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A year after the LA fires, the lesson is clear: Our greatest disasters are often self-inflicted
LOS ANGELES — “The Palisades was this idyllic community,” Jeremy Padawer said. “People actually knew each other. They talked to one another. You knew your neighbors. It was exactly what I needed to provide for my children.”
Padawer, an entrepreneur, lost his home in the fire that tore through the Pacific Palisades, an affluent Los Angeles neighborhood, a year ago. That fire was not a natural disaster; instead, an arsonist lit the original fire in a brushy area beyond Palisades Drive. Then, after firefighters extinguished it, we know from a tireless Los Angeles Times investigation, their senior officials failed to order further monitoring of the burn area, which reignited.
Nature provided 80-mph winds on Jan. 8, 2025. But human incompetence and hubris fed the flames.
The result? 12 people died. More than 6,500 local homes were destroyed, 25,000 people were displaced, and 37 square miles were burned or covered in toxic ash. The economic loss is estimated at $250 billion.
A year after the fire, I visited one of the most iconic buildings affected by the fire: Villa Aurora, once owned by the German Jewish novelist Lion Feuchtwanger, who fled Nazi Germany after the Nazis declared him “enemy of the state number one.”
There, the lessons of this unnatural disaster became clear.
‘Everything you see now was burned’
It’s not an especially brilliant insight to point out that most of the tragedies that beset us, with the exception of the body’s natural decay and demise, are of our own making.
But that insight rang true to me as I stood on the balcony of Villa Aurora two weeks ago and looked out over the Palisades.
The sprawling, Spanish Revival hillside mansion was built in 1928 as a model home by a consortium of investors that included the Los Angeles Times, and came into Feuchtwanger’s hands after he fled southern France — where he had been in exile — in disguise as an old woman. Eventually, he reached Los Angeles as a refugee.
In his novel The Oppermans, published in 1933. Feuchtwanger detailed the persecution of a highly assimilated German Jewish family like his own. “The Oppermanns were clever people, they understood the world,” he wrote. “The world at large was indifferent.”
But in Villa Aurora, he and his wife Marta founded a refuge from indifference: a center of intellectual and cultural life for his fellow refugees, including the German Nobel laureate Thomas Mann, who found refuge in his own home, six miles east.
The 2025 fire came within a few feet of the villa, and while the flames didn’t claim the structure, they did infiltrate and pollute the precious books and furnishings with smoke and ash.
The fire torched the landscaping right up to the house. “Everything you see now was burned,” said Claudia Gordon, the director of Villa Aurora, which was bought by the German government in 1989 and eventually converted, along with the Thomas Mann House, into a retreat center for German artists.
Gordon let a group of us into the home last month. Industrial air purifiers were still churning, the last signs of an extensive year-long smoke remediation process.
The fire came so fast that Gordon was able to flee with only a few rare books and a Renaissance-era Purim scroll.
“It stopped there,” she pointed to a spot just a few feet from the balcony. “We were very lucky. This was all burned.” Houses on either side of the villa went up in smoke.
I stood on the balcony and looked down at the yard that a year earlier had been blackened. Now, I watched butterflies and hummingbirds flit over clusters of bright yellow and orange flowers, amid the deep green bushes that covered the hillside.
“The place is a monument to endurance in the face of exile and disaster,” wrote Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano after his recent visit.
True, but it is also a reminder of the stubborn permanence of human folly.
Feuchtwanger’s refuge at Villa Aurora was marred by more inhumanity after the end of World War II. Because he had flirted with communism, he became a target of a new wave of American intolerance: that of McCarthyism. After the war, he couldn’t go abroad to take advantage of his best seller status, for fear of not being allowed to return.
Mann’s refuge was even more impermanent. Targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee for his left-leaning associations, he left Los Angeles and moved to Switzerland, where he died.
“Spiritual intolerance, political inquisitions, and declining legal security, and all this in the name of an alleged ‘state of emergency.’ That is how it started in Germany,” Mann said in 1947.
None of these tragedies had to be, I reflected. Whether fleeing fascism, weathering McCarthyism, or watching a preventable fire consume a neighborhood, the human capacity for self-inflicted tragedy is as enduring as Villa Aurora itself.
The missing deputy mayor
Several hundred homeowners have filed a lawsuit against the state and city for negligence leading up to the fire. In a phone interview, Padawer, the entrepreneur who lost his home, outlined some of their claims.
A Palisades water reservoir was empty, he said; fire hydrants lacked pressure; state environmental regulations prevented adequate fire abatement measures in the initial burn area; and the city failed to field enough fire engines despite the imminent threat.
It didn’t help that a key city post was unfilled after a bizarre fake antisemitic bomb threat. On Oct. 3, 2024, Brian K. Williams, then Los Angeles deputy mayor of public safety, reported receiving a bomb threat against City Hall. It was the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and the caller said he was tired of the city’s support for Israel, according to Williams.
“In light of the Jewish holidays,” Williams’ memo to Mayor Karen Bass at the time read, “we are taking this a little more seriously. I will keep you posted.”
An investigation found that Williams himself made the threat. He was arrested by the FBI and removed from his position in December 2024. Williams, who said he acted out of “anxiety,” pleaded guilty to making a bomb threat and was sentenced to one year probation and a $5,000 fine. Bass left his position empty.
The Deputy Mayor for Public Safety specifically oversees crisis and disaster response, including wildfires, according to the city. Which meant that when the fires came in January, Los Angeles had no official overseeing the LAPD, LAFD, emergency management or disaster response. Bass didn’t appoint a replacement for Williams until April 2025, months after the city burned.
“These deputy mayors have real jobs,” said Padawer. “The mayor didn’t replace him.”
‘They Let Us Burn’
One year later, I drove down Radcliffe Ave., in the heart of the Palisades, where two dear friends once lived. I couldn’t figure where their houses had stood. It was all just empty land..
On many of the burned out buildings, someone had affixed posters with the words, “THEY LET US BURN,” in stark red and black.
The posters were part of a neighborhood movement, launched by Padawer, to hold officials accountable for the fire and the rebuilding.
“The damage is done. The city is gone,” reads an entry on the movement’s website. “Let’s keep politicians, builders, banks, insurance companies and all key stakeholders honest as we rebuild together. So that this NEVER happens in Los Angeles again.”
The motto for Padawer’s website? “News for Our Unnatural Disaster.”
“The first day after the fire, you have the mayor and the governor, saying, natural disaster, climate change,” said Padawer. “And why would they do that? They don’t want the liability associated with all of the failure. But everything about it was unnatural.”
Driving out of the Palisades, I thought back to Villa Aurora and the streets where my friends’ homes once stood. The exiles understood that while nature can be cruel, humans pose the greater threat. The empty lots prove them right.
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Portuguese artists pull out of Jerry Seinfeld-headlined festival
(JTA) — Several Portuguese artists have dropped out of a comedy festival in Lisbon headlined by Jerry Seinfeld, citing their support for Palestinians and implying opposition to Seinfeld’s support for Israel.
At least six acts over recent days have canceled their appearances at the MEO Commedia a La Carte Fest, a new international comedy festival in the Portuguese capital. The event from Oct. 29 to Nov. 1 has advertised that it will host Seinfeld’s first live appearance in Portugal.
Though none of the artists who withdrew mentioned Seinfeld by name, some hinted at a boycott against his pro-Israel views. The Jewish comedian has become one of Hollywood’s most prominent advocates for Israel since October 2023.
Actress and comedian Inês Aires Pereira announced on Instagram on Saturday that “one of the names” featured at the festival “persistently defends ideas and acts that I consider indefensible,” adding, “We cannot relativize or normalize a genocide.”
The comedy duo Cebola Mol posted a graphic of themselves with a watermelon, widely recognized as a symbol of solidarity with Palestinians. “We will celebrate justice, freedom and joy with you on another occasion,” they said on Instagram.
The festival announced on Friday that performances by the groups Tributo Pop and Conjunto Cuca Monga were also canceled, but did not provide reasons. Two other acts, comedian Pedro Tochas and visual artist Vhils, shared their cancellations on Instagram without further details.
Seinfeld has aligned himself with Israel during its current conflict in Gaza, following decades of largely avoiding commenting on political issues. He visited Israel in December 2023 to meet with the families of hostages seized by Hamas on Oct. 7 of that year. Since then, he has attracted attention for a series of dismissive remarks toward pro-Palestinian advocates.
During an appearance last year at Duke University, Seinfeld compared pro-Palestinian activists with the Ku Klux Klan, saying, “The Klan is actually a little better here because they can come right out and say, ‘We don’t like Blacks, we don’t like Jews.’ OK, that’s honest.”
Representatives of Seinfeld and producers of the MEO Commedia a La Carte Fest did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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UK, France, Canada to ban goods from Israeli settlements
(JTA) —
The United Kingdom, France and Canada will ban goods produced in the West Bank settlements and Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told Parliament on Tuesday, explaining that all such communities were deemed by his country to be illegal.
The declaration exacerbated the rising tensions riling the traditionally strong Israel-U.K. alliance. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar warned that these steps stoked antisemitism against British Jews in an on-camera statement to reporters in Jerusalem.
Sa’ar charged that the measures were a politicized hostile action deliberately taken ahead of Friday’s Jewish New Year holiday, with an eye toward influencing the country’s Oct. 27 elections.
Israel, he said, is responding by closing the British Consulate in Jerusalem that services Palestinians. It will also remove British representatives from the International Gaza Support Center in Kiryat Gat and halt the British training of Palestinian Authority security forces. He added that Israel would bar the entry of 12 British politicians and other nationals involved in anti-Israel activity.
France and Canada have also announced a ban on the import of settlement goods, Miliband told parliament. He noted that the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Spain and Norway have either banned goods or in the process of doing so.
In the same address, Miliband affirmed Israel’s right to exist, reflected on his own Jewish roots and rejected the notion that there was a connection between the policy steps against West Bank settlement activity and the safety of British Jews.
What is motivating the U.K., Miliband said, is “a deep sense of shame about what has unfolded in Palestine under the eyes of the international community” as well as Israel’s “clear intent to bury the Palestinian state.”
In response, he said, the U.K. “will introduce an import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied [Palestinian] territory” as part of a “new comprehensive sanctions regime” that will be put in place within nine months.
This will include, he said, “action against specific companies and individuals who provide services, such as construction, infrastructure, financing or real estate for settlement expansion.”
To those who “finance or facilitate illegal settlements, let me say this, you will face the full force of U.K. sanctions,” Miliband warned.
Miliband clarified that the ban would not affect the export of religious items or life-saving Israeli medications. He explained that trade with the settlements was minimal and that the greater impact would be the sanctions on services.
As part of declaring the ban, Miliband said that the British government is also adopting the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion that all Israeli settlement activity over the pre-1967 border was illegal.
But others in Parliament pushed back against Miliband’s declaration. MP Richard Tice of Britain’s right-wing Reform party said that the sanctions were a grave mistake that would “embolden the scourge of antisemitism against British Jews on British streets,” endanger ties with the United States and lead to “tit for tat” sanctions from Israel.
Miliband shot back that “no British Jew is responsible for the policies of the Israeli government and it behooves all of us to make sure that there can be no confusion about that,” saying that Tice’s statement “fell foul” of that goal.
The U.K. action is the latest escalation in tensions between Israel and the Labour-led British government headed by Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who took power in July.
The prior government, led by former Labour Premier Keir Starmer, had already angered Israel by recognizing Palestinian statehood in 2025, suspending licenses for the export of arms to Israel and freezing talks toward a free-trade agreement.
France and Canada are also announcing a ban on the import of settlement goods, Miliband told parliament. He explained that the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Spain, and Norway have either banned goods or in the process of doing so.
In concert with Miliband’s appearance at Parliament, Britain and 11 other countries issued a joint statement pledging “their intention to introduce national and/or support European restrictions on trade in goods with settlements which are illegal under international law.”
Those other countries were Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.
The 12-country bloc said it was taking this step to maintain the viability of the two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, describing the situation in the West Bank as “rapidly deteriorating.”
In its statement, the bloc stressed that it was taking this step amid an “unprecedented level of settler violence and settlement expansion, including the unacceptable decision to publish tenders for the E1 settlement project.” That project is seen as cutting through land that would render a Palestinian state unviable.
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California Gov. Newsom, a presidential hopeful, slams Netanyahu and AIPAC in PBS interview
(JTA) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a 2028 presidential hopeful, ventured farther than ever in his criticisms of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a weekend interview that delved into the Democratic Party’s relationship with Israel.
“I think it’s overwhelmingly opposed to the current regime in Israel,” Newsom said of the party, in a PBS News Hour interview with Amna Nawaz.
Pressed by Nawaz on divisions among his colleagues on Israel, Newsom denied that the subject is “even controversial anymore,” stressing that “the condemnation of what Bibi Netnayahu’s doing is almost universal.” The governor slammed the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza and condemned the settler violence that has expanded in the West Bank.
“We want a democratic and secure Israel, and we want a secure and democratic Palestinian state as well right next door,” Newsom said, adding that Netanyahu has proved counterproductive to achieving a two-state solution.
Though he repeatedly maintained that Democrats are not divided on Israel, the governor acknowledged that “some of the language” by fellow Democrats “has been weaponized.” Certain “aspects of rhetoric” from individual candidates, he added, are on “the spectrum of concern,” Newsom said.
A number of candidates from the party’s far left place most if not all of the blame on Israel for a war in Gaza that has resulted in tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths. and downplay the role of Hamas in launching the war with the Oct. 7, 2023 raid inside Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 were abducted. Newsom’s rhetoric is of a piece with party moderates who are critical of the Israeli government but who call for a secure Israel, reject Hamas and who resist pressure from the left to call Israel’s actions “genocide.”
Newsom nonetheless insisted that the party is unified on the issue. “But I think universally, everyone agrees, even if you don’t think it’s genocide, that it’s been a moral catastrophe,” he said of the war in Gaza. “The vast majority of us also agree about the atrocities on Oct. 7th and how horrific and unacceptable it was, and the terrorism that was perpetrated by Hamas.”
Newsom was among the many U.S. politicians to visit Israel in October 2023, meeting with survivors and families impacted by the attacks.
During a March book tour, Newsom sparked a backlash when he said that some people were referring to Israel “appropriately as sort of an apartheid state.” He quickly walked back these remarks, telling Politico that he had used the term “in the context of the direction that Bibi is going.”
“I revere the state of Israel,” he declared at the time.
The governor warned, however, that if Netanyahu proceeds in the direction of West Bank annexation, apartheid could become “a word you may hear others use.”
In addition to amplifying his condemnation of Netanyahu this weekend, Newsom also addressed the fact that fewer Democrats are accepting funds from political action committees affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobbying group.
As for Newsom himself, Track AIPAC, an organization that compiles Federal Election Commission data to flag pro-Israel campaign contributions, did not log any such donations to the likely presidential candidate. But the group did flag him as “pro-Israel.”
“It’s a minority of Democrats that are accepting AIPAC,” the governor said, noting a “dramatic change” over the last couple years.
“The vast majority of Democrats I talk to, even Democrats in the past that have in the past have taken AIPAC money, are pledging not to now,” Newsom added. “That’s more of a mainstream position, interestingly, within the Democratic Party.”
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