Spain Blames Russia and Israel for the Lies Behind a Deadly Border Rush
On Aug. 31, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said networks linked to Russia and Israel had spread the online disinformation that helped drive more than 72,000 people to rush the enclave of Ceuta in late July, a surge in which at least 100 died. Citing research by the European Union’s diplomatic service, he accused two foreign states of exploiting a deadly migration crisis to attack a European democracy; both denied it.
Spain has put a name to the online lies it says helped turn a border into a death trap. Speaking on Aug. 31, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said there were signs that Russia and Israel had spread disinformation about Spanish migration policy in the run-up to the late-July surge on Ceuta, the country’s enclave on the North African coast, while finding no evidence of Moroccan involvement, NBC News reported, citing Reuters.
More than 72,000 people crossed irregularly from Morocco into the small Spanish territory between July 30 and 31, in what officials called an unprecedented surge at one of the European Union’s only two land borders with Africa. At least 100 died in the attempt, according to Ceuta’s local authorities, CBS News reported. Spain, Morocco and the European Union had already blamed a wave of social-media disinformation for the rush; Sánchez’s statement was the first to attribute part of it to specific foreign states.
What Spain says the EU found
Sánchez said research by the EU’s diplomatic service, the European External Action Service, had indicated that Russian and Israeli networks were behind the spread of the disinformation, working in conjunction with international far-right networks, Al Jazeera reported. After July 30 and 31, he said, there was “a spread of rumors and disinformation” from social networks he described as linked to both countries, alongside an international far right that, in his account, “always uses migration” to attack Spain and to divide Europe.
He framed the alleged campaign as retaliation, saying it was clear the two states had used the crisis to criticize Madrid over its positions on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, NBC News reported. Sánchez gave no further detail on the evidence underpinning the accusation, according to the same account — a gap his critics were quick to seize on.
The lie that pulled people to the fence
The disinformation that preceded the crossings turned on a single false promise: that anyone who reached Ceuta by swimming could not be sent back to Morocco. That claim, untrue under Spanish and EU law, circulated on social platforms and was amplified by human-trafficking groups and by a misreading of a Spanish court ruling, Al Jazeera reported. Within roughly 48 hours, tens of thousands of people acted on it, and the sea and the border fences became lethal.
Denials from Moscow and Jerusalem
The accusation drew swift denials. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Sánchez was “lying shamelessly,” and that the statements “will not distract from Sánchez’s disgraceful failure to manage his country’s affairs,” CBS News reported. Russia also rejected the claim, denying any involvement in the migrant crisis or in any disinformation campaign around it, Al Jazeera reported.
An accusation, and the burden it carries
The dispute leaves a democracy in an uncomfortable position of its own making. A sitting EU head of government has publicly named two foreign states as sources of a disinformation operation tied to a crisis in which people died — a serious charge that, on the public record so far, rests on a summary of intelligence rather than published evidence, CBS News reported. That tension runs through the wider fight over online falsehoods: attribution is hard, proof is often classified, and the same uncertainty that shields state actors can also be used to wave away real findings. What is not in dispute is the sequence the reporting describes — a lie moved across feeds faster than any correction, and more than 100 people never came back from the water, NBC News reported.