Consider Sanchez’s push Monday to have the European Union join Spain in suspending a free trade agreement with Israel. Sanchez said the EU had to act “once and for all” because “everything suggests” that Israel has engaged in systemic human rights abuses in its Gaza and Lebanon military actions. Everything does not suggest nearly as much. However, Sanchez’s policy here is in contrast to the one that he applies to China.

Visiting Beijing last month, Sanchez had only glowing tributes for Chinese President Xi Jinping, leader of the country’s Communist Party.

“China and Spain are two friendly nations,” Sanchez told Xi, “defenders of peace and committed to the multilateral order.”

China’s genocide against the Uyghur people of Xinjiang, its oppression of Hong Kong and silencing of dissent, and its rather unfriendly and unpeaceful treatment of Taiwan and the Philippines were not on Sanchez’s agenda. Making the prime minister’s human rights hypocrisy especially absurd was the focus behind his particularly promiscuous pursuit of Xi’s affection.

After all, it was the very same focus as that with which Sanchez now targets Israel: trade.

While in Beijing, Sanchez betrayed his fellow EU leaders by abandoning his prior support for EU tariffs to address Chinese dumping. Because China’s economy is rotting under the weight of vast debt and Xi’s paranoid suspicion of private industry and entrepreneurship, the Chinese Communist Party is desperately attempting to dump heavily subsidized goods into the West, most notably with electric vehicles.

This dumping poses a clear threat to European jobs and industry. In turn, the EU has moved to take tentative action against it. Sanchez was on board with this multilateral defensive effort. At least, he was on board until Xi bought him off. The prime minister’s tariff U-turn came just one day after a Chinese energy company pledged to invest a billion dollars in Spain. Chinese state media commended their comrade, observing that Sanchez’s “realistic and rational perspective deserves to be heard more widely around the world.”

Such generous Chinese praise is usually reserved for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

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Israel has made some mistakes in its operations in Gaza. It has relied too heavily on air power and has sometimes excessively obstructed aid flows. However, Israel’s prosecution of its war effort has generally been focused on killing terrorists while simultaneously mitigating civilian harm. It has defended its people and taken a lot of very bad actors off the board. In contrast, among its many other crimes, the CCP is continuing a genocide that has seen nearly 2 million innocents forced into concentration camps of rape, reeducation, murder, and despair.

Targeting Israel is easy and plays well with Sanchez’s Socialist base. However, when it comes to Xi and human rights, the prime minister has a well-understood pacto del olvido.