The war in the Middle East is actually "spilling over" into the North Caucasus. It all began with information (or rumours?) that Israel, at war with the Palestinians, was beginning to move Israelis en masse into the republics of the North Caucasus.

The local population, especially those who sympathise with the people of Gaza who are currently being subjected to genocide by bombing and shelling, reacted quite emotionally to this. In Karachay-Cherkessia and Dagestan, rallies began demanding that Israelis be prevented from settling in their republics.

 Emotions were so high that, on 28 October, outraged locals carried out a 'revision' of a hotel in Khasavyurt. And on the evening of 29 October, an outraged mob seized Makhachkala airport - again demanding that Israelis not be allowed into the republic.

The Dagestani authorities had to cancel flights and call in the police and Rosgvardiya to stabilise the situation. The most interesting thing is that the authorities in the Kremlin, who had just received a Hamas delegation (which many perceived as support for Palestine), took the "ostrich position", as in the case of the Wagner mutiny four months ago. There were no instructions, speeches or decisive actions from the Russian leadership regarding the situation in Makhachkala on 29 October.

This shows one thing - the situation has clearly taken the Kremlin by surprise. And pro-Kremlin propagandists have clumsily attempted to divert public outrage in Dagestan to "anti-Ukrainian issues", throwing in sneering information about the fact that "the majority of Israelis have arrived in Avdiivka" and that Ukrainian President Zelensky is Jewish.

But the fact remains. Dagestanis have no particular aversion to Ukrainians, or even "Banderaites", and no desire to continue fighting for the Kremlin's interests in Ukraine, which they do not understand. But they really do sympathise with the Palestinians, and massively so. At least on the basis of Muslim solidarity.

Moreover, the question remains: were there real reasons for the Dagestanis' resentment of the real or imagined arrival of Israelis on their land? And to understand this, it is necessary to look at the historical processes of the last 250 years in the North Caucasus through the eyes of Muslims. And for them, the picture is unfortunately bleak and alarming.

Let's start with the fact that before the Russian Empire came to the Caucasus and the northern shores of the Black Sea, this vast territory was indeed Muslim, with small "inclusions" of non-Muslim populations. The Crimean Khanate, which together with its Nogai subjects occupied vast territories from the south of modern Moldova to the Kuban, was Muslim; Cherkessia, Karachay, Kabarda, Balkaria, a significant part  of Ossetia, Ingushetia were Muslim. Chechnya, Dagestan states, first of all the powerful state of the Kumyk Turks - Shamkhalsvo Tarkovskoye.

Russia's arrival in the Caucasus began with the mass genocide of the Kuban Nogais, which left small "fragments" of the region's almost most numerous people in present-day Karachay-Cherkessia and Dagestan.  Then began a long and bloody Caucasian war, accompanied by brutal punitive expeditions by Russian troops and the destruction of entire auls.

The Caucasian War ended with the mass genocide of the Circassians and the tragedy of Muhajir, when most Circassian and Abkhazian Muslims were forced to flee to the Ottoman Empire. Muslims of almost all Caucasian peoples, including a significant part of the Ossetian Muslims, were driven to the Ottoman Empire, though in smaller numbers. But it was the genocide of the Nogais and then of the Circassians that meant that vast territories were "cleansed" of Muslims, and those who remained in small "enclaves" were simply broken and began to assimilate rapidly.

The next stage in the tragedy of the North Caucasian peoples was the mass deportation of the Karachais, Balkars, Chechens, Ingush and Crimean Tatars from neighbouring Crimea by the Stalinist USSR in 1943-45.

At the same time, the "strategy of deportation" stands out. First of all, Turkic peoples (Crimean Tatars, Karachais, Balkars) and peoples with a strong Muslim identity (Chechens and Ingush) were deported. They were accused of "collaborationism". Although there were tens of thousands of collaborators among the Estonians and Latvians, for example, no one deported them en masse. And in the end, even the representatives of these peoples who served in the Wehrmacht and the SS were amnestied, as they had allegedly been "forcibly mobilised". In other words, there was a kind of deliberate "deturkisation" and "de-Islamisation" of Crimea and the North Caucasus under the pretext of "fighting traitors".

At the same time, discussions began, especially among Jewish activists (of the same "Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee"), about the expediency of creating a Jewish autonomy in the USSR, not in the Far East (where the Jewish autonomy already existed), but in the Crimea, "cleansed" of Crimean Tatars. These  ideas were not developed - the USSR first considered it necessary to support the creation of Israel in 1947-48, then, when Israel came out of Soviet control, the same "Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee" was subjected to repression. But many people knew and still know about these plans.

The Dagestani people were not deported, but probably not only because of their loyalty to Soviet power, but also because there was simply no one to repopulate the mountains of Dagestan, where life was difficult enough. Some Dagestanis had to populate the mountainous Vedeno district of Chechnya because the 'non-Dagestani' peoples simply could not live in such harsh conditions. Similarly, some of the highland districts of Ingushetia, Karachai and Balkaria were settled by Georgian mountain people, who, as Ruslan Aushev notes, kept their owners' houses and property intact during the deportation and returned everything to them on their return, down to the crockery (which, unfortunately, the Ossetians who settled in Ingush villages did not do).

In other words, "there is no smoke without fire". The peoples of the North Caucasus remember very well  how wave after wave of Muslims were expelled and deported from their homeland and how foreigners were settled on their land. They are banally afraid for the fate of their peoples, for their future. And they "reassure". It may be emotional, but it is also understandable. Especially when they receive information that those who have just fought with their Muslim brothers are coming to their land, and in the most brutal way.

There is information on social networks about plans to revive the "New Khazaria" in the lands of southern Ukraine and the North Caucasus. And many people have a question, and not under this very "New Khazaria" and carried out for centuries and decades "de-Islamisation" of vast territories, and literally in the last year and a half there has been a "war cleansing" of the lands of southern Ukraine? And where is the guarantee that this process will not be "continued" on the land of Dagestan? This is what many Dagestanis fear.

It should be remembered that when the Zionist movement began, not all Jewish activists believed that their people should move en masse to Palestine and create an Israel "for all Jews".

And it was not even a question of how to share this piece of land with the Arabs. The resources of Palestine are banally insufficient even for the present population of Israel. It has long been said that Israel needs "its own" breadbasket and land where "not very religious" Jews will live, for whom Jerusalem and the Western Wall are not so important. And what could be better than the most fertile lands of southern Ukraine and the northern Caucasus?

Here, for example, is the speech of a well-known "expert" on Jewish issues, an "anti-Maidan" activist from Ukraine who moved to Russia, Sergei Moseyev (from 5 to 8 minutes), where he talks about "New Khazaria and possible motives for the resettlement of Israelis in the "new lands":

Of course, all this is probably just vain fears, conspiracies, and has nothing to do with reality. But many people are beginning to fear that such plans will come to pass. Moreover, not only does Israel not dispel their fears, but on the contrary, instead of seeking reconciliation and dialogue with the Palestinians, it promotes the dehumanisation of the Palestinians and pursues a genocidal policy against them. Muslims outside Israel are afraid that if they settle on their land, the Israelis will treat them in the same way. This leads to the kind of excesses that took place at Makhachkala airport on the evening of 29 October.

Grigol Giorgadze