Israel is crying about Spanish burning effigy of war criminal Netanyahu

Israel is having a petulant hissy fit about Spain. Again. The occupation regime has cried that a Spanish village’s decision to use an effigy of genocidal war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu in its traditional Easter ceremony is – you’ve guessed it – antisemitic.

The Israeli government – never one to shy away from displays of arrogance – has “summoned” a Spanish embassy official for a “reprimand”. The issue? The small Málaga town of El Burgo used an effigy of Benjamin Netanyahu for its traditional “burning of Judas” festival.

All too typically, the Israeli government ranted on X that the decision of one pueblo in an autonomous region of Andalusia was the fault of Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez – because he has criticised Israel’s genocide in Gaza, said mean things about Israeli war criminals and dared to say Spain will not support Israel’s illegal war on Iran:

The appalling antisemitic hatred on display here is a direct result of @sanchezcastejon government’s systemic incitement.
And even now, the Spanish government remains silent.
The Spanish chargé d’affaires was summoned for a reprimand. pic.twitter.com/2Bguhs7Ce8

— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) April 11, 2026

Israel having another tantrum

Sánchez’s government was having none of such nonsense. In a public statement, it said that it rejected the “insidious accusation” and pointed out the measures it has taken to protect and support Spain’s tens of thousands of Sephardi Jews.

On Easter Sunday, 5 April, El Burgo’s townspeople burned a 7m-tall effigy of Netanyahu, filled with around 14kg of gunpowder. Many would say that this is the least Netanyahu deserves after Israel’s slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians, his and Donald Trump’s illegal war on Iran and his attacks on Lebanon, Syria and the occupied West Bank.

Every year, the town selects someone they consider to represent evil as the template for the effigy of Judas. The town’s council said this year’s choice was an expression of the people’s rejection of war and genocide. Last year, Netanyahu’s poodle Donald Trump was selected.

Unsurprisingly, Spain is right, Israel is wrong. Rejecting and opposing evil is not antisemitic. In 2015, the Sussex town of Lewes selected then-PM David Cameron to burn as Guy Fawkes on the UK’s ‘Bonfire night’, a festival with deeply anti-Catholic origins. Of course, suggesting that rejecting evil is antisemitic is, itself, antisemitic. That’s hardly surprising either, considering the deeply antisemitic nature of Zionism and its propaganda.

Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Al Jazeera