Anti-Israel Activists Compare LA Fires to Gaza

Science and Health
David Rutman

Anti-Israel activists on social media and elsewhere have compared the ongoing fires Los Angeles to the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, with some going as far as blaming Israel for the fires.

The most notable figure to compare the Los Angeles fires to Gaza was Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. “On our small planet, all injustices are connected,” Albanese posted on X in response to an op-ed, “From Gaza to California: the flames that connect us all,” that was published on Mondoweiss, an anti-Zionist website.

The op-ed stated that “for 15 months, I’ve witnessed Gaza’s land, and people, burn through screens and headlines, and now as I watch the skies over an American city fill with smoke, the distances between these catastrophes collapse into a single, searing truth: these flames speak the same language of destruction – colonialism.” It goes onto state that “each bomb that falls on Gaza sends ripples through our collective future, its impact felt in rising seas, warming temperatures, and yes, in the fires that now threaten California’s hills.” It added: “The bitter irony doesn’t escape me: LA Mayor cut $17.6 million to its fire departments while California sent $610 million to Israel through taxpayers. The Wonderful Company, controlling nearly 60% of California’s water through the Resnick family, pumps millions into supporting the very territorial expansion that has turned Gaza’s landscape into an environmental catastrophe. That already, in 2025, Biden is trying to push for an additional 8 billion in military ‘aid’ to fund a Genocide while thousands of U.S. citizens from Ashville, NC to Los Angeles are suffocating under the climate crisis. We are funding the flames that will eventually reach our own doorsteps.”

The Jewish Chronicle quoted multiple X users rebuking Albanese’s X post, accusing her of blaming Israel for and connecting it to the fires.

The Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Center on Extremism released a report on Jan. 14 titled titled “Los Angeles Wildfires Trigger Conspiracy Theories and Hate” mentioned that the Resnick family has been subjected false rumors accusing “them of ‘controlling’ the water in California, suggesting they contributed to water shortages that have made it harder to contain the fires,” though the ADL report did not mention Albanese nor the Mondoweiss op-ed. The Wonderful Company released a statement on Jan. 12 stating that “there is zero truth that any individual or company, much less ours, owns or controls most of the water in California. It’s also not true we have anything to do with water supplied to Los Angeles. Water intended for municipal use is not taken for agricultural purposes or food production.” The company added that “we use less than 1% of the state’s water” and that “we own a 57% stake in the Kern Water Bank, not the state of California’s water resources.”

The ADL report also included a section on how “anti-Zionist influencers and groups are blaming Israel as a key catalyst for the wildfires.” It referred to far-right and anti-Zionist influencer Jackson Hinkle’s suggesting on X “that U.S. funding for both Israel and Ukraine has taken away from the Los Angeles Fire Department’s ability to combat the fires; his post has garnered over 26K likes.” It added that “similar narratives followed the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton in 2024, when false claims suggested that FEMA had insufficient funds for hurricane relief due to U.S. aid towards Israel. Anti-Zionist groups including Code Pink and certain chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) attempted to draw explicit connections between Israel’s war in Gaza and the Los Angeles wildfires. On Instagram, these groups suggested that Israel’s military actions are a form of ecocide, meaning that Israel’s actions in Gaza are contributing disproportionately to global warming or that aid to Israel means the U.S. government doesn’t have adequate funds to fight the fires and climate change generally.” The ADL acknowledged that war contributes to climate change, but contended that “singling out Israel speaks to an agenda of demonizing and scapegoating Israel — rather than highlighting the actual climate crisis.”

Palestinian Media Watch noted that Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank, published a cartoon on their official website stating that the Los Angeles fires are divine punishment for Donald Trump threatening to “open the gates of hell on the Middle East” if Hamas didn’t release the hostages by the time he returns to office.

Author Saul Sadka shared a screenshot on X of “Palestinian celebrations” of the fires; Ido Halbany, who educates people about Judaism and life in Israel, similarly shared screenshots of “pro-Palestinian comments” that are “enjoying every moment” of the fires.

Journalist Eve Barlow described the remarks blaming Israel for the fires — whether it was “payback” for the war in Gaza or that fire department funding was sent to Israel — as being “the fire libel.” In a Jan. 14 piece on her Substack, Barlow specifically pointed to a passage from the Mondoweiss op-ed shared by Albanese (though Barlow does not mention Albanese in her piece) as well as a post on X from comedian and writer Sammy Obeid stating “Biden just approved an $8 billion package to fight the fire in California … Oh wait that was for Israel to fight hospitals, sorry” as examples.

“All these champagne socialists do all day is parrot Hamas lies from the comfort of their first class air lounges, while discrediting themselves forevermore, because only the teeniest amount of fact-checking will show anyone with any modicum of integrity or care for reality that the purpose of Israel’s war in Gaza has not been ‘to fight hospitals,’ but to fight Hamas, who hide in hospitals, which — for the 1 millionth time — is a humanitarian crime in breach of international law,” Barlow wrote. “But also — what does Israel have to do with wild fires in Los Angeles? I’ll tell you what. Two Israeli NGOs have sent assistance to the fires.” Jewish Insider Senior Congressional Correspondent Marc Rod posted on X on Jan. 16 that “Israeli firefighters are arriving in LA today to assist with the wildfire response.”

“Nobody in Los Angeles has energy for these attention-seekers,” wrote Barlow. “The people on social media who have said nothing about the fires other than to make them about Gaza, the Palestinians, and Jewish billionaires see themselves in Palestinian propaganda because they too identify with making themselves the victims of everything that happens at all times. When someone they faintly knew dies, it’s about them. When someone they once met in a bar has a public scandal going on, it’s about them. When pandas are becoming extinct in China, it’s about them because of something that happened with a panda once in their childhood. Everything that ever happens in the world to anyone else is actually happening to them. They make themselves the center of every single story conceivable with the end goal of getting their own spotlight and attention, just like their Palestinian heroes.”

Barlow continued: “Let this show you who these people are. They’re narcissistic liars and they are suffering from a psychotic, hateful, mental derangement that no amount of re-education can resolve, because THEY DO NOT WANT TO LISTEN TO THE FACTS.”

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