Masked neo-Nazis in Connecticut
Masked neo-Nazis in ConnecticutPhil Noel: Connecticut Post

Jews around the world are trying to celebrate Chanukah amid worldwide anti-Semitism. Masked neo-Nazis disrupted a menorah lighting ceremony in Connecticut before being arrested, Christians in the Republic of Moldova replaced a menorah with a cross, and vandals in Long Island, New York threw a menorah in a pond.

News footage from the eastern European Republic of Moldova, located between Romania and Ukraine, showed a fundamentalist bearded priest leading 200 Christians who shouted anti-Semitic slogans and ripped down a public metal menorah, replacing it with a wooden cross.

The Christians then placed the menorah upside down at the base of a statue of a king, while police did not intervene. "The Jews can try to kill us, to traumatize our children,” the priest charged, adding that Jews try to “dominate people.”

In Connecticut, masked neo-Nazis Sunday night disrupted a Chanukah menorah lighting ceremony, shouting Nazi obscenities and waving Nazi flags bearing a swastika and an iron cross before police chased after them.

In Long Island, one public menorah was broken and a second was tossed into a pond in what police are treating as hate crimes.