A catastrophic forest fire that ravaged vast sections of a nature reserve and residential area in Argentina's Patagonia region has ignited a media firestorm across the country's news outlets and social networks.
The uproar began after a court in Chubut province in southern Argentina determined that the devastating blaze stemmed from human intervention and may have been deliberately ignited. The court's finding unleashed a torrent of online speculation, including baseless accusations that Israelis or Jews intentionally started the fire.
A video posted hours after the court's decision – depicting a local resident berating tourists who had lit a campfire in a protected zone where such activity is banned – went viral with allegations that the two tourists visible in the clip were not merely Israelis but IDF soldiers dispatched by the Mossad to deliberately torch this part of Argentina.
Ante la inacción de una dirigencia cómplice, que cumple órdenes del enemigo colonizador, que sea el Argentino el que se encargue de expulsarlos.
No pertenecen a esta tierra, NO SON BIENVENIDOS
Difunda! pic.twitter.com/CYLb2r3OMe
— Sanmartiniano (@Ley_SanMartin) January 9, 2026
The footage, in which the tourists' identities remain completely ambiguous, spread across the country's social networks accompanied by the caption: "Defend yourselves from arson, expel Israeli soldiers from Argentina." Yet an investigation by the news site Ahora Caleta uncovered that the video was filmed at a location 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) from the actual fire scene. The person who recorded the video even informed the news site that he personally extinguished the fire, and no blaze resulted from the incident.
Despite the narrative being rapidly dismantled, anti-Israeli and antisemitic forces in Argentina persisted in disseminating the blood libel and even embellished it with additional fabrications. Some posts asserted that two Israeli tourists had been arrested and, even more outrageously, that weapons were discovered near the arrest location. Among those eager to propagate these falsehoods was the Iranian Fars News agency, which echoed the invented details in an effort to pin blame for the fire on Israel.
It bears noting that not only Jews and Israelis faced accusations of igniting the fire, but also members of the Mapuche nation, an indigenous community residing in southern Argentina and Chile, who are routinely blamed by nationalist and racist factions in Buenos Aires for committing sabotage and terror.
