Antisemitic Activists Find New Disaster To Blame on Israel — the California Wildfires
Congressman Ritchie Torres calls it ‘slanderous scapegoating.’
Anti-Israel activists appear to be conjuring up a new charge to levy against the Jewish state: causing the California wildfires.
CUNY Law graduate, Fatima Mohammed, who is an active member of the hard-line anti-Israel group, Within Our Lifetime, floated her less-than-scientific hypothesis tying the fires in Southern California to the war across the globe in Gaza in a series of posts on X.
“Dropping hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs on Gaza, turning it into a blazing inferno, has consequences that extend beyond our moral condemnation — there are climate consequences that will find us all,” she wrote on Tuesday, adding that her heart “aches” for Gaza and the people of Los Angeles.
Ms. Mohammed also offered a fiery warning to “environmentalists who continue to ignore Gaza,” claiming that they will face a “reckoning.” She adds: “A populace that sees a people being torched for over a year and is not moved into action will suffer at its own expense. None of us are spared in the eye of empire.”
Ms. Mohammed, however, neglects to mention any other war, recent or ongoing, that could lead to such “climate consequences.” Nor does she mention the estimated 20,000 missiles, rockets, and drones launched by Hamas and Hezbollah since October 7, 2023.
The anti-Israel advocate has a long history of condemning the Jewish state. Ms. Mohammed made headlines in 2023 when she delivered a commencement speech at CUNY Law accusing Israel of “indiscriminate” murder and applauded resistance to “Zionism around the world.” CUNY’s chancellor denounced her remarks as hate speech.
Other anti-Israel activists have taken their theories all the way to Congress. CodePink, a left-wing antiwar grassroots organization, shared a video on Instagram of one of their leaders, Olivia Dinucci, standing in front of a California senators office, monologuing about how the California wildfires are “connected to the genocide in Gaza.”
In the clip, Ms. Dinucci, wrapped in a Keffiyeh, condemns the American government for selling weapons to its ally, Israel, and suggests that the deal results in grave consequences. “Every bomb that goes off is being tested and built on sacrifice zones in this country, on indigenous lands,” she says.
Ms. Dinucci further accuses the American government of directing funds away from “climate reparations” and other national issues, and instead funneling the cash to a cause that will “further climate collapse and further the devastation and genocide of the people in Gaza.” She closes out her cri de coeur by proclaiming: “genocide is ecocide.”
CodePink’s charge caught the attention of Congressman Ritchie Torres, who was quick to rebuff the effort as an antisemitic effort to scapegoat Israel. “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 wrote on X, sharing CodePink’s post. “The modus operandi of Antisemitism is slanderous scapegoating: when in doubt, blame the Jews.”
Israeli writer and social media activist, Hen Mazzig, shared a similar sentiment, describing the “mental gymnastics required to draw parallels between the fires in California and the war in Gaza” as “simply astounding.”