Mob stormed Makhachkala Airport in 2023 seeking Israeli passengers; 20 injured.

By David Brummer, World Israel News

Russian courts have sentenced 135 people to prison for their roles in the October 2023 mob attack on Makhachkala Uytash Airport in the Muslim-majority region of Dagestan, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced Friday.

The attack occurred amid heightened tensions following the October 7 Hamas massacre in southern Israel and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza, the Jewish Chronicle reported.

On October 29, 2023, hundreds of young Muslim men stormed the airport after rumours spread that a flight from Tel Aviv had landed.

Footage from the scene showed rioters waving Palestinian flags, shouting “Allahu Akbar” and searching terminals for Jewish and Israeli passengers.

Some protesters stopped cars near the airport, asking if the passengers were “from the Jewish state.”

One participant was quoted saying, “We came for the Jews — to kill them with a knife and shoot them.”

More than 20 people were injured before Russian security forces regained control.

About 15 Israelis and Jews were confirmed to have been at the airport but were sheltered in a secure room before being flown to Moscow. No passengers were physically harmed.

Authorities completed investigations against 139 people, while three others, accused of organizing the riots via Telegram, remain on Russia’s wanted list, according to Reuters.

Sentences for those convicted range from six-and-a-half to 15 years for participating in mass riots and related crimes.

Following the attack, Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office and Foreign Ministry issued a joint statement condemning the attempted lynching.

“Israel takes a grave view of attempts to harm Israeli citizens and Jews anywhere,” the statement said, adding that Jerusalem expected Russian authorities to act decisively against antisemitic incitement and violence.

Russian state outlet RT reported that just a day before the airport incident, Muslim protesters stormed a hotel in Khasavyurt, Dagestan, searching for “Jewish refugees” after hearing false rumours.

Israel’s Ambassador to Russia, Alexander Ben Zvi, engaged with local officials to ensure the safety of Israeli tourists.

Violence against Jews in Dagestan resurfaced in June 2024 when terrorists attacked the coastal city of Derbent. Gunmen opened fire on a synagogue and an Orthodox church.

The synagogue, one of the last in Dagestan, was burned down.

At the church, priest Nikolai Kotelnikov was killed, reportedly by having his throat slit, before the building was set ablaze.

Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee labeled the incidents terrorist acts, later confirming the killing of several attackers.

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The rabbi said the attacks marked a ‘continuation of the very active antisemitism’ that the region had witnessed last October.

By The Algemeiner and Reuters

Russia’s exiled chief rabbi accused the authorities of leaving Jews and other citizens vulnerable to attacks like Sunday’s gun rampages by turning the state’s security apparatus on Kremlin critics instead of terrorist threats.

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt was speaking after gunmen killed 19 people in the mainly Muslim region of Dagestan in southern Russia in attacks on churches, synagogues, and the police.

“The Russian authorities during the last years have used the law enforcement authorities to repress any kind of opposition to the Kremlin, opposition to the war and any movements like the LGBT movement which was declared as extremist. People are sent to prison for criticizing the war,” Goldschmidt said in a video interview from Berlin.

“So instead of using law enforcement and the interior ministry and FSB [security service] to provide security for Russian citizens, it’s being used to eradicate any opposition to the regime. And here we see the results, that such terrorists like ISIS are able to again and again mount successful attacks against houses of worship, against cultural events.”

Investigators have yet to establish who was behind Sunday’s attack but ISIS, or Islamic State, has an established presence in Russia’s North Caucasus region, which includes Dagestan.

Simultaneous, coordinated strikes by gunmen who are prepared to die while conducting marauding attacks are a hallmark of the Islamist terrorist group, which claimed responsibility for a massacre of 145 people attending a concert near Moscow in March.

“The most probable perpetrator is Islamic State,” Riccardo Valle, an expert on the group, said of the latest attacks. “Islamic State has the means and capabilities, and it also has a foothold in the area,” he told Reuters.

PUTIN OFFERS CONDOLENCES

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin expressed his deep condolences over Sunday’s attacks, but it has not commented on who was to blame or why authorities failed to stop them.

Goldschmidt condemned the attack and said he was praying for the victims — who included an Orthodox priest — and their families.

He said it appeared two synagogues were attacked, in the cities of Derbent and Makhachkala. Both were empty of worshippers at the time.

In Derbent, a security guard outside the synagogue was killed and the attackers tried to burn it down, he said. In Makhachkala, “we heard [the synagogue] was attacked by gunmen and there were shots.”

The rabbi said the attacks marked a “continuation of the very active antisemitism” that the region had witnessed last October, soon after the start of the Gaza war, when rioters waving Palestinian flags rampaged through Makhachkala airport to hunt for Jewish passengers on a flight arriving from Tel Aviv.

Dagestan has a Jewish population of just a few thousand, descendants of the so-called mountain Jews who have lived there for over 2,000 years, he said.

Most had left since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, with a new wave following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Goldschmidt said the climate towards Jews in Russia had worsened as a result of the Ukraine and Gaza wars. Among other factors, he cited Russia’s repeated slurs against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s Jewishness.

Goldschmidt, who is president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said there were a million Jews in Moscow alone when he first arrived in Russia in 1989, but now there are no more than 100,000 in the whole of the country.

He himself left Russia soon after the start of the war and has encouraged more Jews to follow his example rather than stay on in what he called a “semi-totalitarian” country.

“Tens of thousands of Jews left, and I’m happy they left,” he said. “We are worried for all of those who are still there.”

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