Antisemitism is being disguised as moral clarity.

When leaders hold the Jewish state to standards applied to no one else, moral posturing becomes a mask for something far uglier.

The blood libel continues in modern fashion, now in the language of “human rights.” (photo: Tristan Sosteric/Unsplash)

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This is a guest essay by Nachum Kaplan, a longtime journalist and commentator who writes the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has cultivated an obsessive hostility toward Israel that has become a distinctive feature of an otherwise forgettable premiership.

His latest stunt — calling on the European Union to scrap its association agreement with Israel — is pure grandstanding. It has no chance of succeeding because a few grown-ups remain in the room.

But success is not the point. The move belongs less to the realm of foreign policy than to political theater, and not particularly sophisticated theater at that.

This is not the product of a genuine moral position, nor the drift of a government under pressure. It is deliberate, sustained, and calculated. A fixation. A posture marketed as humanitarian virtue and circulated for applause in certain segments of Europe where indignation passes for seriousness and rhetoric for responsibility.

Strip away the language, however, and it is an ugly blend of opportunism, selective outrage, historical illiteracy — and the increasingly pungent odor of scandal gathering on Sánchez’s own political doorstep.

That context matters, because Sánchez does not speak from a position of integrity or credibility. He speaks from within a political ecosystem that is corroding with each day he is in office.

In April 2026, after a years-long investigation, his wife, Begoña Gómez, was charged with embezzlement, influence peddling, corruption in business dealings, and misappropriation of funds. These are not trivial allegations or technical infractions. They go to the heart of whether political proximity was leveraged for private gain — whether public institutions were repurposed as vehicles for personal advancement.

She denies wrongdoing. Yet the charges are serious enough to cast a shadow over any pretense Sánchez may have to moral authority.

The rot does not stop there, either. His brother has faced investigation for alleged influence peddling linked to his public role. Senior figures within Sánchez’s political orbit have been tied to corruption probes involving bribery, public contracts, and kickbacks.

The cumulative effect extends beyond reputational damage; it is the steady erosion of credibility. And credibility is the currency Sánchez attempts to spend when he lectures Israel about morality.

That contradiction is glaring.

A leader presiding over a scandal-ridden political environment has the moral authority of a bushranger. Yet Sánchez speaks as though he is presiding over a model democracy — confident, righteous, untroubled by the smell of decay emanating from his government. He condemns Israel as though Spain were a beacon of ethical governance.

It is a transparent performance, but it serves a purpose.

Sánchez’s anti-Israel rhetoric intensifies in near-perfect synchrony with domestic political pressure: corruption headlines, coalition instability, declining popularity. In such moments, foreign policy becomes a stage, and Israel becomes a prop.

Israel is a uniquely convenient target. Condemning it carries no cost within Sánchez’s coalition. On the contrary, it delivers returns. It energizes his party’s Far-Left base, aligns him with fashionable European opinion, and allows him to posture as a moral actor without risking anything tangible.

Few targets offer such a low-risk, high-reward opportunity for moral exhibitionism.

The reasons are structural. Israel sits at the intersection of ideology, emotion, and distortion. It is small enough to be singled out, visible enough to be endlessly scrutinized, and misunderstood enough to be caricatured without consequence. Sánchez has embraced this dynamic with enthusiasm, revealing his lack of moral seriousness and complete shallowness.

Consider the asymmetry: When corruption allegations surface within his own circle, Sánchez reaches for the language of deflection — accusing his opponents of “lawfare,” conspiracy, and judicial overreach. Investigators are cast as partisans, scrutiny as persecution, and accountability as attack.

Yet when Israel confronts enemies that openly call for its annihilation (states, militias, and terrorist organizations committed to its destruction), Sánchez abandons any capacity for nuance. There is no talk of complexity, no acknowledgment of existential threat, no effort to understand strategic reality. There is only condemnation.

Double standards are intellectually dishonest in any context. Applied consistently to Israel, however, they become more revealing. Israel is not just another state; it is the world’s only Jewish one. When it is judged by uniquely harsh standards, when its actions are stripped of context while those of its adversaries are rationalized or ignored, the question ceases to be merely political.

There is a term for this: antisemitism.

Europe, of all places, should recognize it. Spain, in particular, is very familiar with it, as the country has not had a non-antisemitic moment since it expelled its Jews in 1492. What makes Sánchez’s posture harmful is that he normalizes a discourse in which Israel is uniquely demonized, reinforcing narratives that do not remain confined to foreign policy. They seep outward — into media, into public consciousness, into cultural attitudes toward Jews more broadly. This is how political rhetoric becomes social reality.

Moral authority is not declared; it is earned. It requires consistency, integrity, and a willingness to apply standards equally, especially to oneself. Under Sánchez, Spain exhibits none of these qualities. It lectures abroad while stumbling at home, projecting certainty where it should show restraint.

Nor does Spain have the strategic weight to justify such posturing. It is not a decisive actor in the Middle East, does not shape the region’s security architecture, and does not bear the consequences of the threats Israel faces. Spain contributes little in terms of hard power, and even less in terms of strategic responsibility.

What it offers instead is asinine commentary: loud, moralizing, and largely irrelevant.

It is also self-defeating, although Sánchez lacks the intellect or insight to see it. The more Sánchez escalates his rhetoric, the more he invites scrutiny of his own contradictions. The louder he condemns Israel, the more visible his unresolved scandals at home become. The more he presents himself as a moral arbiter, the more fragile that claim appears under examination.

This erodes Spain’s credibility, distorts public understanding of the conflict, and diminishes Europe’s fast-waning influence further.

In the end, Sánchez’s anti-Israel fixation signals nothing more than political fragility and ethical incoherence. It is what happens when a leader substitutes performance for principle, rhetoric for reality, and external condemnation for internal accountability.

Spain deserves better than a leader who treats it so casually, and so does the truth.

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