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In Estonia, Hamas’ attack on Israel and the subsequent military operation in Gaza were perceived as a threat to the country’s own security.
The reason is simple: the more the attention of Western allies is diverted by conflicts in new political hotspots, the less they can provide support to a warring Ukraine, and the freer the Kremlin’s hands are. It is not surprising that the sympathies of the Estonian establishment in this conflict are almost entirely directed at Israel.
This is also facilitated by the fact that the Muslim community in Estonia is not very active politically and is small compared to many European countries. It practically does not have its own lobby in politics, so Estonia did not see mass demonstrations in support of Palestine.
A demonstration did take place on November 5 in the central square of Tallinn; its organizers criticized the Estonian authorities for not contributing to a speedy resolution of the conflict and accused the media of biased coverage of the situation.
The action, organized, among others, by a representative of the international humanitarian organization Mondo, Kristi Okba, and supported by local leftists and feminists, was relatively calm, except for the fact that five people were detained by the police for using the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."
A case was brought against them under the article “support and justification of international crimes”. The representatives of the Estonian police said that by using this slogan, the demonstrators were calling for the end of the state of Israel, which could be interpreted as “a public manifestation of a crime against humanity.”
Kristi Okba, who spent her childhood in Kuwait and comes from a mixed family with a Yemeni father, told the press that she was concerned about the one-sided position of the Estonian authorities, who interpret the defense of freedom as inciting ethnic hatred: “In the same way, the Russian-speaking community may feel that defending the freedom of Ukrainians incites hatred towards them."
However, the Estonian authorities, in addition to the modern political context, also have historical reasons to react so sharply to manifestations of anti-Semitism: in 1941, Estonia was declared “Judenfrei”. Most Estonian Jews had managed to flee the country before the Germans came, but still, some 900 were killed during the Nazi occupation.
The notorious concentration camp in Klooga, where in 1944 one of the largest massacres on Estonian territory during the entire Second World War took place, is one of the shameful pages of Estonian history. About 2,000 Jews, mostly coming from other Nazi-occupied territories, were killed then.
According to local Jewish community historian Josef Kats, after the Holocaust, there were fewer than ten local Jews in Estonia, as well as several dozen from the Lithuanian ghettos who survived the liquidation of the Klooga concentration camp.
Nowadays, the Jewish community in Estonia consists of the descendants of those who, since the early 1950s, moved to Estonia from other Soviet republics—Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and, a little later, Moldova. “This creates a paradox: if in 1940 there were about 4,000 Jews living in Estonia, then by the end of the 1950s there were about 5,500 Jews,” says Josef Kats.
Antisemitism is rare in modern day Estonia, but there were some incidents
In modern Estonia, anti-Semitism, according to him, is not very noticeable. “Thank God, I don’t feel any threat to myself or my loved ones in Estonia. Anti-Semitism here is a traditionally marginal phenomenon. It’s hard to say how much it has changed since the start of the war in Israel. I did not take the corresponding measurements. Yes, among the fighters for all that is good against all that is evil, there is a desire to chant “From the river to the sea”, but it seems to me that what is at stake here is not anti-Semitism as such, but an extremely superficial familiarity with the problems of the Middle East conflict and “fashion”, comments Kats.
He treats demonstrations in support of Palestine as inevitable: “There will definitely be those who like to take part in the condemnation of the “Israeli military against the Arab hillbillies”, as they say. Among them, there are probably also principled people—I will assume that, first of all, from among the natives of the Middle East who, for one reason or another, live in Estonia. There is, of course, a support group that is guided by the fight against “post-colonialism, apartheid, and militarism.” Local good-hearted characters predominate here. The police, in my opinion, could have suppressed the very chanting at a “peaceful mourning event” of a perky and fashionable chant calling for ethnic cleansing in the territory from the bed of the Jordan River to the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.”
The former leader of the Jewish community and now the director of the Jewish Museum in Tallinn, Gennady Gramberg, also notes that, until now, the level of anti-Semitism in Estonia has not been high. According to him, there are excellent relations between the local Jewish and Muslim communities. “Our chairman, Alla Yakobson, received a call, for example, from the chairman of the Azerbaijani community. Immediately after the attack on Israel and then again, when it turned out that the imam was at the manifestation on Vabaduse Square, he called again and apologized. My Tatar friends completely condemn terrorism and believe that Israel is doing the right thing by defending itself and actually fighting terrorism alone in the Middle East.”
According to Gennady Gramberg, at the demonstration, it was noticeable that many participants were people who had come to Estonia to study or who had entered the country in some other way.
There were no overt threats to local Jews, but despite this, in the first days after the start of the war in Israel, the Jewish school was placed under protection.
“The school already organized security in the first days, just in case. We didn't know what would happen—maybe these attacks on Jews would be organized all over the world. That’s why a parent patrol was organized,” says Gramberg. Shortly after this, the mayor of the capital, Mikhail Kylvart, unexpectedly came to the school, asking how the city government could help. “He was told directly that increased security was needed, so now a Municipal Police car is on duty here,” explains the former head of the community.
This precaution in a very calm country might seem unnecessary if not for the bitter historical experience, so the Estonian authorities treat manifestations of anti-Semitism with the utmost seriousness.
In November, anti-Semitic leaflets began to be planted on Tallinn cars; the person who laid them out was filmed, and the police opened a case.
“Based on the quotes presented there, Jews are such bloodthirsty people who always hold a knife behind their backs to plunge it into any non-Jew. This is completely nonsense! Especially now when society is so mixed. Not to mention the fact that there are a lot of non-Jewish children studying in the Jewish school! We have a lot of mixed families, and everyone lives together,” Gramberg says.
According to him, the text of the leaflets reminded him of publications in a local weekly magazine in the 1990s that published “exposing” articles about the machinations of Jews while appealing to the Talmud and citing false quotes from it. “At that time, no one here knew what was written in the Talmud; in Soviet times, no one had the opportunity to study this, at least in Estonia. And then it turned out that these quotes had a long anti-Semitic tradition; they are taken out of context, distorted, and have nothing to do with the Talmud,” says Gennady Gramberg.
According to historian Josef Kats, the contents of the leaflets are a compilation of texts translated into Estonian from a 16th-century anti-Semitic pamphlet and contemporary far-right conspiracy theories. “For the last year and a half, one right-wing radical has been hanging posters with incoherent texts denouncing a Jewish conspiracy on the fence near the Russian Embassy. In any case, the police should deal with this. If not psychiatrists at all," notes Kats.
The war in Gaza is seen through the lens of the war in Ukraine
Looking at publications on social networks, one can assume that there is some kind of correlation between pro-Palestinian and pro-Russian sentiments in society. This is not too surprising, given that the Russian television that is partially available in Estonia tends to convey a Palestinian point of view. “As far as I know, there were quite a lot of Russian-speaking people at this manifestation,” states Gennady Gramberg, noting, however, that the Jewish Museum was recently visited by students from Russian-language schools who showed sincere interest in Jewish history and culture.
If you read the comments of some local Russian-speaking figures, the correlation between the anti-Semitic position and pro-Russian sentiments is undeniable, Josef Kats confirms, but then adds: “If you look at the footage from the pro-Palestinian demonstration, it was full of Estonian students with yellow-blue Ukrainian ribbons; in their case, there is definitely no such correlation.”
The Arab-Israeli conflict is now inevitably viewed in Estonia through the prism of the war in Ukraine, and since the position of the Estonian state regarding the latter is quite clear, the same binary approach is often applied to the conflict in the Middle East, Vootele Päi, adviser to the Minister of the Interior, writes on a social network. “Naturally, it is clear that terrorism cannot be justified. At the same time, it is necessary to understand that countering terrorism by any means and with any victims is also not acceptable” , he believes.
In his opinion, the conflict between Israel and Palestine has such a long history and so many undercurrents that it is simply unreasonable to wave flags and choose sides. “First, most of our society does not have a sufficient understanding of the holistic context. Secondly, there is absolutely no point for us to import someone else’s conflict into our society,” he notes.
And it seems that this point of view is shared by Estonian society in general. Several weeks after the start of the war in the Middle East, the topic is gradually losing its position on the agenda of local media and discussions on social networks.
