The United States condemned anti-Semitic actions in Dagestan. Let us remember that on Sunday hundreds of people broke into the Makhachkala airport and took to the tarmac to protest the arrival of a plane from Tel Aviv.
“We call on Russian authorities to publicly condemn these violent acts, hold all participants accountable, and ensure the safety of Israelis and Jews in Russia,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at a news conference on Monday, adding that the Russian Foreign Ministry’s statements implicating Ukraine in attacking Makhachkala airport are “absurd.”
Hours earlier, the founder of the social network Telegram, Pavel Durov, said the platform would block channels that incite anti-Semitic violence in Dagestan.
“Channels calling for violence will be blocked for violating the rules of Telegram, Google, Apple and the entire civilized world,” Durov wrote on his channel.
The Russian Interior Ministry said on Monday that 60 people had been arrested after hundreds of protesters stormed Makhachkala airport on Sunday and tried to attack a plane arriving from Israel.
The president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, Rabbi Alexander Boroda, on Monday called on the Kremlin to bring to justice those involved in the unrest in Dagestan.
In his statement, Beard noted that the riots “undermined… the foundations of our multicultural and multinational state,” and anti-Israel sentiment, fueled by events in the Middle East, turned into open aggression toward Russian Jews.
“Furthermore, we see that local authorities were unprepared for such incidents and allowed large-scale violations of law and order, mass protests with open threats to Jews and Israelis,” Beard said. “I call on the country’s leaders and law enforcement agencies to find and more severely punish all organizers and participants of these anti-Semitic actions.”
RIA Novosti reported that, as reported by Israel’s ambassador to Russia, no Israeli citizens were injured during the riots and all were evacuated. According to unconfirmed reports, they were taken to a military base and then taken out of the region.
On Monday afternoon, Makhachkala airport resumed normal operations, the Russian aviation authority reported, announcing at the same time that flights from Israel would be temporarily redirected to other Russian cities.
The community of mountain Jews, which has existed in the Caucasus since the 7th century, found itself in the spotlight of the international community after the attack on Makhachkala airport.
The maximum size of the community in the middle of the last century was just over 10 thousand people.
Rabbi Ovadia Isakov, the most authoritative rabbi of the Mountain Jews, told Russian media that between 300 and 400 families belonging to the community remain in Derbent.
The chief rabbi of Azerbaijan’s Ashkenazi community, Shneor Segal, said recent events were a terrible reminder that “even in our region, in the Caucasus, where the Jews have already been practically destroyed, anti-Semites use any excuse. .to terrorize those who are already few.” “