Spain’s current government under Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has pursued policies that not only damage its international standing but also contribute to a rising wave of postmodern antisemitism in Europe. This trend, disguised as progressive inclusion, risks reviving exclusionary impulses under the guise of anti-fascism and solidarity with Palestine.

In May 2024, Spain’s Council of Ministers approved the recognition of a Palestinian state outside UN frameworks, amid ongoing Hamas attacks on Israel and its use of human shields. Far from promoting a genuine two-state solution, this move aligned Spain with Hamas’s agenda—celebrated by the terrorist group, which enjoys majority Palestinian support in polls. Hamas had already applauded Sánchez in 2023 for quasi-collaborationist funding to UNRWA and his critical rhetoric toward Israel. By March 2026, Sánchez permanently withdrew Ambassador Ana Salomón Pérez from Israel, earning fresh praise from Hamas and Iran for his “No to War” stance—ironically used to deflect domestic failures like insecurity, infrastructure, and youth housing access.

Sánchez positions himself as Europe’s leading “antifascist progressive,” often outpacing cautious leaders like Macron, Starmer, or von der Leyen. Yet his anti-hate speech initiatives (including tools like “Hodio”) coincide with incidents fostering hostility toward Jews: disruptions at the 2025 Vuelta a España, vandalism at Barcelona’s Jewish cemetery, tensions at Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum, and university acampadas supporting Hamas while ignoring women’s and LGBTQ+ oppression under Islamist regimes.

Spanish public universities have severed ties with Israeli academic institutions—cutting research in high-tech fields—while remaining silent on China. Professors push pro-Hamas biases, leading to intimidation, harassment, and assaults against Jewish students, including spitting and calls for expulsion. This echoes historical Judenfrei zones in Nazi Germany (Berlin, Vienna), where Jewish businesses were marked and boycotted.

Paradoxically, those claiming to fight fascism enable antisemitism’s resurgence. Friedrich Hayek in The Road to Serfdom warned that socialism and certain nationalisms share collectivist roots in coercive planning, rejecting liberal individualism. German thinkers like Werner Sombart, Johann Plenge, and Othmar Spann shifted from Marxist internationalism to state-directed organic communities, facilitating Nazism’s rise as a radicalization of socialist premises—preserving anti-market hatred but redirecting it nationally and racially.

Today’s “woke” progressivism risks a similar convergence: extreme left sectors indirectly gain support from neo-Nazis, Falangists, or anti-liberal fringes obsessed with Jews, Austrian economics, right-wing homosexuals, or Christian groups—often via front-populist media. This symbiosis should not surprise us; it unites collectivist planners against Judeo-Christian Western values.

From a Catholic perspective, supporting modern Israel’s right to self-defense poses no moral contradiction. Catholic doctrine affirms the irrevocability of God’s covenant with the Jewish people (Romans 11:28-29: “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable”). The Catechism (nn. 839-840) highlights the Jewish people’s role in salvation history; Nostra Aetate (Vatican II) deplores antisemitism; the 2015 Commission document reaffirms the covenant’s validity. St. Thomas Aquinas’s just war criteria (just cause, right intention) justify Israel’s defense against Hamas—a group that repudiates peace, uses human shields (including children), operates from hospitals/schools, and enjoys broad Palestinian electoral support. St. John Paul II called Jews “our elder brothers” in 1986, underscoring fraternal bonds.

Israel remains the Middle East’s sole democracy respecting human dignity, freedoms, and integration (Arabs serve in public life). In contrast, Hamas and allies like Iran/Hezbollah threaten Western liberties, including women’s and LGBTQ+ rights—ironically championed by Sánchez’s coalition (including Sumar, Podemos, ERC, BNG). This “red-green alliance” of cultural Marxism and Islamism targets true equality, dignity, and freedom rooted in Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman, and Aristotelian-Thomistic heritage.

Sánchez’s path—normalizing Hamas’s political arm (echoing past Basque separatist accommodations)—projects Spain as third-worldized, allied with Hispanic American narco-communist regimes and anti-Western Islamist states, pleasing Putin. When Hamas and Iran applaud your policies, reflection is urgent.

True progress defends liberty, not empowers those rejecting it. Catholics and Westerners must recognize Israel as a bulwark against threats, honoring the irrevocable divine promises while pursuing just peace for all in the Holy Land.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)