ICE goons. Some countries, including Morocco and Türkiye, do use refugees as provocations against their neighbors. But the radical right parties and sectarian groups in Europe – many actively supported by Trump and J.D. Vance as well as by Putin – try hard to use immigration in the way Trump uses it, as an excuse to exercise state terror with some old-fashioned vigilante violence to supplement it.

Government officials, journalists and politicians in democratic countries need to be especially careful of treating immigration problems as “hybrid warfare.” Democracy has enough enemies without its centrist supporters piling on to undermine it.

The Leipzig drone incident does look at least plausibly like a Russian provocation and warning signal to the EU and European NATO allies. The recent incident of a Russian missile landing and exploding in a field in Poland with no people around also legitimately raised questions about whether it was an accidental misfire of a missile aimed at Ukraine. That’s one of those things for which researchers 30 years from now may dig out solid answers about from declassified documents.

Anne Hähnig reported early today for the German Die Zeit:

Since an armed drone was discovered at Leipzig Airport on Wednesday night, many details have become known. For example, how big the drone was (a quadrocopter with the approximate dimensions of a microwave, four rotors). Where it was found (near a Ukrainian cargo plane, which is also used to transport military equipment). Or what explosives it was carrying (Semtex).

However, some crucial questions about the process so far remain unanswered. Among other things, how the armed drone got close to the Ukrainian plane in the first place, what route it took, whether it scouted out the machine or, for instance, tried to fly underneath it. (5)

According to information obtained by Die Zeit, video recordings have now been evaluated that provide information about it. This is because the majority of the airport grounds are monitored by cameras. The videos show that Leipzig escaped a catastrophe by a much narrower margin than previously known.

As quoted below, Hähning notes that there were cameras filming the area where the drone was found. But there were no radar signs, or observations by the pilots or air controllers, of a drone closely tracking the plane?

The videos show the [Ukrainian] Antonov cargo plane parked at the airport. And they apparently show that already on Tuesday evening at around 7:30 PM., an object flew directly towards this aircraft. It eventually hit one of the wings. The wings are particularly sensitive parts of the aircraft because they usually contain fuel tanks. If you want to blow up an airplane, you detonate a bomb there. However, this did not happen in Leipzig. The footage shows that the object bounced off the wing and fell to the ground. Traces on a wing of the Antonov confirm this presumed sequence of events. Why the explosive device did not explode is still unclear.

(I did a double-take on that one. On 7:30 PM Tuesday, an “object” was seen and recorded on video - but the drone itself wasn’t discovered at the airport until Wednesday evening? A simple translation can be misleading: the report reads in German “in der Nacht auf Mittwoch,” which means the night from Tuesday to Wednesday.)

The report leaves open whether the drone was following the aircraft in the air or whether it was hidden on the ground and struck first after the landing.

The drone was not discovered by chance until four hours later. Die Zeit had already reported on Wednesday that it was the bus driver of a tourist group who became aware of the device. Previous reconstructions had assumed that he had kicked the device and later fixed it to the ground. …

Camera footage, on the other hand, now shows that the drone was already on the ground when the bus driver arrived. After a short hesitation, he put his foot on it and informed the security staff. In the end, the explosive device was not found on the drone itself – contrary to what was previously known – but at some distance. It is possible that it detached itself on impact with the aircraft.

I would say that if you see a strange object that kind of looks like a drone lying randomly on the ground on or near an airport runway, walking over and kicking it  - in this case apparently driving by it in a bus and kicking it while it's in the air - probably isn’t the safest way to check it out! And the explosives were lying well away from the drone. And the drone with the explosives may have hit the plane but the explosives just fell off and didn’t detonate?

Hähning’s report continues:

For the officers of the Federal Criminal Police Office, who took over the investigation at the weekend, this results in new insights. It is now more clear how exactly the drone approached the aircraft: not carefully, but with the obvious intention of damaging it. It is also more clear what purpose it served. So far, one of the investigative hypotheses has been that it could have been meant merely as a kind of warning. Armed yes, but not intended to actually explode. (emphasis added) This hypothesis can now hardly be maintained. Leipzig Airport narrowly escaped a devastating attack.

When Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) interrupted his vacation on Wednesday to travel to Leipzig, he avoided clear statements about who he suspects to be the culprit. But he spoke of a "hybrid attack scenario" and of "foreign powers", which is commonly read as a reference to Russia. But Dobrindt avoided explicitly naming Russia as the perpetrator. ...

So far, the investigations have not yielded any clear indications that Russia is behind the attempted attack. However, several details point to highly professional perpetrators. … That a state actor was involved in the attack – in whatever way – is … one of the investigative hypotheses that has now become more likely.

After her own description of what is known about the attack, I’m not sure that adds up to making the idea that “a state actor was involved in the attack … more likely.”

Hopefully we’ll get a more complete description at some point. But the beginning of a Russian Blitzkrieg it’s definitely not!

[08/12/2026: This post deliberately highlighted uncertainties in the early report. Two articles with additional information are Bus driver kicked explosive drone out of the air at German airport, lawmaker says (Reuters 08/08/2026) and How a German Bus Driver May Have Averted a War (The Bulwark 08/12/2026) 08/12/2026.]

Notes:

(1) Cole, Deborah & Roth, Andrew (2026): Drone carrying explosives at German airport marks ‘new level of danger’, says interior minister. Guardian 08/05/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/05/drone-german-airport-dhl-cargo-plane-collides-object-leipzig> (Accessed: 2026-10-08).

(2) DHL cargo plane lands in Hanover after mid-air collision with object, source says. Reuters <https://www.reuters.com/world/dhl-cargo-plane-lands-hanover-after-mid-air-collision-with-ob.ject-source-says-2026-08-05/> (Accessed: 2026-10-08).

(3) Bomb-disposal robot and drone with explosives discovered at Germany's Leipzig airport FRANCE 24 English YouTube channel 08/06/2026. <https://youtu.be/7F1z4HFuT3k?si=q77nxRDaSFnjmnq6> (Accessed: 2026-10-08).

(4) Countering hybrid threats. NATO website 01/29/2026. <https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/deterrence-and-defence/countering-hybrid-threats> (Accessed: 2026-10-08).

(5) Hähnig, Anne (2026): Das war keine Warnung, das war ein Angriff. Die Zeit 08/10/2026. <https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2026-08/drohne-leipzig-flughafen-sprengstoff-kameraaufnahmen?freebie=1e4ac99d> (Accessed: 2026-10-08). My translation to English, with emphasis added in italics.

Ukraine and European diplomacy

Bloomberg has reported, “Former senior officials from the UK, France, Germany and Russia met in Vienna last month to explore potential conditions for peace talks to end Moscow’s war on Ukraine, according to people familiar with the matter.”

This was a follow-up to a previous meeting:

In fact, another secret European-Russian meeting took place in July: in Baku, Azerbaijan, as the authoritarian President Ilham Aliyev revealed. As a result, the talks apparently moved on to Vienna. In Baku, in addition to the chairman of the Gazprom supervisory board and close Putin confidant Viktor Zubkov, the chairman of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, Valery Fadeyev, was also present from the Russian side. Both are under heavy international sanctions. (1)

It’s no surprise that such diplomatic talks are happening. And it’s not unusual for governments to use news of such conferences to send messages to other foreign actors and to test public and official reactions.

Britain and the EU countries are generally supportive of Ukraine in their war with Russia and have been all along, since the Russia occupation of Crimea in 2014, the low-intensity irregular warfare in the Donbas region that followed, and then the full-blown Russian invasion of 2022, which is generally taken as the beginning of the current Russia-Ukraine War. The military seizure of another country’s sovereign territory is an illegal act of aggression under international law.

I won’t recap here is spectacularly foolish, reckless diplomacy beginning with the Cheney-Bush Administration over NATO membership for Ukraine.

Major parts of the context are the EU and NATO, both of which require their members to maintain democratic forms of government. For some member governments over the decades, that has been a challenge. But the European members of both alliances do see democracy and the rule of law as a basic foundation for the success and survival of both alliances. T he EU has an Eastern Partnership program that provides Ukraine and other countries including Moldova assistance in bringing their countries into compliance with the minimum EU standards. And that in itself is a powerful incentive for those countries to aspire to EU membership, and an important means of enhancing the power of the EU itself.

The Russian objections to Ukrainian partnerships with the West have focused heavily on NATO rather than on the EU. NATO is a defensive partnership that of course still includes the United States, however unreliable the US now looks as an ally for its European partners. But it’s also important to remember that the EU has a mutual defense clause itself. So as long as Russia occupies part of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, formal Ukrainian membership in either the EU or NATO would be highly problematic. Diplomacy can be very creative, but joining an alliance with a country that has significant parts of its territory occupied by Russia would be uncomfortably close to a declaration of war against Russia. The EU is not going to do that – though again, diplomacy can get very creative.

But the Russia-Ukraine War remains largely a frozen conflict. Both countries can very probably keep the war of attrition going for a while. It’s already gone on longer than the Firsst World War. But it’s at a tremendous cost to both sides. There are good reasons that both countries would see advantages in a stable armistice. And with the Western supplies of interceptor missiles running short while the US is also locked into a war with Iran with no near end in sight, Ukraine is more vulnerable to Russian missiles that are already doing some serious damage to Ukrainian infrastructure. But the most obvious barrier to a peace settlement is that it would have to involve assurances by the US on economic sanctions and various military issues.

And while the EU is still very much capable of diplomacy, we are seeing on a daily basis that the Orange Anomaly in the White House is not.

When we look at European options in grubby power-political terms, it’s a very safe assumption that European NATO allies have been very aware all along that not only was helping Ukraine an important deterrence measure. But also that a prolonged war like Russia is now having with Ukraine also weakens Russia in important ways. Obviously, Russian propaganda emphasizes that point about Western intentions, but it’s also an obvious factor to take into account. On the other hand, Russian experience in warfare the last four years and the expansion they have made in their military production capabilities during the war are not factors that work in favor of potential European adversaries of Russia.

However, I do think claims like the one made by Almut Rochowanski in a 2025 article are overblown, or at least unhelpfully vague: “It is by now clear that European leaders prefer the war in Ukraine to continue, that they fear peace (a “quick” one anyway), that many believe Europe is already at war and seem “gung ho” to turn it into a shooting war, and that they are obsessed with inflicting defeat on Russia.” (emphasis added) (2)

Military industries are inherently problematic in that they are dependent on public spending but as private corporations, they have maximum incentive to paint the most gloom-and-doom picture of the state of national security that they can to maximize defense spending and their own profits. Politicians very often find it much more convenient to tout the benefits of military spending for their own districts than to exercise critical oversight over military programs.

Yet as devastating as climate change is, no human activity does so much damage so far as wars do. Even in the middle of wars, the military budget and how the government manages it is a critical function that is often badly performed. Aaron Sobczak noted in a 2025 report that the Department of Defense “has failed every audit since it was legally required to submit to one each year beginning in 2018. In fact, the Pentagon is the only one of 24 federal agencies that has not been able to pass an unmodified financial audit since the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990.” (3)

Anne Applebaum talks about the state of the Russia-Ukraine War in this interview just after 20:00, and about what kinds of things EU states are watching about potential threats from Russia, after talking about the latest Trump messes. She argues that Russia at the moment is not in any position to launch some kind of full-scale military action against NATO members. But Russia is arguably looking to make trouble for Europe where it can, including by promoting far-right parties and boosting xenophobic scares like the recent one over Moroccan immigrants in Ceuta, Spain. She also comments about that recent incident and who may have incited it. (Applebaum is not part of the Polish government but she is married to the Polish Foreign Minister. So she has incentive to be very mindful of how she describes such things.) (4)

(Near the end of the interview, supposed Never-Trumper Charlie Sykes smugly badmouths Michigan Democrats for voting for a left-leaning Democrat in the Senate primary. He’s basically promoting the Republican candidate. Applebaum is obviously reserved in her response.)

John Mearsheimer has started his very own podcast, as well as still giving lots of interviews. His first contribution was this one on the background of the Russia-Ukraine War. (5)

Notes:

(1) Sommavilla, Fabian (2026): Geheimtreffen in Wien: Europäische Diplomaten trafen Russen ohne ukrainische Beteiligung. Der Standard 08/07/2026. <https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000334664/geheimtreffen-in-wien-europaeische-diplomaten-trafen-russen-ohne-ukrainische-beteiligung> (Accessed: 2026-08-08). My translation from German.

(2) Rochowanski, Almut (2025): Europe’s Leaders Have No Strategy for Peace. Jacobin 11/27/2025. <https://jacobin.com/2025/11/europe-war-ukraine-strategy-peace> (Accessed: 2026-09-08).

(3) Sobczak, Aaron (2026): Report: Pentagon will likely fail audits through 2028. Responsible Statecraft 05/07/2026. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/department-of-defense-audit-failures/> (Accessed: 2026-09-08).

(4) Anne Applebaum: “I Can’t Think of Anything More Corrupt”. To the Contrary … YouTube channel 08/08/2026. <https://youtu.be/0JqHtslRdv4?si=bWiPO8Kz9HTULWYK> (Accessed: 2026-08-08).

(5) Episode 1: Origins of the War In Ukraine. John Mearsheimer-Offensive Realism YouTube channel 07/30/2026. <https://youtu.be/0LmCveTM788?si=yu8nplEfDYkm9Eo-> (Accessed: 2026-08-08).

More on the Ceuta incident and its international context

Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political scientist and author of The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled (2023), commented on the idea that Israel may have encouraged last week’s incident in Ceuta, in which 72 thousand people starting on Thursday crossed the border from Morocco to Spain, causing a flap among some panicky EU politicians - though most of them had returned to Morocco by Monday. She calls it “conspiratorial hogwash.“ (1)

I find her description overblown. We don’t know exactly who incited the incident. We do know that there was a flood of social media messages inciting people to cross the border, and with deadly results for at least 88 of the border-crossers. There has been no immediate confirmation of who was behind those messages. And the Moroccan government hasn’t fessed up to anything. But it is clear from the circumstances of the initial crossing and the rapid returns as well as from some of the new reporting that the Moroccan government was facilitating if not directly inciting it.

Here is an August 4 BBC report on the Ceuta incident: (2)

That report contains an error I’ve seen elsewhere, in that it calls Ceuta a Spanish territory. It is not. It is a part of Spain. The UN does not count Ceuta and the nearby city of Melilla as unresolved colonial issues. It does consider British occupation of the Spanish island of Gibraltar as one.

European governments have to be prepared for foreign governments inciting immigration incidents. As immigration experts like Gerald Knaus and Judith Kohlenberger point out, how the EU immigration system functions depends by definition on conditions in nearby countries and on those governments’ policies. That’s a truism in the sense that immigrants have reasons for leaving their countries and going to other ones, usually economic reasons but also a result of military conflicts. If there had been no wars in Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine in the last fifteen years, and if countries in the Middle East and North Africa had consistently robust and prosperous economies, not so many people would have been determined to come to Europe. In immigration jargon, there are “push” effects and “pull” effects on immigration.

In America, even the most besotted fans of the White House czar of ethnonationalism, Stephen Goebbels-Miller, know that most immigrants to the US have primarily economic motives, though a lot of them will claim it’s all part of a George Soros Jewish conspiracy. Nativists in EU countries operate on similarly primitive assumptions.

That notion of immigration being a terrible threat and part of a Jewish plot actually does play a big role in the ideology of far-right parties like the AfD in Germany, the FPÖ (“Freedom” Party) in Austria, and Georgia Meloni’s party and coalition government in Italy. Meloni has shown some real pragmatism at times, and her Brothers of Italy party tends to be anti-Russian so her government has been cooperative on genuine defense concerns in the Trump 2.0 era. But her party is organizationally a lineal descendent of Mussolini’s Fascist Party and Meloni does promote xenophobic politics.

In the Ceuta incident of the past week, she declared that she was suspending the free movement of people in the Schengen Zone, of which Italy is part, for air and sea travelers, and called for kicking Spain out of the Schengen Zone. This was cheap demagoguery and a political gesture toward anti-EU sentiments. And her close-the-borders move is almost certainly illegal under Schengen and EU laws.

And Europe does have foreign actors interested in using immigration to give European countries real headaches. And they see xenophobic far-right parties like Meloni’s as an exploitable weakness. Trump and Vance support far-right parties like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) in France and Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in Hungary. Vance even took himself and his negative charisma to Hungary to campaign for the anti-democracy Orbán in the election this year, thereby helping Fidesz to lose the election in a landslide. They would like to promote Meloni’s party, too, but Trump’s ham-fisted imitation of diplomacy has been screwing that up.

This means that both Washington and Moscow see opportunities to exploit immigration scares like the Ceuta one over the past week to promote the political fortunes of their favorite parties. Neither Putin nor Trump want to see Europe coalesce around a revised collective defense arrangement, so they are looking for ways to exploit xenophobia and Islamophobia to divide EU nations from each other as much as possible. And we see some of that in the Ceuta incident, with some other EU leaders badmouthing Pedro Sánchez’ Spanish government over it. Although most of them seemed to have pulled it together after a couple of days and express solidarity with Spain’s over the crisis. (3)

The EU countries with the five biggest armies are Poland, Spain, Italy, France, and Germany. If they are serious about European defense arrangements much more independent from the US than even now, their leaders have to keep in mind that both Russia and the Trumpified US will seek to exploit their political weaknesses, of which xenophobic far-right parties are the single biggest one. Trump of course fanned the flames by calling Ceuta incident an “invasion” and a catastrophe.” (It was a deadly catastrophe for the estimate 88 immigrants who died and for their families.)

As Judith Kohlenberger observes, this was the first stress test for the recently-implemented Common European Asylum System (CEAS), and the EU didn’t do so well. At least not initially.

Both the US and Israel are angry at Spain for not allowing their air space to be used by US planes involved in the US-Israel War on Iran. As I noted in a previous post, Morocco is a party to the Abraham Accords, and Israel has backed Morocco’s claims that the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilli should belong to Morocco – a highly dubious claim in international law. In addition, Morocco has a long-running dispute with its neighbor Algeria over the Western Sahara, which was once occupied by Spain. Spain’s government recently endorsed Algeria’s position on control of Western Sahara, which of course did not please Morocco’s government.

Immigration is by definition an international event. So it’s nothing unusual that several governments besides Spain and Morocco have interests that touch on the question of immigration to Spain through Ceuta and Melilla.

And, of course, actual conspiracy-mongers and governments with an interest in creating information fog around an event like Ceuta are more than willing to push garbage into the information sphere.

Scheindlin writes:

The surge of Moroccans to Ceuta desperately seeking a better life seems unusual? If you are an Israel or Palestine fanatic, it explains that too. This is how conspiracy theories are born.

As tens of thousands of would-be migrants rushed the Spanish territory in Morocco last Thursday, by Friday, the conspiracy theories were already flowing. An X account posing as Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called Morocco a "tool" of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump, and wrote "they are punishing Spain for supporting Palestine."

That’s a valid criticism by Scheindlin. Unfortunately, it’s only in the last paragraph that she notes: “Israel's position on the Morocco-Spain crisis is idiotic enough without [the help of conspiracists]. Its officials only offer up snark, and its influencers parade their ignorance around by trying to compare immigrants to Palestinians. Let that speak for itself.“ [emphasis added]

She focuses on an article by Stephen Zunes in The Nation, a longtime left-leaning US publication, to use as an example of insinuating an unfounded conspiracy theory. He gives this description, accurate so far as I can see, of Trump’s position – although Trump’s position can literally fluctuate from one sentence to the next these days:

Trump has labeled Spain as “hopeless,” with “bad people,” in response to Sanchez’s not increasing the country’s military budget as much as he demanded and, in particular, Madrid’s refusal to allow US military bases on Spanish territory to be used in the war on Iran or to allow overflight by US military aircraft. Last month, Trump directed the secretary of the treasury to cut trade ties with Spain, despite that being impossible due to Spain’s membership in the EU, and he was looking for other ways of punishing Madrid.

Given how Trump has developed a greater affinity with repressive Arab monarchs like Morocco’s King Mohammed VI than with traditional European allies, it is perhaps not surprising that he would criticize rather than defend a NATO ally faced with a violation of their sovereign territory. [emphasis added] (4)

And he mentions the actual initial US public response:

In addition, the wave of border crossings has created images that far-right parties in Europe are now using to claim that there is an uncontrollable refugee crisis, feeding racist and xenophobic attacks against Sanchez and other left-leaning governments for allowing a foreign “invasion” of EU territory. Conservative European governments have demanded that Spain be removed from the Schengen Zone that allows for passport-free movement within most of Europe despite the fact that Spain maintains tight internal migration control between the presidios and the Spanish mainland and that none of 50,000 who illegally crossed into Ceuta have made it onto the European continent.

Meanwhile, in the United States, Vice President JD Vance blamed the border crossings on “radical left-wing globalist policies that have enabled the Invasion of the West,” while Trump warned that scenes similar to those of the tens of thousands of dark-skinned people storming the border in Ceuta would occur in the United States as well if Democrats get back into office. [emphasis added]

By the way, Vance knows very well that his fans assume that “globalist policies” refers to an imagined World Jewish Conspiracy.

Zunes concludes that the Ceuta incident was “part of efforts by the growing US-Israeli-Moroccan nexus - codified and strengthened by the so-called Abraham Accords - to weaken a progressive European government [Spain’s], divide Europe, and undermine international law and human rights.”

From the news I’ve seen, that particular conclusion does go beyond what has been clearly established in the reporting on the incident. But from what we do know from information currently public is that the Moroccan government is very likely to have actively facilitated the Ceuta incident. And it’s highly likely that their Israeli and US allies at least gave them tacit approval, though I haven’t yet seen that specifically documented. (But, really, neither the CIA nor the Mossad knew that something like this was in the works?)

To be clear here: Dahlia Scheindlin is an excellent source for analysis of Israeli politics. I highly recommend her work.

Notes:

(1) Israel, Ceuta and 'The Real Story': How to Spot Conspiratorial Hogwash. Haaretz 08/04/2026. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/haaretz-today/2026-08-04/ty-article/.highlight/israel-ceuta-and-the-real-story-how-to-spot-conspiratorial-hogwash/0000019f-cd36-d312-a3ff-ef3fd1a90000?gift=72e0ee8696114a4d9b0e77c1f7833ddc> (Accessed: 2026-05-08).

(2) Who is to blame for the chaos on Spain’s border? BBC News YouTube channel 08/04/2026. <https://youtu.be/UUnxNtqR3kg?si=2FE6UMmyYMrI6yaM> (Accessed: 2026-05-08).

(3) Gilmartin, Eoghan (2026): Spain’s Pedro Sánchez is a progressive outlier in Europe – and over Ceuta, he is being made to pay for it. Guardian 08/06/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/06/spains-pedro-sanchez-is-a-progressive-outlier-in-europe-and-over-ceuta-he-is-being-made-to-pay-for-it> (Accessed: 2026-06-08).

(4) Zunes, Stephen (2026): The Real Story Behind the Human Wave That Entered Ceuta. The Nation 08/03/2026. <https://www.thenation.com/article/world/ceuta-spain-morocco-border-crisis-western-sahara-geopolitics/> (Accessed: 2026-05-08).

What’s up with the US’ new partner (?!) Venezuela?

A new editorial in El País takes a quick look at the status of governance in Venezuela after the early 2026 US intervention in which the President, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife were kidnapped and sent to the US, where they are still awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges. The trial isn’t scheduled to begin until June 1 of 2027. The editorial states:

The enormous expectation aroused by the announcement of a beginning of a dialogue between Chavismo [Maduro’s supporters] and the opposition in Venezuela was diminished this Saturday, when the rapprochement was limited to a brief phone call between Jorge Rodríguez, president of the National Assembly, and the opposition Dinorah Figuera. It is still a very small step for a country shocked by a humanitarian emergency, aggravated by the tragedy of the earthquakes that caused more than 5,000 deaths, which needs to move once and for all towards a democratic future with real political plurality and free elections. Both parties committed to an upcoming in-person meeting.

This rapprochement takes place under the rules drawn up by the United States, which in practice maintains control of the country after the military intervention on January 3 in which it captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, now in prison in New York awaiting trial. The State Department is the declared arbiter of Venezuelan institutions, and it is the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who is leading the process. (1)

This is a genuinely weird situation. On the surface, it appears that Maduro was betrayed by his own government and armed forces, which basically allowed him to be taken without serious resistance. And if his government (without him) was totally willing to cooperate with the US – even in replacing Maduro – how much of a threat was Venezuela to US security? Or to anyone else’s?

Maduro before his kidnapping had offered massive concessions for US oil companies, which the replacement government also did. The acting President, Delcy Rodríguez – whose name isn’t even mentioned in the El País editorial – even created essentially a slush fund with oil revenues that is under Donald Trump’s control. As CNN reports:

On [July 27], President Donald Trump said his administration has collected more than $13 billion from selling Venezuelan oil since Maduro’s capture.

The US government has said it will hold the proceeds from the sale of Venezuelan oil in US-controlled accounts in a “custodial” capacity and intends to return them to Venezuela. Democrats in Congress have pushed for more transparency over this process. (2)

Yes, I’m sure all the money will go back to Venezuela for schools and hospitals and public infrastructure … (Do I need to specify that’s sarcasm?)

Shocking as it may be, the Trumpistas don’t seem to be particularly focused on establishing a functioning liberal democratic system in Venezuela:

Nevertheless, Trump’s government cannot also try to condition the vote of Venezuelans or impose the actors of a dialogue so awaited by the population while leaving out the opposition sectors with the greatest support, such as the one led by María Corina Machado. The opponent who led the electoral defeat of Chavismo maintains a discreet profile and has said that she will not be an obstacle.

A Trumpian version of “democracy” for Venezuela. Is there anyone who actually believes this Trump and his gang of misfits can or will set up anything but an authoritarian system? They may not even try to do that, if the current government is so corrupt that they are happy to be America’s satraps in Venezuela.

But that brings us again to the fact that this is apparently essentially the same government that was in place on January 1,  just without Maduro as the top figure. So why again was this regime such a threat that we had to kidnap its leader so that his second-in-command could head the government? Especially since Maduro himself was also offering enormous concessions to the US?

This is looking more and more like the kind of “gunboat diplomacy” that the US has practiced for way too long in Latin America. This has often not worked out well. To put it mildly. An example from 1914 comes to mind. (3)

Notes:

(1) Tímido deshielo en Venezuela. El País 08/03/2026. <https://elpais.com/opinion/2026-08-03/timido-deshielo-en-venezuela.html> (Accessed: 2026-03-08). My translation to English.

(2) Cooban, Anna (2026): ‘The time is now’: Investors gear up to enter Venezuela despite enormous risks. CNN Business 08/02/2026. <https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/02/business/venezuelan-oil-foreign-investor-event> (Accessed: 2026-03-08).

(3) Warren Zevon “Veracruz” Live at La Locomotive on 2/5/1988. WarrenZevonArchive YouTube channel 12/03/2022. <https://youtu.be/2KdQQe5IOBY?si=ebvdbSuxVURGz2Uy&t=122> (Accessed: 2026-05-08).

Ceuta immigration incident, five days on

Politico reports on Tuesday a number of 72 thousand for the number of immigrants/refugees who arrived in the Spanish city of Ceuta from Morocco, most of which apparently came on this past Thursday. Virtually all were quickly returned to Morocco. It reports that 88 people died in the incident, presumably mostly by drowning. And most of Spain’s EU partners managed to pull themselves together and suppress support for Spain’s government rather than using the incident to pander to far-right nativists parties:

EU interior ministers sought to draw a line under five days of bitter recriminations over the arrival of 72,000 migrants in Ceuta, closing ranks behind Spain and accusing smugglers and foreign actors of exploiting the crisis to divide the bloc.

The show of solidarity marked a sharp shift after EU leaders publicly blamed Madrid’s migration policies for creating a crisis they warned could spill across Europe, prompting Italy to suspend air and sea links with Spain.

Following a three-hour emergency meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, ministers praised Spain’s response, stressed that the passport-free Schengen zone had never been at risk and called for tighter coordination among capitals during future migration emergencies. [emphasis added] (1)

I’ll just insert here that if the major military powers of west-central Europe want to have effective defense cooperation against possible Russian aggression, losing their minds at each other over immigration issues is not a constructive approach.

This is a good August 3 report from British Channel 4 on the Ceuta incident and its implications that features several commentators, including Gerald Knaus of the European Stability Initiative (ESI), one of the best-informed commentators of immigration issues. (2)

This was almost certainly orchestrated by the Moroccan government, because of the 72 thousand people who showed up in Ceuta at the end of the week, all but a few thousand had been returned to Morocco by Monday. The scenario almost certainly required careful planning.

Anne Applebaum also has a good comment on the Ceuta incident (She's married to the current Polish foreign minister, which doesn't mean she speaks for him but does mean she has to particularly careful about her formulations, especially on EU affairs.) She opens with this:

Mostly young, mostly male Moroccans crawling onto beaches, climbing hills, scaling walls, jumping over fences, surging past police in order to get into Europe: The photographs and videos that emerged from Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, on July 29 and 30 looked very much like migrant-terror videos, deliberately designed to be broadcast by the international far right. So closely did this incident resemble the “invasion” that MAGA and its European friends have long said is under way that it was hard not to suspect that it had been orchestrated.

Last week, according to El Pais as well as other Spanish, international, and Moroccan media outlets, many Moroccans saw a TikTok video nevertheless claiming that “the Spanish border is open and you can cross without papers,” meaning they could reach the European continent. The video appeared to reference a recent ruling by the Spanish supreme court making it harder to return migrants who arrive by sea, but it was not the only encouragement. Other messages, many of which have now disappeared, told people where to buy wet suits, flippers, goggles, floats, and even waterproof bags for documents and cellphones. Screenshots from Google Maps told them which sections of the Ceuta beach might have fewer police. Moroccan border guards were either unwilling or unable to stop them.

Surprised by the unprecedented numbers and perhaps fearing hundreds would drown—in the end, at least 70 people died in the water, including some children—the Spanish police let them land on the beach. This is when the photographs and videos began to circulate. Among those promoting them were senior members of the Trump administration, and senior leaders of the European far right. [emphasis added] (3)

The Republicans in the US are probably already working on ad spots for this year’s election featuring scary-looking footage with ominous music and commentary featuring young Arab and black men from the Ceuta incident.

Applebaum gives this good brief description of how the far right uses such messaging:

Readers can be forgiven for feeling a strong sense of déjà vu. For more than a decade now, European and indeed American politicians have known that real, fake, enhanced, or context-free pictures of migrants jumping fences will immediately create a wave reaction. Military rhetoric will be used — attack or invasion — and, to quote Vance, “radical left-wing globalist policies” will be blamed. Hardly anyone will ask why it is that so many people are so desperate to move that they will risk their lives. Few will mourn the dead.

Instead, far-right and MAGA politicians, influencers, and podcasters will immediately use the most divisive language possible in order to make voters as angry as possible, as fast as possible, regardless of what actually happened. Almost everyone else will be intimidated by their fury. As it turns out, it’s harder to stop the wave of anger than it is to stop the migrants themselves.

Guardian columnist Jonathan Liew comments, “Ceuta functions as a kind of border porn for the global far right: a locus upon which to project their most vivid and apocalyptic fantasies.” (4)

Kim Son Hoang reports for Austria’s Der Standard:

Spain may rely on a different migration policy internally than the majority of the other EU states [a reference to Spain’s recent immigrant-normalization action], but the country is also restrictive externally. Border protection – even in Ceuta – has been massively expanded, and there is also close cooperation with neighboring third countries such as Morocco or Algeria in order to be able to stop migration movements there.

It is the model on which the EU has been relying for years: to engage riparian states [who share a common waterway like the Strait of Gibralter] as Europe's bouncers, even if they resort to brutal methods. …

Of course, fake news around a ruling by the Spanish Supreme Court, according to which the way to mainland Europe via Ceuta is now open, played a role. But the mass border crossings would never have been possible without the active or passive support of the Moroccan authorities, who control and monitor the country so strictly. Videos on social media showing Moroccan officials carting tens of migrants to the border in trucks are likely to be fake. Numerous eyewitnesses reported that border guards on the Moroccan side did not intervene. And the New York Times writes that some of them even encouraged people to swim to Ceuta. [emphasis added] (5)

Notes:

(1) Sheftalovich, Zoya, et.al. (2026): EU ministers close ranks behind Spain after Ceuta migration crisis. Politico 08/04/2026. <https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ministers-back-spain-after-ceuta-migration-crisis/> (Accessed: 2026-04-08).

(2) Moroccan Migrant incident: Why the right say UK could be invaded. Channel 4 News YouTube channel 08/03/2026. <https://youtu.be/ktcC0pQM3XA?si=dCLpnBZbnMlTqXao> (Accessed: 2026-04-08).

(3) Applebaum, Anne (2026): The Far Right Is Distorting Ceuta: We’ve seen this before. Atlantic 08/03/2026. <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/08/ceuta-spain-far-right/688154/?gift=hVZeG3M9DnxL4CekrWGK3-S2rg6vicUyi94WzO9WXUM&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share&fbclid=IwY2xjawTdZi5leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETEwd3VOWDVlcjZvUkFZS21Pc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHgLImglVgyVp6vs16MGU4r4txHJStFppg2peIFwEGRydpQIg7aJFAFXEjzSD_aem_bPMUJtHjJC6-NNx1V8XGOg> (Accessed: 2026-04-08).

(4) Liew, Jonathan (2026): Ceuta was a carnival of anti-migrant content for hateful opportunists on the right. Guardian 04-Aug-2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/04/ceuta-carnival-anti-migrant-content-opportunists-on-right-lesson-for-left> (Accessed: 2026-04-08).

(5) Hoang, Kim Son (2026): Spanien als Pull-Faktor, Marokkos Motive, Europa erpressbar: Die wichtigsten Punkte zu Ceuta. Der Standard 08/03/2026. <https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000333912/spanien-als-pull-faktor-marokkos-motive-europa-erpressbar-die-wichtigsten-punkte-zu-ceuta> My translation to English.

The recent refugee flow from Morocco to Spain and … Israeli involvement??

I have my reservations these days about the reporting from The Young Turks, especially from their two leading reporters, Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian.

But Cenk and John Iadorola here have a decent discussion of the circumstantial evidence that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel had something to do with the strange flood of refugees this weekend from Morocco to the adjacent Spanish city of Ceuta. (1)

A blog entry by Jose Lev Alvarez Gomez at the Times of Israel website also attacks the Spanish government over its handling of the crisis this weekend. (2) He sneers out this silly claim: "The Sánchez administration’s border mess is a shameful abdication of constitutional duty that signals a profound strategic weakness. While Morocco’s demographic pressures are real, Spain’s vulnerability is entirely self-inflicted and the direct result of a hollowed-out border security apparatus."

What is the lesson Alvarez Gomez takes from this? “Morocco should propose a comprehensive Western Mediterranean Security Pact to the United States and the State of Israel under the Abraham Accord framework.”

Yes, Morocco is a participant in the Abraham Accords, one of the seven signatories, the others being Bahrain, Israel, Kazakhstan, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the US. (3)

It’s important to remember that Ceuta and Melilla are legally parts of Spain, whatever nationalist or moral claims Morocco may assert. The United Nations current list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, i.e., those with unresolved colonial status. Ceuta and Melilla are not among them. Gibraltar, the nearby island territory of Britain, is claimed by Spain. Western Sahara, the territory involved in the dispute between Morocco and Algeria that probably played some role in the short Ceuta crisis over the weekend, is also a Non-Self-Governing Territories on the list.

Alex Milan Durie writes:

Some observers believe that if Morocco did orchestrate the mayhem, it may have been encouraged by others, pointing at two leaders with a particular grudge against Sanchez – US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

[Spanish Prime Minister Pedro] Sanchez is one of Europe’s most consistently pro-Palestinian voices. He has explicitly said Israel’s war on Gaza is genocide, has been highly critical of the US-Israel war on Iran, and refused to allow jointly operated US-Spanish military facilities to be used to facilitate that war. …

There is no evidence that Morocco orchestrated events in Ceuta partly on behalf of Israel, just a lot of interesting coincidences.

But whether or not there was any conspiracy, one consequence of the episode is clear – the already frosty relations between the left-wing Spanish government of Sanchez and the far-right Israeli government of Netanyahu are now even chillier. [emphasis added] (4)

Ynet News Global, the English online site for the Israeli news agency Yedioth Ahronoth, reports that Morocco is also angry with Israel. Or maybe that’s diplomatic cover for Morocco cooperating with Israel.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon also criticized Sánchez on Friday. “Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis surrounding its migration policy,” he wrote on X. “Perhaps before it continues lecturing us, it is time for Spain to explain to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa.”

Following Danon’s remarks, a Moroccan news site accused Israel of “exploiting the migration crisis in Ceuta to settle scores with Spain.” A Moroccan source told ynet that many Moroccans rejected the description of the event as illegal migration. “Many Moroccans said the incident had nothing to do with illegal immigration, but rather with Moroccans crossing the border into a Moroccan city under Spanish occupation,” the source said.

“They argued that the problem is the occupation itself, not the arrival of Moroccans on their ancestral land [Ceuta].” (5)

Another Ynet News Global report from April also references the diplomatic opportunities presented to Israel by the cities of Ceuta and Mellilla:

The geopolitical earthquake shaking Washington's relationship with Madrid has opened an unexpected window for one of the Arab world's oldest territorial grievances. Spain's refusal to allow the United States access to its Rota and Morón military bases during the Iran campaign, its consistent failure to meet NATO defense spending targets, and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's confrontational posture toward the Trump administration have collectively generated something rare in North African affairs: a genuine crack in Spain's strategic armor over Ceuta and Melilla. Into that crack, Morocco's most consequential new partner, Israel, is uniquely positioned to press.

The pieces have been assembling for months. In March 2026, Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, writing through the Middle East Forum, called on the Trump administration to formally recognize Ceuta and Melilla as occupied Moroccan territory, branding Spain "a colonial power running colonies across the Strait of Gibraltar." Days later, Representative Mario Díaz-Balart, chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security and one of Marco Rubio's closest congressional confidants, declared publicly that the enclaves "are not in the geographic territory of Spain" but rather in Moroccan territory, and that their fate should be "established, negotiated, and discussed between friends and allies." This was not the fringe speaking. This was the architecture of a coordinated strategic repositioning. [emphasis added] (6)

Israel even cynically advocates for Muslim Morocco to occupy and annex Ceuta and the similar Spanish enclave of Melilla. Because that’s what Israel has been doing since 1948, just seizing and taking over areas it wants? Like in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria right now?

Not that Spain handling of Ceuta and Mililla has been an example of sterling government. Quite the contrary.

In a 2022 incident, Moroccan police killed at least 27 emigrants trying to leave Moroccan territory to enter Spain. That was the opposite situation to what happened this past weekend, when it’s pretty clear that Morocco actively encouraged a mass rush of refugees into Ceuta – most of which were immediately returned to Morocco.

“It is horrible that the government would congratulate the Moroccan police,” tweeted progressive [Spanish] MP Íñigo Errejón. “Is this what the abandonment of the Saharawi people bought us?” Here he referred to Sánchez’s historic foreign policy shift this February with respect to the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara, which saw him back a plan to formalize Morocco’s brutal occupation regime in exchange for the normalization of diplomatic ties with the authoritarian monarchy [i.e., Morocco’s monarchy]. The move broke with decades of Spanish foreign policy and goes against international court rulings and the position of the United Nations General Assembly that recognizes Western Sahara’s right to self-determination.

In this respect, outsourcing its border security to Morocco has left Spain open to repeated blackmail as Mohammed VI’s government has sought to leverage the issue of irregular immigration against its European neighbor. In May 2021, Morocco opened the border at the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, allowing eight thousand people to cross in just forty-eight hours. This was, in part, retaliation for Spain’s condemnation of Donald Trump’s unilateral recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. Then in March this year, Sánchez chose to sue for peace after one thousand migrants unsuccessfully tried to scale the fences in Melilla. Spanish intelligence believed that this could be the start of further mass incursions — and in the context of the Ukraine war, a destabilized border was not something Sánchez wanted to countenance.

Although it pulled out in 1975, Spain remains, under international law, the administrative power in Western Sahara, legally responsible for completing the decolonization of this resource-rich territory the land area of Britain. In exchange for selling out the Sahrawi people and turning his back on his country’s historic mandate, what Sánchez got from Morocco was an increased crackdown against irregular immigration, stopping people reaching Spain, with Morocco’s cooperation formally secured in a bilateral agreement on immigration in April. The immediate background to Friday’s killings was the violent dismantling of an immigrant camp close to Melilla on Thursday night by Moroccan police while Spanish and Moroccan police operated together on Spanish soil to immediately remove the vast majority of the five hundred people who scaled the fence. PSOE’s own electoral program contains the promise to end these types of migrant pushbacks, which deny those arriving any due process over the right to seek asylum. [emphasis added] (7)

Linda Dyan describes the incident in Haaretz. (8) According to her account, there was as many as 60,000 migrants/refugees coming into Ceuta. By seemingly all account, most of them had returned within a day or so, with only a few thousand of the tens of thousands that quickly crossed the border. Given the numbers involved, it’s very reasonable to assume that the Moroccan government actively encouraged the influx, though exactly how is unclear in the reporting.

Whatever role Israel may have played diplomatically is not clear from the current reporting. There are differences between Morocco and Spain over the Western Sahara and Israel does have criticisms of Spain over its public criticism of the genocide in Gaza and Spain’s refusal to allow the US to use its airspace for flights connected to the US-Israel War on Iran. Israel’s government has also shown sympathy for far-right parties in Europe like Germany’s AfD, with whom they find common cause in their Islamophobia – and demagoguery over immigration is a central part of those parties’ political strategies.

So those are legitimate question about Morocco’s and Israel’s role in Ceuta flap this past weekend, so long as we remember the skeptic’s adage that “correlation is not causation.” Dyan dismisses the questions about Israel’s role as a “conspiracy theory.” But she herself speculates that this represents a “weaponization of migrants by Morocco” while citing only the plausible Moroccan motivations already referenced above, including the fact that Morocco is one of the five signatories to the pro-Israel Abraham Accords. Dyan also writes:

... Morocco is a signatory to the Abraham Accords, and the two cooperate on defense and security.

Israel's Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon didn't do much to quell the theories. "Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis over its immigration policy," he wrote. "Maybe before it continues lecturing us, it's time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa."

In a very recent article for the EJIL: Talk! Blog of the European Journal of International Law, Desislava Dimitrova goes a bit more into some of the international legal issues around refugees in Ceuta and Melilla. Even though Spain has had a more practical and humane policy for normalizing the residency of refugees, the larger problem remains of the EU’s protracted failure to adopt more pragmatic and humane policies for handling refugees:

Border management in Ceuta and Melilla cannot be reduced to mechanisms for the summary return of intercepted migrants. Instead, it must be grounded in safeguards that ensure the effective protection of fundamental rights, while fully complying with the law of the sea. In this context, technological developments can play an important role. Rather than being conceived solely as instruments of border enforcement, they should also be recognized for their potential to protect human life at sea. Realizing that potential, however, requires the prevailing securitarian approach to give way to one centred on the protection of life. (8)

Notes:

(1) Cenk Reveals Who Is Behind The Migrant Crisis In Spain. The Young Turks YouTube channel 08/01/2026. <https://youtu.be/ktHGVy4jBbU?si=YkSsxOSxPw0vBRfw> (Accessed: 2026-02-08).

(2) Spain Lost Ceuta: Morocco Must Now Finish the Job. Times of Israel 08/01/2026. <https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/spain-lost-ceuta-morocco-must-now-finish-the-job/> (Accessed: 2026-02-08).

(3) Israel and the Abraham Accords in 2025: Five years on. House of Commons Library 09/30/2025. <https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/israel-and-the-abraham-accords-in-2025-five-years-on/> (Accessed: 2026-02-08).

(4) Durie, Alex Milan (2026): Why did Ceuta migrant mayhem chill already frosty Israel-Spain relations? Aljazeera 08/01/2026. <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/1/why-did-ceuta-migrant-mayhem-chill-already-frosty-israel-spain-relations> (Accessed: 2026-02-08).

(5) Ben Air, Lior (2026): 'Not migration, but a city under Spanish occupation': Morocco turns its anger on Israel. Ynet News Global 08/01/2026. <https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bj00vypcbge> (Accessed: 2026-02-08).

(6) Ayoub, Amine (2026): Abraham Accords reach the Strait: how Israel can help Morocco reclaim its north. Ynet News Global 04/26/2026. <https://www.ynetnews.com/opinions-analysis/article/bki11ns9tzx> (Accessed: 2026-03-08).

(7) Gilmartin, Eoghan (2022): Spain’s Government Is Turning a Blind Eye to Killings at Its Border. Jacobin 06/28/2022. <https://jacobin.com/2022/06/europe-spain-morocco-border-killings-psoe-sanchez> (Accessed: 2022-08-10).

(8) Dayan, Linda (2026): Israel's Fault? The Conspiracy Theory Surrounding Spain's Ceuta Border Crossings. Haaretz 08/02/2026. Gift link: <https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/2026-08-02/ty-article/.premium/israels-fault-the-conspiracy-theory-surrounding-spains-ceuta-border-crossings/0000019f-c245-d3b5-a99f-efe5cc7f0000?gift=5ad3c1cf6fa642c7a12b20f3d98569ed> (Accessed: 2026-03-08).

(9) Dimitrova, Desislava (2026): The Spanish Supreme Court on Rejection at the Borders of Ceuta and Melilla: What About Human Rights at Sea? EJIL:Talk! 07/30/2026. <https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-spanish-supreme-court-on-rejection-at-the-borders-of-ceuta-and-melilla-what-about-human-rights-at-sea> (Accessed: 2026-03-08).

Refugee influx from Morocco into Spain

Judith Kohlenberger of the Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien has become a prominent commentator on immigration issues in the EU. And she is one of the best-informed and insightful analysts of the issue.

She posted a Facebook comment August 1 on the current situation of immigration into the Spanish city/enclave of Ceuta, describe here in a news report from Britain’s Channel 4:

Having paid close attention to immigration in the US and now living as a (completely legal, fully documented) immigrant in the EU, I’m routinely frustrated at the superficiality of the political dialogue and often the mainstream reporting on immigration issues.

In the ongoing politics of defending liberal democracy, immigration continues to be a centrally important issue, because rightwing anti-democracy parties make national identity as well as race and religion a central part of ethnonationalist identity politics (völkisch politics in German).

The German version of Kohlenberger’s post is imbedded below. Here is my English translation interspersed with my commentary:

“Three aspects that become clear from the still-confused situation in Ceuta, and the role of Morocco, Spain and the USA for Europe's migration policy.” (JK) That refers to the current panic over the influx of thousands of refugees from Morocco to the autonomous Spanish city of Ceuta. From Google Maps:

As the map above shows, Ceuta is on the Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar. Britannica has already updated its entry on Ceuta to include the recent crisis:

Ceuta is a Spanish exclave, military post, and free port on the coast of Morocco, at the Mediterranean entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. It is an autonomous city administered by Spain. Ceuta, Melilla (also an exclave), and other tiny islets along the coast of North Africa constitute the territories of Spanish North Africa.

Ceuta is surrounded by a double fence with barbed wire. In 2006, the fence was raised and military personnel and weapons were increased to secure the borders. Even so, thousands of immigrants, mainly African refugees, unsuccessfully try to cross the border every year. In July 2026, mass migration into Ceuta caused prime minister Pedro Sánchez to deploy further military units there. (2)

The visual is important to understanding the sleazy and dishonest politics of the political xenophobes. When we see and hear reports of dark-skinned young men running across a border into Europe, that immediate gets the adrenalin of völkisch types flowing. And of course they are calling this an “invasion” in typical Trumpista language. Sánchez calls the sudden influx of refugees from Morocco ““a violation of Spain’s territorial integrity.”

For anyone who’s not an oxycontin-head – forgive the retro Rush Limbaugh reference – thousands of unarmed civilian refugees coming across the border is not a military invasion. Non-rightwing parties should not encourage or validate the use of “invasion” for refugee influxes, or as a part of “hybrid warfare.” The latter phrase is fine for hostile cyberattacks by other nations. But describing immigrants as invaders legitimates ignoring international law on refugees as well as the use of vigilante violence against immigrants. This is as true for the US as for Europe.

Spain’s current Prime Minister (since 2017) is Pedro Sánchez, head of the main social-democratic party, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). He is generally considered a left politician and has drawn hostile comments from the Trump regime, like various other European leaders across the spectrum, including the hard-right Georgia Meloni. And he’s publicly treated this as some kind of hostile act by the government of Morocco.

There is a foreign policy issue between Spain and Morocco that probably played some part in the sudden surge of refugees this week.

[T]he crossing could be linked to the rivalry between Morocco and Algeria, and a recent trip by the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, to Algiers.

The last mass border crossing, in May 2021, took place after Morocco loosened border controls during a diplomatic row with Spain over Spain’s decision to allow the leader of the Western Sahara independence movement, the Polisario Front, to be treated for Covid-19 in Spain.

Morocco and the Polisario Front both lay claim to Western Sahara, which was under Spanish rule until 1975, when colonial authorities handed over the territory to Morocco and Mauritania.

That diplomatic crisis ended in 2022 when Madrid reversed its longstanding policy of neutrality and backed Morocco’s plan for Western Sahara – a move that had caused a diplomatic rift between Madrid and Algiers, which supports the Polisario group.

Sánchez visited Algiers on 20 July – the first such visit by a Spanish head of government in four years – marking a thaw in relations with Algeria. (3)

But, “Sánchez blamed the sudden inflow on human traffickers spreading rumours about a recent Spanish supreme court ruling that irregular migrants arriving by sea cannot be immediately returned.” He may have reasons that he doesn’t want to place foreign-policy issue on the front burner at the moment. But resorting to cheap xenophobic posturing – it’s the court’s fault for recognizing the rights of immigrants and refugees! – is destructive in itself.

And European politics over the last decade and a half have shown again and again that when left and center-right policies pander to xenophobia, it consistently strengthens the far right/Trumpist/Orbánist parties and groups.

Kohlenberger’s first major point:

The supposedly "demotivating" effect of the CEAS [Common European Asylum System] reform, which has been in force since 12 June, is clearly not occurring in view of strong migration drivers such as high youth unemployment in Morocco (which decades of empirical migration research confirms). Ceuta has one of the most massive border fortifications in the world, secured with double fences made of barbed wire, and yet tens of thousands arrived. The illusion of deterrence has developed further cracks - and makes Europe susceptible to blackmail by outsourcing (border) power to third countries. [emphasis added]

What does the new CEAS system involve?

The new "Common European Asylum System" (CEAS) will require that asylum seekers undergo a mandatory preliminary screening at the EU's external borders, in an attempt to speed up procedures for people coming from countries with low rates of acceptance of asylum applications.

This means that asylum seekers from countries such as Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Turkey and Nigeria will be subjected to fast-track border procedures in camps that are largely closed off. According to Eurostat, the EU's statistical office, fewer than 20% of the asylum seekers from these and dozens of other countries have their rights to asylum recognized.

It’s not yet usual to call these concentration camps. But in practice that’s what is envisioned here, like those the ICE Gestapo and the Trump regime are using in the United States. Greece currently has such a system of closed camps, and it functions pretty badly, as one can easily imagine. But it’s a perfect concept for xenophobic politicians because it encourages people to see refugees as bums and criminals.

Another leading immigration policy expert, Gerald Knaus, points to the unrealistic, largely scam nature of the last CEAS (Knaus also speaks in the Channel 4 report above just after 3:30):

According to the European Commission, the largest groups of asylum seekers in 2025 came from Afghanistan and Syria. The asylum recognition rate for people hailing from these two countries is over 20%. Consequently, individuals from these countries do not go through border procedures but rather through regular asylum procedures. And responsibility for these procedures also lies with the countries of first entry.

Knaus points out that although Germany and Austria do not lie on the EU's external border, more than half of all successful asylum applications in the EU within the last 10 years were granted in these countries.

Knaus believes that this will remain unchanged and that the numbers will be influenced more by developments in the asylum seekers' countries of origin than by EU law. "If the fall of the Assad regime brings an end to the exodus of Syrians entering the EU, then the number of asylum applications in Germany and Austria will also drop dramatically. That had nothing to do with the interior minister, nor does it have anything to do with CEAS, nor does it have anything to do with border controls," he told DW. Since the regime change in Syria at the end of 2024, the number of people leaving the country has been declining sharply. (4)

The EU countries and Switzerland are part of the 29-country Schengen Area, which authorizes and requires the first country of arrival, whether for refugees or authorized travelers, to check the credentials of the person entering the Schengen Area. In the case of asylum seekers, that creates a complication when larger surges of refugees occur, in that most of them will come to countries like Greece or Spain or Italy. And in the normal arrangement, the country of entry is required to handle the asylum request. As Knaus’ comment indicates, in practice Germany has often handled asylum processes for people who entered the Schengen Area via another member country.

Kohlenberger’s second point:

Spain's migration policy, which, by the way, is by no means as liberal at the borders and in border protection as commonly assumed, is encountering an acute dilemma that will soon become apparent in other European countries as well: Increasing demand for labor, especially in sectors such as agriculture and tourism, which are increasingly unattractive for locals, runs up against the imperative of isolation and deterrence and still far too few legal access routes to the country. What young Moroccans are obviously looking for in Spain: work (not social benefits). [emphasis added]

Europe needs more foreign labor if it wants to have healthy and growing economies in coming decades. Italy’s Meloni – whose political party is a lineal descendent of Mussolini’s fascist party – has actually suggested some pragmatic policies, such as creating easier paths for legal immigrants to work come to Italy to work. But she also indulges in dumb demagoguery. Her government set up two small centers in Albania to hold immigrants detained trying to enter Italy.

Italy opened two centres in Albania – in Gjadër and Shëngjin – in 2024 as part of a controversial pact aimed at processing the asylum applications of adult men intercepted at sea by Italian government vessels and detaining refused asylum seekers pending their deportation.

The five-year deal, which is costing Italy an estimated €130-140m (£112-120m) a year, has faced numerous legal challenges. Citing European law, Italian judges have rejected many transfers on the grounds that migrants’ countries of origin were unsafe to be repatriated to if their asylum requests were rejected.

Several people are believed to have arrived at the facilities since the European parliament adopted a plan this month enabling the creation of offshore “return hubs” – centres outside the EU where undocumented people can be held for unspecified periods while waiting to be sent back to their home country. [emphasis added] (5)

Although there is a scam aspect of this arrangement, it’s not harmless. The cited article describes reported abusive conditions for even the few hundred people held there.

Kohlenberger’s third point:

The migration issue is increasingly dominated by false reporting, sometimes with considerable effects. Not only in terms of the interpretation of the court ruling of the Spanish Supreme Court on "hot returns", which seems to have triggered this movement in the first place - the reactions of incumbent EU politicians, probably out of domestic political calculation, also show this: Ceuta is not part of the Schengen area, so an onward journey of the migrants without further controls was therefore excluded from the outset; the "Schengen Agreement" cannot be unilaterally "terminated", as Meloni believes, because it is now binding EU law; newly arriving migrants would not fall into Spain's current regularization offensive - and so on.

These are important lessons that should be learned from the acute crisis for the further positioning of European migration policy. In any case, only one and a half months after the new European asylum rules came into force, they did not pass the first stress test. [emphasis added]

Her original Facebook post:

Notes:

(1) Spain deploys troops as tens of thousands cross Ceuta border. Channel 4 News YouTube channel. 07/31/2026. <https://youtu.be/47EBP1i1XLc?si=v_waGYCKFYbN5Msj> (Accessed: 2026-08-01).

(2) Editors (2026): What is Ceuta? Encyclopedia Britannica 07/31/2026. <https://www.britannica.com/question/What-is-Ceuta> (Accessed: 2026-01-08).

(3) Why is Ceuta a migration flashpoint and how were so many people able to cross from Morocco? Guardian 07/31/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/31/ceuta-spain-eu-border-africa> (Accessed: 2026-01-08).

(4) Rieger, Bernd (2026): What impact will the new EU asylum law CEAS really have? DW News 06/12/2026. <https://www.dw.com/en/eu-asylum-law-ceas-germany-deportation-migration/a-77508144> (Accessed: 2026-01-08).

(5) Giuffrida, Angela & Rankin, Jennifer (2026): Italian MEP suggests government wants to ‘hide truth’ about Albania migrant centre. Guardian 06/30/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/30/italy-mep-government-truth-migrant-detention-centre-albania> (Accessed: 2026-01-08).