Over the weekend, hundreds of men stormed an airport in Dagestan, chanting antisemitic slogans and looking for Israelis arriving on a flight from Tel Aviv. The violent disarray, labelled by some as a “pogrom,” happened in the North Caucasus region, where anger over the conflict in Gaza is running high. While antisemitism was “not necessarily” rife in the North Caucasus, a flood of misinformation and emotionally charged online content around the bloodshed in Gaza has made positions much more extreme in recent weeks.
Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in May 2022 compared Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Adolf Hitler, who he said “also had Jewish blood.” State television in Russia has also accused prominent Ukrainian politicians of being secretly Jewish, while Russian-backed leaders in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions have claimed Jews were behind Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan revolution that toppled pro-Russia leader Viktor Yanukovych. Antisemitism was a significant issue during the Soviet Union, especially under Stalin and later Brezhnev, with Jews facing institutional and societal racism.
As the Ukraine war grinds on, Moscow is driving up intolerance towards Jewish people and Russia’s other religious and ethnic minorities amid efforts to boost nationalism and deflect attention from the invasion’s grim economic fallout. Antisemitism was decreasing over the last two decades in Russia, following a surge in the 1990s. However, in August, the Jewish Agency said 20,500 had fled the country, with the spectre of historical persecution likely looming large.
For those that remain inside the country, when Jews see this pogrom happening and the lack of state response they feel fearful. “It’s scary,” said Мilàn Czerny, a Russia-Israel relations specialist. While cautioning against thinking the Russian Federation was going to “break up,” Czerny echoed the argument that the riot showed the “capacity of the Russian state was diminishing and it is, to some extent, losing control.”
Unrest in Russia’s Caucasus region is a worry for Vladimir Putin, who blamed the West and Ukraine for stirring up trouble over social media, something Washington dismissed on Wednesday as “absurd.” The Russian president previously defeated an Islamist insurgency there and is keen to ensure peace at home ahead of elections next year.
SOURCE: Ref Image from Reuters
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