STATEMENT: Pedro Sanchez uses the State to advance his phobias against Israel and his sympathies toward jihadism

Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM) firmly denounces the instrumental use of the Spanish State by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to fuel his phobias against Israel and the Jewish people, while at the same time indulging his sympathies toward Hamas and the actors that promote jihadism and terrorism in the Middle East.

Sánchez has turned Spain’s foreign policy into a tool of ideological militancy. He rewards Hamas by recognizing a fictitious “Palestinian State,” ignoring the reality that Hamas — the terrorist organization that massacred 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, and uses its own population as human shields — rejects any two-state solution and seeks only the destruction of Israel. At the same time, he floods UNRWA with public money, despite the UN agency having been repeatedly accused of complicity with Hamas: Spain has allocated more than €80 million since 2023, a 332% increase under his government, even though dozens of Western countries suspended their contributions after it was discovered that agency employees participated in the 10/7 attacks and that its facilities and personnel serve as terrorist infrastructure.

Sánchez sabotages any real pressure on the murderous Iranian ayatollah theocracy, the main financier of regional terrorism, and condemns the arrest in Israel of Saif Abukeshek, a Palestinian whose acquisition of a Spanish passport remains unexplained, detained aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla. Israeli authorities accuse him of direct links to Hamas and terrorist organizations, collaboration with the enemy during wartime, membership in a terrorist organization, and providing services to it. The Spanish government, however, speaks of an “illegal kidnapping,” demands his immediate release, and has repatriated the rest of the flotilla “charlatans” on official aircraft and with state resources — activists attempting to assist criminals in Gaza — effectively turning the State into a transportation service for pro-terrorist activists.

But the culmination of this drift is the awarding of the Commander by Number of the Order of Civil Merit to Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, personally bestowed by Sánchez this Thursday, May 7, 2026, at La Moncloa. Albanese, an open ally of the most abhorrent jihadism, destroys any claim to UN legitimacy on Middle East matters. Her statements are explicit and outrageous:

• In 2014, she claimed that “America is subjugated by the Jewish lobby” and Europe “by guilt over the Holocaust,” thereby condemning the “oppressed” (the Palestinians).
• She has repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide,” “settler colonialism,” and being the “common enemy of humanity.”
• She has justified Palestinian “armed resistance” and has been sanctioned by the United States for “blatant antisemitism” and “support for terrorism.”

Leading countries — including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Argentina, Canada, and others — have harshly criticized her, demanded her resignation, and denounced her virulent bias and partiality. Several Western governments have described her positions as antisemitic and warned that she prostitutes her office to advance an agenda of hatred. Decorating her does not uphold the conscience of the world; it replaces it with militancy. Rewarding such a profile with civil honors is a political position, not a moral one, and says far more about the Sánchez government than about her.

Sánchez does not succeed in legitimizing someone whom many democracies have denounced for prostituting her position in the service of hatred. But he does succeed in further tarnishing Spain’s reputation and credibility, turning it into an isolated country that rewards antisemitism and sympathy for terrorism with the money and prestige of all Spaniards.

ACOM harbors no hope that this government — alienated from the main Western democracies and turned into an absolute disgrace for Spain — will correct its course of action. Its conduct, widely known and criticized abroad, has caused serious damage to our country’s international reputation and credibility. We trust that the next Spanish government will be able to heal the deep rift opened by Pedro Sánchez and reveal, with transparency, the true motivations hidden behind these sympathies and phobias.

Spain deserves a dignified foreign policy, not a personal crusade.