In July, Dina Rubina, an Israeli writer who was born in Uzbekistan and speaks Russian, gave an interview to Russia’s opposition channel Rain TV, causing a stir in the Russian-speaking world. During the hour-and-a-half show, she declared that there were no “peaceful residents” in Gaza, that Israel had the right to “clean up Gaza and turn it into a parking lot” and that Palestinians needed to be “dissolved in hydrochloric acid”.
Mikhail Kozyrev, the exiled journalist and producer who interviewed Rubina, decided to extract these parts, calling them the “most complex parts” of the interview. Although he appeared to question Rubina’s claim that there are no “peaceful inhabitants of Gaza” by comparing it to the collective condemnation faced by Russians over the war in Ukraine, he did not deny her claims and himself took a clear pro-Israel position throughout his conversations with her.
And while many Russian-speakers condemned Rubina, especially in Central Asia where lectures on her book have been canceled, many Russian political immigrants supported her and did not publicly condemn her or claimed that her words were taken out of context.
This incident is not unusual. Many of Russia’s liberal opposition, now mostly operating in exile, undoubtedly support Israel. This is not only due to their tendency to ignore institutionalized racism in Russia, but also to their acceptance of a civilizational hierarchy narrative with white Westerners at the top. Anti-Palestinian prejudice is a natural consequence of this worldview.
There are many examples of the Russian opposition’s vicious anti-Palestinianism. Exiled star columnist Yulia Latynina compared Palestinians to “savages” destroying a “blossoming civilization” and called students protesting the massacre in Gaza “lazy and stupid.”
Leonid Gozman, another independent liberal critic in exile, argued that European countries voted in favor of a “pro-Hamas” resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza at the United Nations because they were “afraid of migrant communities.”
Andrei Pivovarov, a former director of the now-defunct pro-democracy group Open Russia, said he believed Israel’s actions in Gaza were “justified.” He was imprisoned in Russia until his release last year in a prisoner swap with Western countries.
Dmitry Gudkov, a Russian opposition politician currently residing in Bulgaria, declared: “For me, Israel is the embodiment of civilization. Anything that goes against Israel is barbarism.”
Kseniya Larina, a prominent Russian journalist and radio presenter, is also currently in exile and has hosted numerous shows for Russian-speaking intellectuals in Israel. In one instance, the title of a talk with an Israeli educator was “Recognizing Palestine is not anti-Semitism, it’s stupidity.”
These are just a few examples of the many Russian liberal immigrants who openly supported Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. In addition, Russian pop icons, comedians, musicians, and television personalities who are based in or visiting Israel are also constantly broadcasting Israeli stories.
Russia’s popular opposition media outlets – the Nobel Prize-winning newsletter Novaya Gazeta, the publication Meduza, and TV Reign – do little anti-Israel reporting and disproportionately feature pro-Israel news. As a result, racist and anti-Palestinian rhetoric is rampant on Russian-language social and traditional media.
The roots of this pro-Israel stance among Russian liberals, who make up the majority of Russia’s opposition parties, go back to the 20th century.
Jews were persecuted by the Tsarist regime during the Russian Empire, which the Bolsheviks initially condemned. But the communist regime itself eventually embraced anti-Semitic views under Joseph Stalin. Discrimination against Jews continued, reaching its peak between 1951 and 1953, when Stalin accused the Jewish Doctors of conspiracy against the state and launched a campaign of persecution. Even after the Communist Party dropped the charges, Jews continued to be subjected to forced assimilation and structural discrimination.
In this context, the liberal opposition that emerged in the 1980s came to see Israel as the protector of a victimized Jewish community and a democratic, liberal state that was part of the Western world.
In parallel, there was a wave of immigration to Israel, which was considered a safe haven for Soviet rebels. This fostered unconditional loyalty to Israel and Zionism among dissidents, which was passed on to subsequent generations of liberal opposition.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the pro-Israel tendencies of the Russian opposition further strengthened, and hundreds of thousands of Russian rebels fled the country. Israel has become one of the main destinations. According to some estimates, around 70,000 Russians will immigrate to Israel in 2022 alone, compared to 27,000 in 2021, resulting in a total of around 1.3 million Russian speakers in Israel.
The paradox here is that Russia’s liberal opposition, while openly expressing racist views against Palestinians, claims that Russia is a democratic and moral alternative to President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism. It primarily condemns Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Russian war crimes, but denies Israeli war crimes.
In the West, the democratic values proclaimed by Russia’s rebels are rarely scrutinized. But it should be so, because it is not only in relations with Palestine that racist views of Palestine are evident.
In the past, liberal opposition figures have frequently reproduced Kremlin-style narratives about immigrants, Muslims, and other racist people. For example, the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, once hailed as Russia’s hope for democracy, called immigrants from the Caucasus “cockroaches” and “flies” in a 2007 video on “How to Fight Insects.” In 2021, these and other statements led Amnesty International to revoke his prisoner of conscience status. The organization later apologized and continued to defend him until his death in custody.
In April of this year, Vladimir Kara-Murza, vice president of the Free Russia Foundation, claimed that soldiers from Russia’s ethnic minorities find it easier to kill Ukrainians than ethnic Russian soldiers. The statement was seen as an attempt to place the blame for war crimes on racialized minorities, and an open letter was submitted by the Russian Indigenous Peoples Foundation condemning the statement.
The attitude expressed by Navalny and Kara-Murza is not an anomaly. Russia’s liberal opposition rarely, if ever, condemns discrimination or racist violence against Russia’s minorities. Last year, when activist Rifat Dautov died in custody in the Bashkortostan region from apparent torture, there was little reaction from the exiled rebel community. By contrast, when Navalny died in prison weeks later from a suspected poisoning, mourning and mourning continued for months.
This reflects a long-standing pattern of Russian liberalism. That is, they share the same problematic and prejudiced views while claiming moral superiority over the Kremlin. The truth is that even if Putin’s regime were to fall tomorrow and this opposition party came to power, it would be unlikely to enact major reforms to eliminate structural racism. Concerns from Russia’s periphery, non-Russian ethnic groups, indigenous Russians and immigrant groups seeking greater autonomy within Russia do not seem to trouble Russia’s liberal opposition.
No wonder Russia’s liberal opposition parties try to blame President Putin for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The country does not want the war to be seen as a direct continuation of Russia and the former Soviet Union’s long-standing expansionist politics and drive to conquer peoples deemed inferior.
In the case of Ukraine, Russian liberals can hide behind opposition to the war, but in the case of Palestine they will be exposed.
The dehumanization, deprivation, and denial of existence that Palestinians face today reflects what many racialized indigenous peoples within Russia have endured for years. However, Russian rebels are blind to these experiences and continue to see themselves as the sole victims of Russian authoritarianism.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
