This piece was originally published in Spanish on the website El Debate.
Permit me to introduce myself as I am unknown in Spain, a country whose Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, fills me, thousands of American Jews like me, and millions of American Christians, with great dread.
I am an entrepreneur based in Florida and dedicate much of my time to philanthropic causes. Most recently, I have supported the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), a, non-profit international policy organization working to combat the growing threat posed by extremist ideologies. I helped CEP purchase the house at Auschwitz just outside the perimeter of the death camp. It was the house in which the camp’s commandant Rudolf Höss had lived with his family. Many readers here will be familiar with the house from having seen “The Zone of Interest” (2023), a film about the comfortable banality of Höss’s idyllic domestic life while he planned and oversaw the murder of a million Jews.
That house, in which a monster once lived, has now become a center for research and investigation on organizations that are behind the rise of antisemitism around the world.
For those of us who dedicate our lives to the fight against antisemitism, and to a vigorous defense of a Jewish State in Israel, the attitude of Mr. Sánchez has been greatly troubling. Ever since the murderous attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, Sánchez has not wasted an opportunity to treat Israel a pariah. He gives loud and frequent voice to the international leftist libels that describe Israel as an “apartheid” state and characterize its war of self-defense in Gaza as a “genocide.”
Sánchez has been at the forefront of European political efforts to recognize a Palestinian state and conferred such recognition on the Palestinians on behalf of Spain without even the most minimal concession by the Palestinians of Israel’s right to exist. He inveighs against Israel and its elected prime minister at every opportunity, and has now added to his anti-Israel zealotry a loud and gaudy opposition to the American-Israeli war against Iran. We understand, of course, that his motives are cynical: What better way can there be for him to distract attention from the corruption of his Socialist government than to posture as an international progressive poster-boy against the war.
The damage that Sánchez has done to Spain’s standing in Washington is incalculable and should be of concern to all right-thinking Spaniards. President Trump has, not surprisingly, threatened to cut all trade with Spain as a result of Mr. Sánchez’s hostility. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal suggested, also, that Spain should face punitive economic consequences under the Ribicoff Amendment to the Tax Reform Act of 1976 for boycotting Israel as a matter of national government policy.
More broadly, I write this piece so that Spanish readers are informed that their government is heaping shame on Spain’s good name among many in the United States and around the world. Not only do many American Jews regard him as a misinformed, uneducated, rabid antisemite, but millions of Christians do as well. I am widely involved in communities in Florida, California, and New York, and I have lost count of the number of people, both Christian and Jewish, who have expressed pain, and even disgust, at the hostility that Sánchez has displayed toward the only Jewish State.
There are 2.3 billion Christians in the world, and they are the majority in 120 countries. There are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world in 52 Muslim countries. In 30 of those countries, over 90% of the population is Muslim. There are only 15 million Jews in the world. Israel is the only country in the world where Jews are the majority. Of the 10 million people living in Israel, approximately 7 million are Jews and 2.1 million are Arabs. There is no apartheid in Israel. Arab Israelis go to public schools with Jewish Israelis, they are members of parliament, they work together in businesses and hospitals, and they serve as justices of the Supreme court of Israel.
Sánchez’s hostility shares horrific overtones with the Spanish Inquisition, a period when hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism, thousands were tortured to determine if they had really converted, and at least 2,000 were killed. Estimates indicate that between 40,000 and 100,000 were exiled.
It’s a period that lives in infamy and it is being recalled now in the minds of Jews and Christians alike. Whereas the previous conservative government did the right thing by creating a law in 2015, that granted dual citizenship to Jews who could link their heritage to Spain, the next progressive government and the one that followed led by Sánchez did not. Before the law expired in 2019 and was not renewed, over 4,300 Jews were granted such citizenship. Now, no care is taken to disguise the hate and animosity of the Jewish people by the Spanish government. The Spanish people must wake up to the damage that Prime Minister Sánchez is doing, and the bridges he is burning.
Elliott Broidy is chairman and CEO of Broidy Capital Holdings and a co-chairman of the Fund to End Antisemitism, Extremism and Hate.