Russia’s Chief Rabbi Calls for ‘Severe’ Punishment of Anti-Israeli Airport Rioters

Russia's senior rabbi has called on authorities to "severely punish" anti-Israeli rioters who stormed an airport in the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan on Sunday as they searched for rumored Jewish passengers on a flight from Tel Aviv. 

Alexander Boroda, president of Russia’s Federation of Jewish Communities, said the Sunday evening violence laid bare the extent to which the Israeli-Hamas war has led to “open aggression toward Russian Jews.”

“I call on the country’s leadership and law enforcement to find and punish all the organizers and participants of these anti-Semitic actions as severely as possible,” Boroda said in a statement shared with The Moscow Times. 

He also criticized Russian and international media coverage of the conflict in the Middle East, saying rioters in majority-Muslim Dagestan formed “one-sided and radical views” based on social media posts and news reports.

A mob of around 1,200 people descended on the Makhachkala International Airport on Sunday evening after posts spread on social media claimed a flight of “Jewish refugees” was scheduled to land there.

The Kremlin and other senior Russian officials have so far blamed “outside forces” for stoking the violence.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed that calls to storm the airport in Dagestan were shared by social media accounts linked to exiled former Russian lawmaker Ilya Ponomaryov, who is an influential anti-Kremlin voice based in Ukraine.

Dagestan’s Governor Sergei Melikov said that Utro Dagestan, a news channel on the messaging app Telegram he claimed is run from inside Ukraine, was responsible for stoking unrest by spreading the rumors of “Israeli refugees.”

Ponomaryov has distanced himself from the social media accounts in question since Sunday night's unrest, saying that he was no longer associated with the Utro Dagestan Telegram channel.

At least 20 people were injured as the anti-Israeli mob stormed the Makhachkala International Airport on Sunday.

Videos shared online showed groups of men pelting objects at police, storming the tarmac and attempting to board aircraft as passengers hid inside.

Authorities were able to re-establish control over the airport seven hours after the violence broke out and it was reopened on Monday afternoon.

In his statement, Boroda listed the airport storming in Dagestan alongside previously reported anti-Semitic incidents in other predominantly Muslim republics of Russia’s North Caucasus region.

“This can hardly be called incompetence; rather, the leadership of the republics could not have imagined that such unrest would engulf the multi-ethnic Caucasus,” he said.