Thread by @steveswerdlow

As former monitor for the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews based in Russia's North Caucasus & South Caucasus many years back, I extensively visited Jewish communities in the region, although visiting the ancient Jewish community in Derbent, Dagestan was always difficult.

But I had a front row seat to the difficulties faced by the Mountain Jewish communities in this region, spending many weeks in the Jewish community in the North Caucasus Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria (Nalchik), who were then (early 2000s) dwindling due to emigration to Israel.

The community in Derbent, Dagestan was under security risks posed by violent extremist groups. But somehow they held on, fiercely proud of their unique Mountain Jewish identity and of their place in the larger fabric of diverse ethnic groups across the Caucasus.

What happened in the airport in Makhachkala was frightening on so many levels, but seems to certainly represent a sort of permanent rupture for Jews in the North Caucasus, who up until now were largely able to continue (albeit amidst enormous obstacles) & to maintain synagogues.

Even in the early 2000s the Jewish community in neighboring Kabardino-Balkaria published this compendium of stories about their dwindling community, labeling this work “Exodus: Mountain Jews, The Destruction of the Harmony of Worlds,” 2000.

What happened in Makhachkala, and earlier in Khasavyurt, really destroys that fragile coexistence, that fleeting harmony, for good. I fear this will dramatically accelerate that process of exodus of Jews from the North Caucasus-a phenomenon already so familiar to Jewish history.

Like @BBCSteveR these events also conjured for me thoughts of the anti-Semitic pogroms that prompted my own great-grandfather & other relatives to flee the Russian empire in the early 1900s.

@BBCSteveR A common element between those pogroms (such as Chisinau, 1903) & what occurred this week is pervasive ignorance about Jews (despite their long presence in Dagestan) and powerful, opportunistic state-sponsored propaganda that feeds hatred and violence.

Let's note that unknown assailants burned a Jewish cultural center under construction in Nalchik (west of Dagestan) only days ago. Before the arson, nationalists circulated a petition citing the small number of the Jewish diaspora in the republic. news.am/eng/news/78958…

One point of pride Mountain Jewry communities would emphasize to me during our discussions was the ways in which the N. Caucasus represented a CONTRAST with the areas of the former Pale of Settlement where anti-Semitism prevalent.

Indeed, they would point out the numerous examples when Kabardinians, Balkars and many other Muslim peoples of the region refused to cooperate with Hitler’s SS during the occupation of Nalchik and helped the Mountain Jews avoid arrest and extermination, blending in with them.

Yet another tragic aspect of these events is to wipe away that history of tolerance, revealing the region as now openly hostile and mortally dangerous to all Jews. I greatly hope work will be done to reverse this process.

While not Dagestani, the Chechen thug-dictator-extraordinaire, Ramzan Kadyrov, is certainly one of the most prominent anti-Semitic voices in the region and he has undoubtedly stoked the flames of hatred over his social media for years.

Notwithstanding Dagestan’s somewhat complicated relationship with Chechnya, Kadyrov has normalized anti-Semitism as well as political mob violence in general for young Muslim men across the North Caucasus for years now.