Sept. 29-30 of this year marked the 80th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre, the largest mass killing during the Holocaust in the occupied Soviet territories.
Over 33,771 Jews were murdered in just two days by Nazi mobile killing units. Babi Yar, outside Kiev, Ukraine is among thousands of Holocaust mass graves in the region, according to the Holocaust Museum & Education Center.
Anti-Semitism doesn’t just show up one morning out of the blue. It lies simmering under the surface like a dormant volcano waiting for an event or a person to bring it back to the surface.
On Sunday, a mob of hundreds stormed an airport in Makhachkala, in Russia’s Dagestan region, seeking passengers from a flight arriving from Tel Aviv, Israel, according to CBS News.
When word spread that a plane from Tel Aviv was landing in Dagestan, Russia, a mob stormed the airport in what can only be described as a modern-day pogrom. pic.twitter.com/1G6phfdraz
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) October 29, 2023
BREAKING: A group of Muslims have broken onto the Makhachkala-Dagestan, Russia airport looking for Jews on a suspected plane from Tel Aviv.
The group could be heard yelling “Allahu Akbar” as some of them reportedly tried breaking into some of the planes.
“Crowds of Rioters on… pic.twitter.com/9JCnwDXltx
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 29, 2023
The rioters from the predominantly Muslim region chanted “Allahu Akbar” and anti-Semitic slogans and sought out passengers arriving on an inbound flight from Tel Aviv, Israel. Video circulating on social media showed the crowd surrounding a Russian airliner belonging to Red Wings airline while waving Palestinian flags.
BREAKING:
A lynch mob has stormed the airport in Dagestan, Russia to look for Jewish passengers after finding out that a plane from Tel Aviv is about to land.
They have also stopped police cars in front of the airport and are searching them for Jews.
What’s Putin doing?
???? pic.twitter.com/LgaiXaiDqJ
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 29, 2023
BREAKING:
The lynch mob which stormed the airport in Dagestan, Russia to search for Jews as a plane was landing from Tel Aviv has found its first “suspected Jew”
He tells them he is Uzbek, but they don’t believe him
“Take his passport, search his phone” pic.twitter.com/9gKteyKFz0
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 29, 2023
Some of the signs being waved by the rioters included, “We are against Jewish refugees,” and “There is no place for child-killers in Dagestan,” according to CNN.
Authorities said the mob managed to break into the airport and reach the tarmac. In response, officials were forced to shut down the entire airport temporarily.
One video shows the pilot telling passengers “It is not safe to open the doors” because “protesters are below our plane.”
?HAPPENING NOW: Russian Pilot Warns Passengers on Plane at Makhachkala International Airport in Dagestan to Not To Open Doors as Muslim Rioters Try To Break Down The Doors in Hunt of Jewish Passangers ⚠️ pic.twitter.com/CuRR3UMmzx
— Matt Wallace (@MattWallace888) October 29, 2023
The Dagestani Health Ministry reported that over 20 people were injured in the clashes, including both civilians and police officers, with two in critical condition.
Russia’s Interior Ministry announced on Monday that over 150 participants had been identified through CCTV footage and 60 arrested so far. An investigation is underway.
The incident has sparked strong condemnation from Israeli and American leadership. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he expects Russian authorities to protect all Israeli citizens and Jews against the “wild incitement directed against Jews and Israelis.” U.S. National Security Council representative Adrienne Watson said the U.S. “unequivocally stands with the entire Jewish community,” adding that “there is never any excuse or justification for antisemitism.”
Local Dagestani leaders also denounced the riots, appealing for calm from residents despite voicing support for Palestinians in Gaza. The regional governor promised consequences for anyone involved.
By Monday, officials said the airfield had been cleared, but the airport will remain closed to incoming flights until Nov. 6 as the situation is addressed.
In 2022, Moscow’s exiled chief rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt warned this day was coming.
“When we look back over Russian history, whenever the political system was in danger you saw the government trying to redirect the anger and discontent of the masses towards the Jewish community,” Goldschmidt said in an interview with the Guardian. “We saw this in tsarist times and at the end of the Stalinist regime.”
“We’re seeing rising anti-Semitism while Russia is going back to a new kind of Soviet Union, and step by step the iron curtain is coming down again. This is why I believe the best option for Russian Jews is to leave,” he said.
The events following Oct. 7 are a glaring warning that what happened before can happen again.
All over the world, we are seeing the ugly head of anti-Semitism raising its head, justifying itself as anti-Zionism.
But the truth is, not one protestor either in Russia, here in the U.S. or in any other part of the world can specify what exactly they want to see happen to all the Jews in Israel, which leads to only one conclusion — they don’t want them to exist at all.
At the World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem in 2020, King Charles of Britain said, “The lessons of the Holocaust are searingly relevant to this day. Seventy-five years after the Liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, hatred and intolerance still lurk in the human heart, still tell new lies, adopt new disguises, and still seek new victims.”
Let’s pray that, this time, the world does not let the lies win.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
