“A humanitarian emergency at Europe’s border was turned into a global antisemitic campaign in under 72 hours, and X did nothing to slow it down. This is not a story about a few bad actors. It is a story about a platform whose design rewards the fastest and most inflammatory explanation available, and on X that explanation is increasingly a Jewish conspiracy.”
An analysis by Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) Research Center (ARC) found that 173 posts from 119 influencer accounts on X recast a European border emergency as a Jewish plot, reaching an estimated 103.1 million people in 72 hours.
Between 50,000 and 60,000 migrants crossed into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on July 30. Spain declared a state of emergency. The causes were a matter of public record: a Spanish domestic legal ruling, the state of Spanish-Moroccan relations,and a decade of strain on Europe’s asylum system.
That is not the story that spread. Within hours, the ARC found that the dominant explanation on X named the State of Israel and the Jewish people as the architects of European destabilization.
ARC analyzed 173 high-impact posts published in the 72 hours after the crossing, drawn from 119 influencer accounts. Together they generated 57.5 million views, an estimated reach of 103.1 million, 1.9 million likes, and 368,400 shares in two days. The average post alone reached an audience the size of a national newspaper’s circulation.
The data points to three clear conclusions.
This Was Not the Anonymous Fringe
ARC does not track bot clusters or low-reach anonymous accounts. Every account in the sample is named, followed, and monetized. The highest performers hold paid verification, which X prioritizes in replies and recommendations. A user searching for information about Ceuta was statistically more likely to find a conspiracy theory than a verified news report.
One account called “Forbidden HQ,” viewed 5.3 million times, depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a line of migrants filing from his open mouth onto a Spanish beach. A reply beneath it falsely labeled Ceuta and Melilla as Moroccan territory. “Forbidden HQ” answered its own quote tweet by declaring Morocco an Israeli puppet state.
A fabricated image shared on X falsely portrays Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as orchestrating the migrant surge into Spain’s Ceuta enclave.
Dan Bilzerian, whose post drew 2.7 million views, told his followers Prime Minister Netanyahu had warned Spain would pay “the ultimate price” for condemning Israel. The quote appears nowhere outside Bilzerian’s own post. What he built it around was real: an Israeli Foreign Ministry message wishing Morocco a happy holiday, posted that same week. He fused a real coincidence in timing with an invented threat and let readers draw the conclusion themselves.
Dan Bilzerian falsely attributed a threat to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, using an unrelated Israeli Foreign Ministry post about Morocco to lend credibility to the fabricated claim. (Photo credit: social media)
Audiences Forwarded Rather Than Questioned
Shares outnumbered comments by more than seven to one across the sample. Users amplified the claims and rarely challenged them.
An account calling itself “China Times,” unaffiliated with any Chinese news outlet, claimed Israel had “admitted” engineering the migration through Mossad. Its evidence was a labeled parody account. The post still drew 11,000 retweets against 786 comments, a ratio near fourteen to one.
A widely viewed post falsely alleged that Israel and the Mossad orchestrated the Ceuta border crisis, citing a parody account as evidence. (Photo credit: social media)
The Theory Crossed Every Ideological Line
Far-right “Great Replacement” accounts, far-left anti-imperialist accounts, and radical Islamist accounts posted materially identical claims within the same news cycle. All of them concluded that Zionists caused the crisis. Antisemitism was the connective tissue between audiences that share no other political ground, and X’s recommendation engine treated the overlap as an engagement signal worth amplifying.
The ARC report found the same antisemitic conspiracy framed through far-right, far-left, and Islamist narratives.
On the far right, one account invoked the Kalergi Plan, a decades-old antisemitic theory holding that Jewish elites are engineering the ethnic replacement of white Europeans.
A widely shared post promoted the antisemitic “Great Replacement” conspiracy by falsely linking Spain’s criticism of Israel to the Ceuta migrant surge. (Photo credit: social media)
On the far left, author Susan Abulhawa told her followers the crossing was “completely engineered by the US, Israel, and Morocco” to force Spain back in line with “western imperial objectives.”
A meme account linked Spain’s stance on Palestine, its refusal to aid the Iran war, and the migrant wave as proof of a coordinated Israeli plot. (Photo credit: social media)
The overlap showed up in humor as much as argument. One meme account listed Spain’s pro-Palestinian stance, its refusal to aid the Iran war, and the migrant wave as connected facts, captioned with a declaration that the pattern was no coincidence. The post reached 1.1 million views.
A widely shared post falsely claimed that the United States, Israel, and Morocco engineered the Ceuta border crisis to punish Spain for its criticism of Israel. (Photo credit: social media)
Fabrications also attached themselves to real people who never spoke. An account called Land Palestine claimed Spanish actor Javier Bardem said Israel planned the migration to punish Spain over Gaza. Bardem said no such thing. Commentator Mia Khalifa quote-tweeted it to her own followers anyway, adding 906,700 more views to a claim with no source at all.
A viral post amplified the false claim that Israel orchestrated the Ceuta migrant surge in retaliation for Spain’s criticism of Israel. (Photo credit: social media)
The narratives became progressively more elaborate. One thread pointed to Morocco’s documented military cooperation with Israel as evidence of who orchestrated the crossing, then concluded that an unnamed party wanted control of the Strait of Gibraltar now that the Red Sea is closed to Israeli shipping. The thread stopped short of naming Israel directly. Its readers did not need it to.
This post falsely portrayed Morocco’s cooperation with Israel as evidence that Israel orchestrated the Ceuta migrant surge. (Photo credit: social media)
The report also traces the revival of the medieval “fifth column” myth, casting Muslim migration as a tool Jewish people are using to erase European civilization. Moroccan sovereignty disappeared inside the same narratives. Posts repeatedly described the kingdom not as a state making its own decisions, but as a “Zionist stooge” or an “Israeli puppet.”
“A humanitarian emergency at Europe’s border was turned into a global antisemitic campaign in under 72 hours, and X did nothing to slow it down. This is not a story about a few bad actors. It is a story about a platform whose design rewards the fastest and most inflammatory explanation available, and on X that explanation is increasingly a Jewish conspiracy,” said Sacha Roytman Dratwa, CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement.
CAM has called on X to take three actions : Introduce algorithmic friction on keywords tied to established antisemitic tropes during declared humanitarian emergencies, disqualify accounts that spread those tropes from the ad revenue program and from verified distribution priority and deploy expert Community Notes, built in partnership with subject-matter organizations including CAM, to supply historical context in real time.
X is functioning as an engine for the demonization of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.