My first thought was: “What was that?” My second was: “It’s too early to tell.”
The images, however, were striking and unforgettable. Last weekend, some 80,000 people – mainly young men – swarmed across the border from Morocco into the Spanish town of Ceuta. Using a word like “swarmed” has probably already marked me in certain circles, and I should issue a trigger warning now that, at the risk of being accused of dehumanizing, I might describe the incident as an “invasion” or “incursion.”
I’m aware that these border-breachers are human beings – the vast majority of them being exploited. Scores lost their lives – and for what? That’s another question: Just who was behind the mass cross-border flow of thousands, and why did it take place?
Then there’s the tricky problem of what to call them – migrants, infiltrators, asylum-seekers, aliens, potential members of jihadist sleeper cells? Take your pick.
Some of the answers depend on where you are on the socio-political map, and others on where you are reading this on the global map.
The pictures of the barefoot adolescents emerging onto the beaches or climbing up rock cliffs and over fences have entered public awareness, like the Syrian refugees trekking across Europe after Angela Merkel opened Germany to migrants in 2015, or the devastating image of the lifeless body of toddler Aylan Kurdi on a Turkish beach after his family tried to cross the waters to Greece.
Whatever they came to do, it wasn’t to have a picnic in the picturesque small town or cash in on Spain’s success in last month’s FIFA World Cup. It was a challenge to Spain’s sovereignty, European conceptions, and the greater global diplomatic order. Someone was testing the waters, less than 20 km. from mainland Europe. And it wasn’t the first time.
Ceuta shows how mass migration can be mobilized and weaponized
Although most of the infiltrators returned – or were returned – to Morocco a few hours after kissing the Spanish enclave’s shore, they left a mark more enduring than their footprints on the sand. Residents of the small town were scared and scarred. And it wasn’t just the citizens in Ceuta who looked on in fear.
Ceuta’s residents physically locked their homes and stores; Europeans and Brits mentally locked down too. The need for tighter border controls was seen in every youth gleefully posting his personal Spanish conquest on social media.
Open borders combined with closed eyes are vulnerable to abuse. The incident tested the EU’s tolerance of migrants. And maybe that was the point: to see how far they could go figuratively and literally. A new term popped up in discussions: “Migration by mobilization.”
This mass crossing was not the work of small smuggling networks, but the result of the digital platforms used to get out the message, “The border is open,” and spread the news that Spanish courts had recently ruled that migrants who managed to reach Ceuta by sea would not be immediately turned back. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who had previously said Spain would regularize the status of some 1 million refugees in the country, fumed at this assault on Spanish sovereignty (and challenge to his already troubled government).
While last weekend’s incident might not change the global diplomatic map on its own, the precedent, and more importantly the response, will be watched everywhere from the US, Southeast Asia, and Europe. It has been suggested that countries that control migration routes – including Morocco and Turkey – might use the incident to leverage greater diplomatic influence.
Some countries, including Russia and Belarus, might be encouraged to further “weaponize” migrants, using them as pawns to threaten neighboring states, as happened when Belarus apparently permitted an influx of mainly North African and Middle Eastern refugees along the borders with Lithuania, Poland, and Latvia in 2021.
Morocco, an Abraham Accords ally with Israel, is a relatively stable country under the rule of King Mohammed VI. Feeding conspiracy theories, there has been increased tension between both Israel and Sanchez’s Spain (mainly over Gaza), and Morocco and Spain (chiefly over Western Sahara and the status of Ceuta and the neighboring Spanish enclave, Melilla). Spain’s antagonism toward Donald Trump has increased, while Morocco’s relationship with him has grown closer. (Just this week, the Moroccan highway to Western Sahara was renamed after the US president.)
Undoubtedly, the scenes of the mass crashing of a border carry different connotations for Israelis post-October 7, 2023, when thousands of terrorists, followed by waves of “ordinary civilians,” invaded southern Israel, murdering 1,200, abducting 251, raping, pillaging, and burning homes to the ground.
Spiked chief political writer Brendan O’Neill noted the instant hypocrisy and anti-Israel conspiracies. “The speed with which anti-Zionist cranks latched on to the Ceuta crisis was extraordinary,” he wrote. “No sooner had 60,000 men from Morocco swam and kicked their way into the Spanish enclave at the tip of North Africa than both the woke Left and crank Right had spied the hidden hand of the Jewish state… Shorter version: the Jews did it.
“It really is a mania. The Combat Antisemitism Movement found that within the first 72 hours of Ceuta’s storming, more than 100 million people on social media had been exposed to the idea that it was a ‘Jewish plot’…
“It is our own governments’ suicidal abandonment of the ideal of national sovereignty that has caused the migrant crisis, not the hand-rubbing plotting of the Jews of the Holy Land. Like their forebears in the pitchfork Middle Ages, anti-Zionists prefer to live in a house of lies than to confront the truth of their world, and themselves.”
Israel also had mass border breachings before October 7, 2023 – notably one when Palestinians swarmed into the Golan Heights from Syria in May 2011, hailing it as a return to a homeland while conveniently ignoring the fact that the Golan Heights has never had a “Palestinian” presence. There were also intrusive rallies along the Lebanon border.
These incidents already raised the issue of social media creating such “spontaneous” events and who is legally responsible for any harm caused. It’s a strange world when the speed of security incidents depends on the quality of Wi-Fi, and the response needs to take place in the virtual world as well as on the ground.
There is undoubtedly poverty in Morocco; there’s also poverty in New York, London, and throughout the Western world. And these were not “climate migrants,” as some suggested; the weather in Ceuta is the same as just over the border. There is no part of the world that can – or should – accept the bulk of another part’s population.
Ceuta turns mass migration into a global security concern
The answer is developing the techniques and technologies to combat the difficulties, and here, to the dismay of boycotters, Israel is a leading light in every sphere, including agriculture, water, and foodtech.
Europe was definitely spooked. Even though Ceuta and Melilla aren’t included in the Schengen Area that guarantees border crossing from one European member state to another, it was clear that the youths weren’t intending on finding work and living normative lives in sleepy Ceuta.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni immediately suspended the Schengen agreement with Spain on security grounds, and convened a meeting of European interior ministers to discuss the situation. The migrant crisis, already on the agenda in several national elections, will continue to polarize politicians and voters.
The Ceuta incident is largely being treated as part of the migrant crisis rather than a terrorist threat. Maybe that’s because it’s more convenient for European governments to continue to relate to a humanitarian crisis, real or otherwise, than to acknowledge the threat of global jihad, even after frequent painful reminders in the form of lethal attacks, including last month’s car-ramming by a suspected Islamic State member at the Berlin Gay Pride parade. Not only migrants deserve human rights; so do the citizens of the receiving countries.
The events last weekend demonstrate just how quickly borders can be breached by overwhelming numbers. Israel doesn’t need the reminder; it will be forever haunted by October 7. That’s why it is making an effort to maintain buffer zones on the northern and southern borders.
Mass migration is morphing from being a mainly humanitarian issue into being a global security concern. It wasn’t just a border that was breached in Ceuta; a red line was also crossed