From the Liveblog of
Thursday, January 9, 2025
US anti-Israel activists blame Israel for Los Angeles wildfire crisis
Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.
Anti-Israel activists and commentators in the US blame Israel for the wildfire crisis in Los Angeles.
Code Pink, a far-left activist group, says on Instagram, “When US taxes go to burning people alive in Gaza, we can’t be surprised when those fires come home.”
The New York branch of the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace, in a post about the fires, says, “Instead of putting resources toward making our country livable, our government is putting billions toward Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.”
Fatima Mohammed, a leader of the hardline anti-Israel group Within Our Lifetime, posts an image of the fires and says, “The flames of Gaza will not stop there.”
“Dropping hundreds of thousands of bombs on Gaza, turning it into a blazing inferno, has consequences,” she says. “There are climate consequences that will find us all.”
Commentator Mehdi Hasan also links US military aid to Israel to the LA fire department’s budget.
The Los Angeles Fire Department is mainly funded by the city of Los Angeles, while aid to Israel is from the federal government.
New York Congressman Ritchie Torres, one of Israel’s most outspoken supporters in Washington, lashes Code Pink for blaming Israel for the fires.
“The nature of Antisemitism is to scapegoat the Jewish People and the Jewish State for everything wrong in the world—no matter how tenuous the causal connection,” he says on X. “The modus operandi of Antisemitism is slanderous scapegoating: when in doubt, blame the Jews.”
Amy Spitalnick, the head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, calls the Code Pink statement “the latest example of a relentless scapegoating of Israel or Jews for virtually any global problem.”
