US Compares Anti-Jewish Attacks In Russia To Pogroms (Worthy News In-Depth)
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
MOSCOW/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – The United States has compared attacks on Jewish people in Russia’s predominantly Muslim region of Dagestan to “pogroms” of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Jewish families in the area fear for their lives, Worthy News learned, after hundreds of anti-Israel rioters stormed the airport in Dagestan‘s capital, Makhachkala, in search of Jewish passengers who landed on a flight from Israel.
Videos shared on social media showed many in the mainly Muslim mob rampaging through the airport terminal chanting antisemitic slogans such as “death to Jews and “Where the Jews are?” or “Allahu Akbar” – “Allah is Greatest.”
Attackers were also seen carrying Palestinian flags or handwritten banners saying, “Child killers are not welcome in Dagestan“ and “We’re against Jewish refugees.”
A crowd then ran onto the runway and surrounded the aircraft, with some demanding to see passports, presumably to check who was Jewish.
One passenger, reportedly on the flight from Tel Aviv, told local media that the crowd stopped him. He said he was let go after rioters told him: “We are not touching non-Jews today.”
Twenty people were injured before security forces contained the riot, including several who were reportedly still in serious condition, officials said. Sixty alleged mob participants have been arrested, according to Russia’s interior ministry.
SOCIAL MEDIA
The riot was encouraged by a local channel of social media platform Telegram with tens of thousands of followers.
It asked people to gather at the airport at the time of the flight’s arrival from Tel Aviv and encouraged participants to search for every Jewish person there and even follow them to their homes, Worthy News established.
Local media reported that some demonstrators were stopping cars outside Makhachkala’s airport, demanding to see documents, according to a reconstruction of events.
“Some people will compare it to the pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th century, and I think that’s probably an apt description,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
‘Pogrom’ is a Russian word describing an organized attack or massacre against a particular ethnic or religious group and is mainly associated with the historic targeting of Jewish communities in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Anti-Jewish riots, categorized as pogroms, were often happening in the former Russian empire in the years leading up to the 1917 revolution, which toppled the former Czarist monarchy. It led to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the communist state that would rule Russia and much of Eastern Europe for the next seven decades.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Jews left for Israel, but 83,000 are believed to still live in Russia today, including in Dagestan.
LONG HISTORY
However, the rabbi of the Dagestani city of Derbent, Ovadia Isakov, told local media that “the future of the estimated 300-400 Jewish families in Dagestan was in doubt.”
Jews have had a presence in the region since pre-Islamic times, according to historians. Still, the rabbi suggested that the airport riots and other attacks have made their presence impossible.
Ahead of the airport attack, hundreds of demonstrators gathered at a hotel in Khasavyurt, Dagestan, looking for suspected “Israeli refugees” encouraged by social media allegations, several sources said.
The growing attacks against Jews are part of “ongoing antisemitic demonstrations in the Republic of Dagestan and elsewhere in the North Caucasus,” added the respected U.S.-based think tank Institute for the Study of War.
They are “highlighting heightened interethnic and interreligious tensions in Russia,” the institute concluded in an assessment seen by Worthy News.
It observed that outside Dagestan, “unknown actors reportedly set fire to a Jewish cultural center under construction in Nalchik [in Russia’s] Kabardino-Balkarian Republic in the “night of October 28 to 29.”
The violence also resembles anti-Jewish attacks by German Nazis and their sympathizers during and before World War Two, experts argue.
PRO-ISRAELI RALLY
While some participants in the recent attacks claim their actions are linked to Israeli air strikes against Hamas in Gaza, critics say they are expressions of long-simmering anti-semitism.
Hungary, a former Soviet satellite state with one of the largest Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, has said antisemitism won’t be tolerated.
In recent days, people gathered for a pro-Israel rally in front of Budapest’s Dohány Street Synagogue, Europe’s largest synagogue, to protest against the 1,400 people killed by Hamas gunmen in Israel.
Israel demanded that Russia tackle antisemitism, but with tensions rising, Russia’s last remaining Jews were expected to flee the country. Moscow claims the West inspires the riots to destabilize the region amid a standoff over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Already, about 1.6 million Jews and their non-Jewish spouses and relatives, as defined by Israel’s Law of Return, left the former Soviet Union between 1989 and 2006, according to official data.
Most of them came to Israel, followed by the United States and Germany, where, in total, over half a million Jews arrived in that period, official records show.
If you are interested in articles produced by Worthy News, please check out our FREE sydication service available to churches or online Christian ministries. To find out more, visit Worthy Plugins.