Passengers on flight from Tel Aviv to Russia hid in terminal amid rioting: ambassador

Israeli passengers on the Sunday flight from Tel Aviv to Russia had to hide in the terminal of the airport where they landed after encountering an angry mob holding signs with antisemitic slurs, Israeli Ambassador to Russia Alexander Ben Zvi said in an interview with The Associated Press (AP). 

Ben Zvi told the AP there were more than 30 Israeli citizens on the flight and that no one was injured as the rioters roamed the airport — located in Makhachkala, the capital city of the republic of Dagestan in southern Russia — and flooded the tarmac looking for Israeli passengers. 

After several hours of waiting for authorities to disperse the mob, the Israeli passengers got off the plane and went through passport control, after which time, Ben Zvi said, “They apparently ran into some kind of unrest."

“In the end, most of them ended up in a VIP room, and they hid there and spent some time there” until a helicopter was able to transport them to a closed facility, Ben Zvi said, where they remained overnight. 

The next day, the passengers were flown again by helicopter to Mineralnye Vody, a city in the Stavropol region, where they then were permitted to continue their travels. 

Ben Zvi, speaking to the AP from Moscow in an online interview, said he did not think there was antisemitism in Russia “on an organized level,” but he said it was important to take the Sunday incident seriously in order to prevent the sentiment from spreading. He attributed the unrest to “indoctrination” in the predominantly Muslim republic of Dagestan. 

“Of course, there has always been, is and will be antisemitism on the everyday level. The important thing is that it doesn’t develop into what we saw in Makhachkala,” Ben Zvi said. “If all this is under control, I think there will be no problems.” 

“I must say, that both the regional and the federal authorities should take this very seriously, because it could have led to victims. And that really would have influenced the entire situation in Russia,” he added.

The incident comes as antisemitic incidents have been on the rise throughout the United States and globally. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recorded a “dramatic increase” in domestic antisemitic incidents after the Hamas attack on Israel’s southern border on Oct. 7, when more than 1,400 Israelis were killed. 

According to ADL data published on Oct. 25, reported antisemitic incidents experienced a nearly 400 percent increase compared with the same time last year. 

The Associated Press contributed reporting.