Argentina Wildfires Revive Antisemitic Mythology That Never Truly Died

Patagonia is burning again, and so is an old lie. As flames race through Argentina’s southern forests, influencers and politicians are blaming “Israeli tourists” and reviving Plan Andinia, a conspiracy that paints Argentine Jews as accomplices in a secret scheme to seize Patagonia.

When Fire Becomes a Shortcut to Blame

The first thing a wildfire steals is time. In Patagonia, that theft can feel physical: the wind turns, smoke drops into valleys, roads close, families pack what they can carry. The second thing a wildfire steals, in a country that has learned to live with political suspicion, is truth. And in Argentina’s Patagonia, where the blaze began on January 5 in Pueblo Patriada in the southern province of Chubut, the loss of truth has come with a familiar shape: an antisemitic rumor polished into a national storyline.

Authorities say more than 12,000 hectares of forest have burned. Governor Ignacio Torres said the causes had not been established, while noting there were indications that one of the biggest active fires may have been deliberately set, according to the AP. In that vacuum—before investigations harden into evidence, before grief settles into facts—someone always tries to write the first draft. This time, it was a little-known local news site in Santa Cruz, more than 1,400 kilometers south of the fires, that first suggested Israeli tourists were setting them.

From there, the story did what modern conspiracies do: it moved faster than smoke.

The Video That Lit Up the Internet

The clip that gave the rumor its “proof” is small, shaky, and painfully ordinary. A local outlet called Now Calafate, based in the tourist gateway town of Calafate, republished a radio interview with Martin Morales, a local resident who claimed he prevented “two foreign tourists” from starting a fire in a national park in El Chaltén. The accompanying video shows Morales approaching a male tourist and telling him in Spanish to put out the fire. Morales narrates to the camera that the tourists “might be of Israeli origin.” The tourist’s apology in English is barely audible.

It was enough. On X and Instagram, the video spread as a shared certainty—cited by far-right accounts and, more surprisingly, by progressive anti-government accounts as well. Online speculation leapt into a familiar costume: the tourist was rumored to be a recently released combat soldier from the IDF; his hat, some said, must be hiding a kippa. The man in the clip was edited into an ominous social-media poster: “Prevent fires. Expel the arsonist enemy. Israeli soldiers out of Argentina.”

The jump from “a tourist near a flame” to “a foreign military plot” is not an accident. It is the logic of scapegoating, which turns messy reality into a clean villain. It also borrows from a specific Argentine tradition: the belief that Patagonia’s emptiness is always being plotted over by outsiders—either to be purchased, carved up, or colonized again.

Plan Andinia’s Return to Prime Time

The claims echo Plan Andinia, an antisemitic conspiracy theory that until this week lived mostly at the margins, circulating among far-right nationalists. In its modern retellings, it suggests Argentine Jews secretly collaborate with Israel to send soldiers posing as tourists, equipped with military-grade GPS and mapping technology, to plan a “second Israel” in Patagonia.

The story’s endurance is tied to Patagonia’s real geography and symbolic power. Patagonia’s mountains and lakes have long attracted vacationing Israelis. Certain towns absorb so many young adults on post-army trips that Hebrew signage and menus become common—like other global backpacker hubs. Bariloche, the Andes tourism town, is sometimes nicknamed “Israeloche,” a joke that can sound affectionate until it becomes an accusation.

The concentration of Israeli travelers has produced friction for years, and the report describes how travelers have been targeted by antisemitism and anti-Israeli violence. In 2014, activists in Bariloche launched a campaign urging business owners to boycott Israeli tourists. In 2015, in Lago Puelo, Chubut, ten Israelis were robbed and beaten at an Israeli-owned hostel by four people later charged under Argentina’s anti-discrimination law. The attackers reportedly shouted: “You come here to steal our Patagonia,” invoking Plan Andinia. Then, the words turned unmistakably violent: “Go, fucking Jews… Fuck Israelis.”

Conspiracy theories do not appear out of nowhere. They are stored in the social memory like dry brush, waiting for the spark.

Dictatorship Echoes in a Modern Panic

Plan Andinia’s roots are not a mystery. The report traces it to 1971, when far-right, anti-Peronist commentator Walter Beveraggi Allende circulated the idea in a Catholic magazine. It spread inside the military dictatorship that ruled from 1976 to 1983, a regime that treated suspicion as a governing principle. The Jewish Argentine journalist Jacobo Timerman recounted in his memoir being kidnapped by the junta and repeatedly interrogated about Plan Andinia—alongside “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” another infamous antisemitic fabrication.

In the 1980s, Argentina’s Federal Police infiltrated the Jewish community with a spy, Jose Perez, tasked with finding proof of this imagined second-state plot. The story later entered popular culture through a fictionalized version in the Amazon Prime series “Yosi, the Regretful Spy,” reminding Argentines that what sounds like paranoid lore was once bureaucratic policy.

This matters today because the current wildfire rumor isn’t merely an online prank. It draws legitimacy from the old machinery of state suspicion. When a nation once taught itself to believe such things, the belief can return whenever fear needs a target.

Fake Grenades, Real Algorithms, Convenient Enemies

As the “Israeli tourists” narrative grew, spin-off theories multiplied. Some claimed the fires were ignited by an Israeli-made military grenade found by investigators in Chubut. Cesar Milani, chief of the Argentine Armed Forces between 2013 and 2015, accused “a foreign state” of meddling in a post that included a picture of President Javier Milei posing with the Israeli flag. Milani later stepped down amid accusations of crimes against humanity during the dictatorship.

Another viral moment came from a television interview with a local woman driving away from the fires after delivering food and supplies to firefighters. She said “everybody knows” the fires are intentional and that “Jews will buy these lands.” It is the kind of line that spreads because it sounds like folklore—spoken as common sense, delivered without evidence, sharpened by crisis.

Argentina’s fact-checking site Chequeado later verified that the Now Calafate video and Morales’ account were the only “proof” being used to blame Israelis. Chequeado also confirmed that the so-called Israeli grenades were actually bullets produced by Argentine Military Industries.

But the internet does not reward retractions. It rewards the first emotional hit.

Then the story widened, as conspiracy narratives often do, to include more targets. The far-right site La Derecha Diario falsely claimed to have photo evidence that the fires were intentionally ignited by “terrorists” from the Indigenous Mapuche people. The site has Spanish, English, and Hebrew editions, and has been accused of publishing fake and sensational news. The report notes it has also been publicly thanked by Milei for supporting his government and is owned by the right-wing Spanish-language empire Right News Media. Chequeado’s investigation said authorities’ hypotheses did not include organized Mapuche groups.

In other words, the rumor machine was not merely antisemitic. It was opportunistic—ready to criminalize whoever fit the mood.

Milei’s Rebuke and the Fight to Stop the Spiral

As the conspiracy jumped political boundaries, anti-Milei social media accounts began circulating their own false claims: that Milei repealed Argentina’s Fire Management Law, and that a libertarian deputy had confessed to arson and land sales. One viral post claimed a congressperson from Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, named Matias Baez, admitted the fires were set to “sell that land to Israel.” According to Chequeado, the claim was shared by economist Carlos Riello and the popular anti-Milei account El Prensero.

Chequeado verified there is no elected official named Baez, and a reverse image search showed the profile photo belonged to Joey Saladino, an American YouTuber and former Republican presidential candidate in the United States. The deception had traveled far enough that it did not need to be plausible.

Former President Alberto Fernandez, a Peronist opposition leader, warned Argentines who oppose Milei and support democracy not to propagate Plan Andinia, saying “no Peronist should repeat those false allegations.” The line is notable not only for its politics but for its recognition that antisemitism can become a bipartisan virus when crisis and anger open the door.

Deepfakes appeared too, designed to keep the conspiracy alive even as facts pushed back. One circulated video falsely depicted Argentine rabbi Sergio Bergman, head of the World Union of Progressive Judaism, declaring Argentina a “promised, sacred land” that needed to be divided like the State of Israel. Another video, originating from a small alt-right TikTok account and later reposted widely on X, claimed Haaretz runs ads for Patagonia land that can only be purchased by Jewish people, and that Israeli soldiers “patrol Patagonia” gathering intelligence.

What began as memes and talking-head videos entered mainstream discourse when Marcela Feudale, host of Radio 10’s “Feudalisima” and a historian known for criticizing Milei, said she had sources indicating “two Israelis” may be involved. Her remarks drew a personal rebuke from Milei, who accused her of representing “the dark side of humanity.” A pile-on followed from figures allied with Milei, including journalist Eduardo Feinmann and conservative politicians Sabrina Ajmechet and Waldo Wolff. Feudale later apologized and communicated with Argentina’s umbrella Jewish organization, the DAIA.

DAIA president Mauro Berenstein told Haaretz that the organization asks those spreading the fake news “to reflect on what they are doing,” urging responsibility and warning against content that fuels antisemitism and violent threats.

In Patagonia, firefighters still face the harder enemy: wind, heat, terrain, exhaustion. But Argentina, at the same time, is fighting another fire—the one that burns through trust when old conspiracies return wearing new digital clothes. The tragedy is how quickly a country can forget that scapegoats do not extinguish flames. They only make the aftermath more dangerous, leaving behind not just ash, but neighbors taught to fear each other.

Credit: Haaretz — By Pablo Mendez Shiff

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