After several years without any documented antisemitic attacks, two antisemitic incidents related to the war in the Gaza Strip have been reported in Moldova.
In the first case, a young man with Eastern European appearance arrived in a car bearing a Latvian license plate outside Chisinau's central synagogue, known as the Glazer Shul, located on Chabad Lubavitch Street, and began taking pictures of the synagogue building. The 130-year-old building was destroyed in World War II, and later restored by Soviet Jewish soldiers and was the only one that continued to operate even under communism.
The security guard of the compound approached the young man and and to ask why he was photographing the building and the man began cursing the Jews and Israel.
The chief rabbi of Moldova, Rabbi Mendel Axelrod, then came out of the synagogue building and the young man turned his anger on the rabbi, shouting: "What are you doing here? How come no one has finished you off for everything you are doing to the Palestinians?"
The assailant tried to approach the rabbi, but the guard separated the two. The rabbi went back into the synagogue building and the attacker left in his car.
This case joins another antisemitic incident, which happened about a week ago, when vandals spray painted slogans calling for the liberation of Palestine on a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust in the Moldovan city of Soroka.
On Thursday morning, Religious Services Minister Michael Malchieli, together with the Israeli Ambassador to Moldova Joel Lion, visited the Chisinau synagogue, where they met with Axelrod and other Moldovan rabbis and community leaders. "This is a solidarity visit with the chief rabbi to Moldova. Antisemitism is a local social problem, a sociological problem of the local society. We strengthen your hands in this matter and hope that you will see better and better days here as well," Lion said.
Malchieli told the rabbis: "The attack is not only against the rabbi, but against the Jewish people. You are already raising a fourth generation of Chabad emissaries here (Rabbi Axelrod's grandfather, the late Rabbi Zalman Abelsky, was sent to Medina by the Lubavitcher rabbi in 1989 ). On your shoulders and the shoulders of your ancestors was the burden of guarding the Jewish embers here. We came strengthen you and we left strengthened. With God's help, you will receive the strength to lead the Jewish community in the country with a strong hand. We are at your disposal. We came here to tell the authorities clearly that we are against antisemitism."
The Jewish community in Moldova has expressed shock at the incidents and reports that, although antisemitic incidents in the country are a rare event occurring once every few years, there is no doubt that incitement against Israel, especially in the Russian media which is consumed by many residents of the country, has lead to such incidents.
On the order of Moldova's President Maia Sandu, who was informed of the incidents, security forces are searching for the antisemitic perpetrators in order to arrest them and bring them to justice.
"Moldova takes this very seriously," according to the chairman of the Chabad Jewish community, Rabbi Zusha Abelsky. "At the order of President Sandu, it was decided to increase security around the synagogues we operate throughout the country and around our school and kindergartens, as well as make every effort to catch the criminals."
According to Abelsky, the Jewish "revenge" for the antisemitic incidents will be the holding of a communal Seder in each of 18 cities in Moldova on Passover later this month.