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On Sunday, October 29, several hundred people stormed the airport in the Russian region of Dagestan after learning that a plane from Tel Aviv was scheduled to land there.
Published on October 30, 2023 7:35 p.m
Reading time: 1 min
Screenshot from an amateur video showing protesters on the tarmac at Makhachkala airport, Dagestan region, Russia, October 29, 2023. (- / TELEGRAM / @ASKRASUL)
Yonathan Arfi, president of Crif, the representative council of Jewish institutions in France, believes that the images of the attack by an anti-Israel crowd on the airport in Dagestan are “images from another time.” On Sunday, October 29, several hundred people stormed the airport in this Muslim-majority Russian region in the north of the Caucasus after learning that a plane from Tel Aviv was scheduled to make a stopover there.
For the president of Crif, the images show “an angry crowd” “looking for the slightest trace of Jews in order to lynch them. We saw that in the pictures that were reported to us.” “These are images that testify to a hatred of Jews that runs through both history and geography,” Yonathan Arfi continues. “History because it takes us back to scenes from a different time and geography, because Dagestan is very far from the Middle East and Europe.”
“A signal that indicates discomfort”
Asked about the fact that this Russian region has a Muslim majority, the Crif president replied that “there is no need for Jews for there to be anti-Semitism.” He then gives some examples: “Today there are not many Jews in Poland and yet there is anti-Semitism. There are some in Japan where there was never, or almost no, Jewish community.”
According to him, anti-Semitism is, above all, “a signal that reflects a malaise, a disease of the society in which it occurs. If you [la foule du Daguestan] Tracking down Jews who they don’t know, who have never seen them, says something about the hatred that is spreading in this society,” he explains and concludes: “It is a signal about the health of the countries in which .” it appears.
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