Antisemitic outburst in Dagestan

Russia has now seen what may be the starkest outburst of antisemitism worldwide since the beginning of the war in Israel-Gaza. Ten people (largely police and protestors) were taken to hospital, with two left in a critical condition, on Sunday 29 October, after a crowd stormed Makhachkala International Airport in Dagestan, looking for passengers from an inbound Israeli flight.

Hundreds of protestors gathered outside the airport after rumours spread through local Telegram channels that a Tel Aviv-Makhachkala flight would be bringing refugees to be relocated in Dagestan. Some in the crowd carried Palestinian flags, others antisemitic signs. One prominent placard read “[there is] no place in Dagestan for child killers”.

The crowd then burst into the airport and onto the runway, questioning individual passengers and searching their pockets for passports, trying to identify Israeli citizens. Around 60 were arrested at the scene, and police report that over a hundred have since been identified from footage.

The previous night, 28 October, a smaller protest gathered outside a hotel in Khasavyurt, also in Dagestan, after rumours that Israeli refugees were staying there. The hotel staff reportedly let some protestors in to “confirm” that there were no Jewish people there. On the morning of the 29th, a planned Jewish community centre under construction in the neighbouring Kabardino-Balkaria region was set on fire. Leading figures from the Jewish community in Dagestan have discussed the feasibility of evacuating the region’s 800 or so Jewish families.

A spokesperson from the Kremlin has called the protests the result of “outside interference”, surprising nobody. The Israel-Gaza war is likely to put increasing pressure on an already internally fractious Russia — Putin has recently been vocally pro-Palestinian, but there have been enormous familial and cultural connections between Russia and Israel since nearly a million Jews fled Russian antisemitism when the borders were opened in the 1990s. Over a million Israelis have Russian heritage, and Russian is the third most common first language in the country.