Antisemitic conspiracy theories falsely blaming Israel and the Jewish people for the massive migrant surge into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta reached an estimated audience of more than 100 million people on X within just 72 hours, according to a new report by the Combat Antisemitism Movement.

An analysis by CAM’s Antisemitism Research Center identified 173 posts from 119 influencer accounts that portrayed the border crisis as a Jewish plot. The posts generated 57.5 million views, an estimated reach of 103.1 million people, 1.9 million likes and more than 368,000 shares.

Between 50,000 and 60,000 migrants crossed into Ceuta on July 30, prompting Spain to declare a state of emergency. Despite the publicly documented causes surrounding the crisis, false claims rapidly spread online alleging that Israel, the Mossad or Jewish figures had orchestrated the migrant influx.

CAM said the conspiracy theories were promoted by far-right, far-left and Islamist accounts. Some revived longstanding claims that Jewish elites are engineering demographic change in Europe, while others falsely alleged that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had threatened Spain or that Israel had admitted involvement in the crisis.

The report cited several highly viewed posts, including one depicting Netanyahu with migrants emerging from his mouth onto a Spanish beach, as well as claims by prominent social media figures that the crisis had been engineered by Israel, the United States and Morocco.

CAM CEO Sacha Roytman Dratwa said a humanitarian emergency had been transformed into a worldwide antisemitic campaign in less than three days, accusing X’s recommendation systems of rewarding inflammatory conspiracy theories.

CAM called on X to introduce safeguards against established antisemitic tropes during humanitarian emergencies, remove advertising and verification benefits from accounts spreading such content, and expand the use of expert Community Notes.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)