Dagestan: Anti-Semitic mob hunted Israeli citizens

The Russian pilot’s voice was calm: “Please stay in your seats. And do not try to open the doors of the plane.” On Monday night there were bloody anti-Semitic riots at the airport in Makhachkala, the capital of the Russian Caucasus republic of Dagestan. The occupants of several passenger planes that landed were besieged for hours and 20 people, including nine police officers, were injured. Over the course of Sunday, numerous calls appeared on Dagestan social networks and Telegram channels to go to the airport and not to let Israelis into Dagestan.

1,500 people stormed the airfield

At around 7:20 p.m. local time, a plane from Tel Aviv arrived in Makhachkala. Among their 50 passengers were four Israeli citizens who wanted to fly from here to Moscow. According to the Telegram channel Baza, they were expecting 1,500 Dagestanis, mostly young and male, who advanced onto the airfield and also surrounded other aircraft. Videos show them waving Palestinian flags, shouting Allah Akbar and throwing stones at police officers. A mob of angry young men stormed the airport building.

60 arrests

According to authorities, 60 rioters were arrested. The four Israeli citizens, like the other passengers, escaped with horror. Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin gathered members of the government and the heads of his security organs for an emergency meeting in the Kremlin. Earlier, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said they would discuss “the West’s attempts to use events in the Middle East to divide Russian society.” Sergei Melikov, head of government of Dagestan, also spoke of a “provocation planned from abroad.”

Unrest since Saturday

The anti-Semitic riots began on Saturday. A crowd gathered in front of the Flamingo hotel in Khazavyurt, Dagestan, where a man in the costume of Orthodox Jews was reportedly seen. The people threw stones into the hotel windows and only left when their representatives found no Israeli citizens in the “Flamingo”. On the same day, arsonists set fire to a Jewish center under construction in Nalchik, the capital of the Caucasus Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, which is also Muslim. In Cherkessk, the capital of the neighboring republic of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, around 500 people demonstrated against the admission of refugees from Israel.

In Dagestan, as in the entire North Caucasus, Islam has been booming for decades and is developing into a second identity, especially among young people in the structurally weak Caucasus. Dagestan is considered one of the poorest regions in Russia.

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