Dagestan Mob Riot targeting plane from Israel was weeks in the making

A false rumor about the resettlement of Israelis in Dagestan that sparked a violent mob at the capital’s airport on Sunday was shared longer and more widely online than previously reported, according to a New York Times analysis of Telegram posts.

The false story was spread through multiple popular Dagestani Telegram channels in the two and a half weeks before the riot. This illustrates the power and danger of disinformation in areas far removed from the war between Israel and Gaza.

It appears to have first been sparked by a Russian regional airline resuming flights between Dagestan’s capital Makhachkala and Tel Aviv after a pause following the Hamas attacks in Israel. The first flight arrived on the evening of October 11.

That same day, several Telegram channels falsely claimed that a group of Israeli refugees had arrived. Five of these posts on October 11 and 12 were collectively viewed more than 250,000 times. There is no evidence that any attempts have been made to resettle Israelis in Dagestan.

At 2:27 a.m. on October 12 a photo has been posted on the Telegram channel Voice of Dagestan, showing two dozen men holding a large Palestinian flag and the caption: “The Israeli flight was confronted by Palestinian flags at Makhachkala airport.” Although the photo does not appear to have been posted online and taken at the airport before October 12, it has not been possible to conclusively verify the date the photo was taken or whether a protest actually took place. But the post was viewed almost 140,000 times. And over the next four hours, similar posts with the same photo were shared on two other Telegram channels, with 123,000 and 64,000 followers each.

The rumor resurfaced on October 23, when an Instagram account covering local news in Derbent, the city home to most of the region’s small Jewish population, published a reader’s post suggesting that Dagestan would target the Jews welcome those who had emigrated from the region. land to Israel. A Telegram channel then shared a screenshot of the message, along with a message to users using derogatory language, calling on them to report all Jews arriving in Dagestan “under the guise of refugees” and deny them goods or rent to sell. they apartments. “These scum should hear this everywhere they go,” read a message on the channel.

The rumor spread amid growing anger over the war between Israel and Hamas. In the predominantly Muslim region, almost every popular Dagestani Telegram channel reviewed by The Times was dominated by reports of the conflict supporting the Palestinians.

In the days leading up to the riot, users began threatening violence, and the anger spread into online and offline anti-Semitic actions against Jewish people. Some people put pressure on local businesses to ban Jewish customers. Hundreds of people who had been called to action online showed up in person at a hotel where one person claimed a Jewish person was staying there.