Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday condemned an April 5 Easter display in a village in Spain, where an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was blown up using 31 pounds of gunpowder.
“The appalling antisemitic hatred on display here is a direct result of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government’s systemic incitement,” a spokesperson for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in a statement on X about the display in El Burgo near Malaga.
In many Catholic communities, Easter processions feature the burning or hanging in effigy of Judas.
El Burgo Mayor Maria Dolores Narvaez told the Punto4T television station that the display of the 20-foot effigy of Netanyahu was not antisemitic but “a centuries-old custom symbolizing the elimination of evil and not an act against Israel.” She said past events featured the burning in effigy of U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The foreign ministry in Jerusalem also wrote that, “The Spanish chargé d’affaires was summoned for a reprimand” regarding the effgy display.
The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), a pro-Israel Christian group, in a statement Sunday said it “strongly condemns the recent Easter ceremony” where an effigy of Netanyahu “was publicly burned as a supposed embodiment of evil.”
ICEJ President Jürgen Bühler noted that the act of the Burning of Judas follows a centuries‑old tradition found in some Catholic and Orthodox communities that originated in medieval Europe. “Historically, such practices have often been deeply intertwined with antisemitic narratives portraying Jews as greedy, Christ‑killers, or inherently evil. They have no place in our modern world, and should be universally banned by the Catholic Church in keeping with the major reforms of the Vatican II Council,” said Bühler.
Israel on Friday notified Spain that its military contingent will no longer take part in the International Civil Military Coordination Center in Kiryat Gat.
The CMCC was established to secure the truce in Gaza as part of Trump’s peace plan for the region.
“The State of Israel will not remain silent in the face of those who attack us,” Netanyahu explained the decision in a recorded video posted on X.
“Spain has slandered our heroes, Israel Defense Forces soldiers, the soldiers of the most moral army in the world,” he said. “Therefore, I have instructed that Spain’s representatives be removed from the coordination center in Kiryat Gat, after Spain has repeatedly chosen to stand against Israel.”
Last year, Spain’s Observatory against Antisemitism—an entity co-founded by the country’s Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE)—published its annual report for 2024, in which it documented 193 incidents – a record tally that constitutes a 321% increase over 2023 and an increase of 567% over 2022.
Most of these acts documented were linked to the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the report said.
In May, Sanchez called Israel a “genocidal state” during a speech in Congress.
Earlier that year, an Israeli government ministry accused authorities in Spain, along with Ireland and South Africa, of enabling antisemitism through inflammatory rhetoric on Israel. The accusations appeared in the “State of Antisemitism Report for 2024,” published by Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism.
Spain, Ireland and South Africa, which have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, were said to be “countries that enable antisemitism through their selective criticism of Israel and abuse of the language of human rights,” as the report’s authors phrased it.
