US anti-Israel activists blame Jewish state for Los Angeles wildfire crisis
Far-left groups Code Pink and Jewish Voice for Peace tie catastrophic fires to funding for Israel, prompting condemnation from Jewish groups
Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.
US Jewish groups condemned anti-Israel activists on Thursday for blaming the Los Angeles wildfire crisis on Israel.
Several anti-Israel groups and commentators linked the war in Gaza and US military spending on Israel to the catastrophic fires.
Code Pink, a far-left activist group, said on Instagram, “When US taxes go to burning people alive in Gaza, we can’t be surprised when those fires come home.”
The group also said it was pressuring California Senator Alex Padilla at his Washington, DC office, tying the war to climate change.
California sees blazes most years, with the wildfire season typically beginning in June or July and running through October, according to the Western Fire Chiefs Association. But CalFire says January wildfires are not unprecedented; there was one in 2022 and 10 in 2021.
The season is beginning earlier and ending later due to rising temperatures and decreased rainfall tied to climate change, according to recent data. Rains that usually end fire season are often delayed, meaning fires can burn through the winter months, the association said.
The New York branch of the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace, in an Instagram post about the fires, said, “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 New York’s hardline anti-Israel group Within Our Lifetime, posted an image of the fires and said, “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 said. “There are climate consequences that will find us all.”
Commentator Mehdi Hasan also linked US military aid to Israel to the Los Angeles Fire Department’s budget.
The Los Angeles Fire Department is mainly funded by the city of Los Angeles, while military spending for Israel comes from the federal government.
Anti-Israel activists have previously tied funding for Israel to unrelated issues, such as New York libraries.
New York Congressman Ritchie Torres, one of Israel’s most outspoken supporters in Washington, lashed 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 said on X. “The modus operandi of Antisemitism is slanderous scapegoating: when in doubt, blame the Jews.”
“Code Pink’s rabid anti-Zionism and insatiable animosity toward Israel drives them to make an absurd, incomprehensible claim,” the head of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, said on X. “What does it say about a group that will find a way to use any tragedy to foster incitement and antisemitism?”
Amy Spitalnick, the head of the progressive Jewish Council for Public Affairs, called the Code Pink statement “the latest example of a relentless scapegoating of Israel or Jews for virtually any global problem.”
Spitalnick also warned against right-wing rhetoric blaming the fires on diversity initiatives. Elon Musk, in a post on X about the fires, said, “DEI means people DIE.”
Agencies contributed to this report.
