Storming the Gates of Europe

On 25 May 2019, the son of a well-known head of government tweeted this:

Dear Arabs and Muslims. Want to free occupied Arab Islamic lands? Here’s a good start!

– @YairNetanyahu, 25.05.2019 (archived)

With it he posted a map marking Spain’s possessions in North Africa: Ceuta, Melilla, the Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, the Peñón de Alhucemas, the Isla de Alborán and the Chafarinas Islands.

Vox leader Santiago Abascal called him ignorant and frivolous. Netanyahu junior replied that Ceuta and Melilla were tiny territories Spain holds across the sea on another continent, and that Spaniards might imagine how Israel feels when their government calls on it to give away Judea and Samaria (timesofisrael.com, 27.05.2019). This was no one-off slip: in 2025 he repeated the threat and added the prospect of recognising a Catalan state (elespanol.com, 01.10.2025).

And that is far from all of it. And yes, we are talking about exactly the zones you heard about in the news yesterday.

Disarmed by Court Order

On 30 July 2026, thousands of mostly young Moroccans crossed the border into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, most of them swimming around the Tarajal breakwater; in Melilla the Beni Enzar crossing was closed after attempted entries (elindependiente.com, 30.07.2026). In legal terms they have entered Spain, and therefore the EU zone. Even the German state broadcaster felt obliged to report it (tagesschau.de, 30.07.2026), if as usual incompletely. I will explain, but first the known facts.

The immediate occasion is a ruling by Spain’s own Tribunal Supremo (poderjudicial.es, 08.07.2026): people who enter by swimming may no longer be turned back summarily. Spain’s foreign minister Albares drew the connection to the ruling explicitly.

Spain and Morocco have since agreed to return those who entered »as soon as possible«. Experience says a substantial share will nonetheless stay in the country, travel on via Algeciras to the mainland, and of those a good number will continue to Germany.

The White House yesterday immediately blamed Spanish policy. Italy is considering suspending the Schengen agreement with respect to Spain, and summoned Madrid’s ambassador (elespanol.com, 30.07.2026).

There are many more facts to this, and I will come to them, but allow me a »brief« excursion into history.

Tariq ibn Ziyad and Others

The history of Europe is in very large part also the history of fending off Muslim occupiers. I had an AI quickly draw up a list; you may therefore read the rest of this paragraph as illustration: 674–678 (Umayyads, Constantinople), 711 (Tariq ibn Ziyad, Guadalete), 717–718 (Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik, Constantinople), 719 (Umayyads, Narbonne/Septimania), 721 (as-Samh ibn Malik, Toulouse), 732 (Abd ar-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, Tours/Poitiers), 827 (Aghlabids, Sicily), 846 (Arab raiders, Rome/Old St Peter’s), 847 (Aghlabids, Emirate of Bari), 889 (Andalusians, Fraxinetum/Provence), 1086 (Yusuf ibn Tashfin, Sagrajas/Zallaqa), 1195 (Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur, Alarcos), 1212 (Muhammad an-Nasir, Las Navas de Tolosa), 1354 (Ottomans, Gallipoli), 1371 (Ottomans, Maritsa), 1389 (Murad I, Kosovo Polje), 1396 (Bayezid I, Nicopolis), 1444 (Murad II, Varna), 1453 (Mehmed II, Constantinople), 1526 (Suleiman I, Mohács), 1529 (Suleiman I, Vienna), 1570 (Lala Mustafa Pasha, Cyprus), 1571 (Devlet I Giray, Moscow), 1627 (Murat Reis, Iceland), 1631 (Barbary corsairs, Baltimore/Ireland), 1645–1669 (Ottomans, Crete/Candia), 1683 (Kara Mustafa Pasha, Vienna).

NGOs and Welfare Systems

Well, a modern cynic would joke: today it would be legally required to describe the Ottomans as »persons seeking protection«. And their weapons would be not swords and cannon but NGOs and welfare systems.

We know it from attackers who invoke »Allah« explicitly while the authorities stubbornly puzzle over the motive. And we know it from young men who proudly wear T-shirts bearing the number »1453«, the fall of Constantinople, though heaven help you if you infer from that that their minds still run to the conquest and subjection of the Christian West.

The question, then, is not whether young male Muslims of fighting age are moving to Europe. The question is whether they follow their faith and therefore mean to spread it along with its claim to power, or whether they will really submit to the »Euro-Islam« asserted by Cem Özdemir [a leading German Green politician] and others, an »Islam light«. (See on this the 2018 essay »Wenn Politiker sich aufmachen, Religionen zu reformieren«, in German.)

Well then, these are all questions we have been working through here for a decade. And often enough our wildest predictions were wrong only in that reality broke over us wilder still.

But in the case of the assault on the Spanish enclaves in North Africa we have the chance to shed light on some of the closer circumstances, and those are … interesting.

Yair Netanyahu’s call on »Arabs and Muslims« to storm the EU enclaves at the Strait of Gibraltar was perhaps only an early thought experiment, a »crank notion«. But that is what they said about »Greater Israel« too.

An Immediate Price

On 12 March 2026, former Pentagon adviser Michael Rubin, now at the American Enterprise Institute, recommends that Trump and Rubio recognise Ceuta and Melilla as »occupied Moroccan territory« (larazon.es, 20.03.2026). Four days later he goes further and calls on Morocco to send unarmed civilians into the enclaves in the spirit of the 1975 »Green March«, clear away the fences and raise the flag (moroccoworldnews.com, 27.03.2026). On 1 April, Republican congressman Mario Díaz-Balart, a close confidant of Rubio, declares that the enclaves lie not in Spanish but in Moroccan territory (moroccoworldnews.com, 04.04.2026). Morocco counts as part of American »security strategy«. With a takeover of Ceuta and Melilla, the United States (and its close allies) would gain control of the Strait of Gibraltar and thereby of shipping into the Mediterranean.

None of this has to be read between the lines. In April, Ynet, one of Israel’s largest newspapers, ran an opinion piece under the heading that the Abraham Accords were now reaching the Strait, and that Israel is uniquely positioned to help Morocco reclaim its north (ynetnews.com, 26.04.2026).

Spain had refused the United States access to the Rota and Morón bases during the Iran campaign; a leaked Pentagon paper thereupon war-gamed expelling Spain from NATO. When Spain then also criticised the Israeli strikes on Lebanon in sharp terms in April, Israel threw the Spanish representatives out of the Civil-Military Coordination Center for the Gaza ceasefire at Kiryat Gat. Anyone who wages a diplomatic war against Israel, said Netanyahu, will pay an »immediate price« (timesofisrael.com, 10.04.2026). There was speculation about what exactly Israel meant by that threat, and that was presumably the point of the threat.

At the end of July 2026 the King of Morocco celebrated Throne Day. To mark it he pardoned 1,788 convicted persons; according to the Moroccan justice ministry, nine prisoners had the remainder of their sentence remitted, 1,668 had their sentences shortened, and 109 of those pardoned were not in custody at all (moroccoworldnews.com, 29.07.2026).

On 30 July, thousands of young Moroccans stormed the borders of the EU enclaves. Footage is also circulating on social media which purports to show young men being brought close to the border in trucks; independent confirmation is so far lacking (@TalebSahara, 30.07.2026). The Spanish government delegation stated that the Moroccan Gendarmerie was cooperating; officers on the ground called that help superficial.

Overnight, break-ins at flats in Ceuta are reported (@davidsantosvlog, 30.07.2026).

On the morning of 31 July 2026, footage circulates according to which the Spanish army briefly held the border to Ceuta but withdrew again at 5:00, whereupon young men began entering once more (@herqles_es, 31.07.2026).

That same »adviser« from March has spoken up again just now, demanding the »return« of Ceuta and Melilla to Morocco (@mrubin1971, 31.07.2026), which is to say: to the United States and thereby to its »allies«.

These demands are bullshit. Melilla has been under Spanish control since 17 September 1497. Ceuta was taken by the Portuguese in 1415, came under Spanish-Habsburg rule in 1580, chose in 1640 to remain with Spain, and became formally Spanish in 1668 by the Treaty of Lisbon. The United States began in 1776. The state that names itself after the biblical Israel was founded in 1948. The Morocco that exists today gained its independence in 1956. The demand for the »return« of Ceuta and Melilla, as one Mr Rubin makes it, rests on a gross lie, and an educated man ought to know that. They know that we know that they are lying, and so on.

Ten Days Earlier

It may in fact also be that the American-Israeli demands were exactly that: only demands. Possibly what is being fought out right now is an internal Mediterranean conflict, with Washington and Jerusalem watching in some surprise (and then considering how to use it).

On 20 July 2026, Spain’s chief Pedro Sánchez flew to Algiers. He met President Tebboune, and they agreed politically to increase Algerian gas deliveries to Spain. Algeria is by now Spain’s largest gas supplier (libertaddigital.com, 21.07.2026).

For Morocco this is an affront. In 2021 Algeria preferred to shut the Maghreb-Europe pipeline, which ran across Moroccan territory, rather than keep paying Morocco transit fees. More Algerian gas for Spain means more money for Morocco’s arch-enemy, over a route on which Morocco earns nothing.

Ten days later the border broke.

Spain pays Morocco to guard its side of the border. Between 2019 and 2022, more than 62 million euros flowed to the Moroccan authorities (elindependiente.com, 11.03.2023); other accountings arrive at 118 million for the same period from the interior ministry budget alone (hispanidad.com, 10.08.2025). Brussels pays on top of that. And even after the assault of 2021, when Morocco let some 10,000 people through, the payments went on.

The Spanish foreign ministry has, however, expressly denied any connection between the Algiers trip and the border crisis (theobjective.com, 30.07.2026).

It would be a multiple irony. The United States and Israel have been talking for months about the Strait, about »occupied territory«, about a second Green March. And then Morocco opens the border, possibly in revenge for some local gas purchases.

And yet, and this is where the tragedy of Europe lies, the result is the same whether powers overseas or local powers organise the incursion of young men. There is a phrase for this: a distinction without a difference.

One way or another or another: the question will have to be asked how much of Europe will remain of Europe.

Siglo de Oro

I am spending this summer in Toledo, in Spain. Here I attend the Latin Mass daily.

It is still debated who exactly it was who opened the city gates of Toledo in 711, from the inside, and let in the troops of Tariq ibn Ziyad; the sources for it are late and unreliable. What is certain is that the history of Europe and of Spain was also a struggle against foreign powers lasting many centuries, until at last, in 1492, with the completion of the Reconquista, Spain’s Golden Age could begin, the Siglo de Oro (Wikipedia »Spanish Golden Age«).

I do not know whether a new Reconquista is coming. We have not yet run out of popes. Reconquista, though, means reconquest. I fight in my personal Reconquista, wanting to free my mind and my attention from the claws of this age.