On Sunday, news that a flight from Tel Aviv was about to land at the Makhachkala airport in the Muslim-majority Russian province of Dagestan led a mob to show up, some armed with knives, and search the incoming flight for Jews to attack. Fortunately, they had little success. Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt puts the incident in context:

On October 28, the Flamingo Hotel in Khasavyurt, Dagestan was stormed by a group of men looking for Jews. On October 29, the Jewish community center in Nalchik was set on fire—along with an inscription on one of its walls: ​​“Death to the Jews.” In Cherkessk, on Russian Telegram, [a group-message app], videos circulate of locals calling for Jews to leave the country.

All these places are located in the Russian Caucasus, not far from Chechnya, a quasi-autonomous province ruled by the viciously anti-Semitic Islamist Ramzan Kadyrov. Chizhik-Goldschmidt adds:

Note that the airport pogrom occurred three weeks after President Putin’s all-too-evenhanded comments on the Hamas massacre of October 7. It came after Russia’s UN Security Council resolution last week, which avoided mention of Hamas, and days after Moscow welcomed a delegation from Hamas, led by the official Moussa Abu Marzouk. . . . This is not long after a Moscow-based cryptocurrency exchange, Garantex, transferred $93 million to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which took part in the attacks on October 7.

Today, in the wake of the airport mob, the Russian press Secretary Dmitry Peskov has wasted no time in redirecting the blame and declaring that the airport attack was “Western meddling” intended to “divide Russia.”

But the Makhachkala airport scene was no backwater dream of a pogrom in some far-off republic. It is a whisper of something else, something far more sinister. That is, Russia’s attempt to direct its starved and war-devastated masses to blow off steam about the zhid as in times of old. It is the oldest trick in the book: let them focus on the Jew, not on the falling ruble and the rising cost of food, not on the failing war that has ravaged their sons. It is the Jew that is the problem.

Concluded in 1979, the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty ended nearly 30 years of intermittent warfare, and proved one of the most enduring and beneficial products of Middle East diplomacy. But Egypt may not have been upholding its end of the bargain, write Jonathan Schanzer and Mariam Wahba:

Article III, subsection two of the peace agreement’s preamble explicitly requires both parties “to ensure that that acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, or violence do not originate from and are not committed from within its territory.” This clause also mandates both parties to hold accountable any perpetrators of such acts.

Recent Israeli operations along the Philadelphi Corridor, the narrow strip of land bordering Egypt and Gaza, have uncovered multiple tunnels and access points used by Hamas—some in plain sight of Egyptian guard towers. While it could be argued that Egypt has lacked the capacity to tackle this problem, it is equally plausible that it lacks the will. Either way, it’s a serious problem.

Was Egypt motivated by money, amidst a steep and protracted economic decline in recent years? Did Cairo get paid off by Hamas, or its wealthy patron, Qatar? Did the Iranians play a role? Was Egypt threatened with violence and unrest by the Sinai’s Bedouin Union of Tribes, who are the primary profiteers of smuggling, if it did not allow the tunnels to operate? Or did the Sisi regime take part in this operation because of an ideological hatred of Israel?