Attacks on Jews in Southern Russia (Northern Caucasus)

"For foreign citizens of Israel (Jews) entrance is strictly forbidden!"

The sign says:

For foreign citizens
of Israel (Jews)
entrance is strictly forbidden!!!
(And they aren't staying here!!!!!)

The caption, from a Russian-language Telegram channel, says:

Khasavyurt [a city in Dagestan, north of Azerbaijan] / This sign was placed at the entrance to the hotel "Flamingo," in connection with rumors that Jews were staying there.

My source here is Meduza.io, an independent Russian-language news site headquartered in Latvia, though other English-language and Russian-language sources also report on this incident. The Meduza story reports that this sign was placed in response to a mob that had gathered outside the hotel responding to rumors that some Israelis were at the hotel; the mob started throwing stones at the hotel, and eventually left only after the authorities had let a few members into the hotel to confirm that there were no Israelis there.

The story also reports (as do some other stories) that in the nearby city of Nalchik, burning tires were thrown onto the grounds of a Jewish community center, and the words "Death to Jews" (apparently using a Russification of the Arabic word for "Jews") were written on the wall.

Meduza reports that the head of the Dagestan government condemned the actions, and blamed them on extremists controlled by Russia's enemies. Meduza also reports that the Muslim leadership of the Northern Caucus likewise condemned the actions, saying that they support Palestinians, but stress that "the Muslims of the Northern Caucasus cannot be on the side of hatred and intolerance towards other peoples and religions" and that "there is no room for anti-Semitism."

There were also other incidents, most prominently the mob that gathered at the Makhachkala airport in Dagestan, apparently seeking passengers from a flight that had just arrived from Tel Aviv.

Comments

[Dr. Ed 2]

This is where Christians need to stand with Jews because they are coming after us (Christians) next — I have absolutely no doubt of it.

This isn’t just antisemitism — it’s an attack on the entire Western tradition of Enlightenment Values, which Islam largely rejects. In many ways, this is the Trial of Socrates writ large, and like then, Islam *is* a dying culture.

I say that again: Islam is a dying culture. It can’t win on its merits (no more than Soviet culture could) and hence it has to resort to force and violence. Checking a hotel for Jews is more the act of those who FEAR Jews, much more than those who hate them.

I’m not saying that such people aren’t dangerous — and I have no doubt that they’d come after me as well — but they are operating out of fear.

[Michael P]

https://www.commentary.org/articles/bernard-lewis/the-return-of-islam/

In the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967, an ominous phrase was sometimes heard, “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.”

[Noscitur a sociis]

Not quite Prof. Blackman levels of trying to make a horrible problem all about you, but and admirable effort.

[Commenter_XY]

Bad news: Dagestan is no longer a vacation destination for me. /sarc

[Stephen Lathrop]

My first response to that report was, "There is a real place called Dagestan?" I have been bit of a geography buff, but I confess that Dagestan I had completely overlooked.

I checked Wikipedia, and learned a bit of complicated history, about what had previously been a nation several times older than the U.S. Most striking, it was a long Wikipedia article, complete with photographs, full of citations, about places, events, people, climate, natural resources, and economic facts—almost all of them interesting and, of course, to me, completely surprising.

I do not think there was even one fact mentioned in that article that I had ever heard of before. Every city, landmark, person, and event was completely new to me. I found a map of Dagestan—and recognized nothing on it—not one place name I had ever heard before. That seemed remarkable, because Dagestan is surrounded by other regions and nations full of familiar names in history and politics. Turns out I knew where Dagestan was, but nothing at all about Dagestan. I experienced that read as if it were an outlandish fiction, replete with detail, all made up by a skilled fantasy author like Tolkien.

I like to surprise people (or risk boring them) by pointing out disorienting geographic facts. For instance, who knows that if you fly due north from western Turkey, the coast you cross over when you reach the Arctic Ocean is in Norway? Or that part of the Pacific Ocean lies east of Boston? Probably folks in Chile are aware of that, but in the U.S, not so much.

This time, with Dagestan, the surprise was all mine, and it wasn't trivial. The last time I enjoyed learning a bit of geography so much was in 4th grade, when my teacher pulled down from a huge case hung above the blackboard a map of South America. Perhaps it was an older map, due for replacement. All detail in the central Amazon region was omitted, leaving a blank spot marked, "UNEXPLORED." I wish I had that map now.

[Michael P]

Stephen Lathrop was today years old when he discovered Wikipedia. And his limited knowledge of sociopolitical geography.

[Frank Drackman]

All of the Pacific Ocean is East of Boston. And West of Boston. I've heard theories it's because the Earth is round.

[SRG2]

I like to surprise people (or risk boring them) by pointing out disorienting geographic facts.

One I'm fond of is that the state with the easternmost point of the US is Alaska.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Also the northernmost, and the westernmost. But of course easternmost is least intuitive.

[John F. Carr]

The suffix -stan is from Persian and means the place where the prefix is found or abundant. Most of the "stans" are named after the people who live there. Turkmenistan, land of the Turkmen. Except for Dagestan. The Dag- is from the Turkic word for mountain. In modern Turkish it is spelled dağ. "Place of mountains." The people were considered uninteresting.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Does this mean Prof. Volokh has reconsidered his view of threats to have people gassed, placed face-down in landfills, raped, shot in the face when opening front doors, sent to Zyklon showers, exterminated, shoved through woodchippers, etc?

[OtisAH]

I think the problem in this context is that Dagestan doesn’t have a First Amendment protecting freedom of speech. Plus, since these are threats against Jews and not specifically the Israeli government, I don’t think it even counts as anti-semitism in the modern parlance.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The problem in this context is that this blog features plenty of calls for liberals to be gassed, shot, raped, exterminated, woodchipped, Zyklon showered, landfilled, etc. -- and the proprietor acts the matador, waving that stuff (and plenty of right-wing bigotry) through, reserving his censorship powers for occasions when people call conservatives p_ussies or sl_ck-jaw_d or "c_p succ_rs."

[Frank Drackman]

Dagestan's 85% Moose-lum, it's basically North Ear-Ron

[mydisplayname]

See also https://www.loc.gov/item/2021642323/ [Cartoon shows a woman labeled "Soviet Jewry" with a man looking out a window as Soviet soldiers march below. The man is holding a copy of Pravda with a headline reading "New York Jewish Defense League attacks Soviet Mission with rifle fire." A small man says "This sort of defense we can live without. Tell them!."]

[Ed Grinberg]

And your point is...?