Paper short abstract:

In 2010, an IDF helicopter crash in the Carpathian Mountains left no survivors. Government investigations concluded the crash was "most likely due to human error". Romanian right-wing media disagreed: the mountains struck down the IDF helicopter, defending "ancestral land" from foreign occupation.

Paper long abstract:

In July of 2010, an Israeli military helicopter crashed in the tall Carpathian Mountains, killing everyone on board. While government investigations decided the crash was "most likely due to human error", Romanian right-wing media continued to inspect the event and to interview witnesses and military personnel and concluded that the Carpathian Mountains struck the Israeli helicopter down, punishing the foreigners for trying to "occupy ancestral land". In discourses surrounding the helicopter crash, the mountains are imagined as sentient landscape, as animate social actors expressing discontent, punishing certain types of human action - and more importantly ethno-religious Others. The article analyses the event in the broader context of Romania's long history of antisemitism (between 1941-1944, the Romanian fascist government exterminated almost 400,000 Jews), as well as current discourses of indigeneity, foreign occupation, and far-right values driving the Romanian media and politics.