A man was arrested Sunday night after Nazi symbols were found carved into the base of a large menorah in Beverly Hills on the first night of Hanukkah.
Officers responded to reports of a man vandalizing a menorah near Sunset Boulevard and Foothill Road, according to a statement released by the Beverly Hills Police Department.
The suspect, Eric Brian King, of Dallas, Texas, was captured on surveillance cameras hurling objects at the menorah, police said, and is now under investigation for felony, vandalism and a hate crime.
“The initial investigation revealed that King carved Nazi symbols into the base of the menorah,” police said. “He was charged with felony vandalism and a hate crime.”
“A despicable act such as this will never be tolerated in our City,” said Police Chief Mark G. Stainbrook.
Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, was cited by the Los Angeles Times as saying his organization is working with Beverly Hills officials and local law enforcement “to ensure that justice is served and future acts of hate can be prevented.”
A Texas man was arrested after he allegedly defaced a menorah, the Beverly Hills Police Department said. (Screenshot/KCAL/KCBS)
“It is unfortunate that we as Jews can’t even have a peaceful display of our religion without being targeted in this disturbing wave of recent antisemitism locally and globally,” Farkas said. “We will not let this act, or any act of hate, deter us from celebrating the wonder of Hanukkah and the joy of being Jewish. We will continue to live with pride and will never allow an incident like this to diminish our spirit.”
Los Angeles, often regarding as a bastion of progressive liberals, is no stranger to antisemitic hate crimes.
According to a report released this month by the L.A. County Commission on Human Relations, hate crimes in general surged by 23% over 2020, and of those, three-quarters targeted Jews.
The LA Times cited data from the Los Angeles Police Department data analyzed by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, which found that anti-Jewish hate crimes went up 13 percent in 2021.
According to the center’s director Brian Levin, the mainstreaming of antisemitism by high-profile celebrities such as Kanye West will only increase the number of incidents.
“It’s not just the kind of antisemitic attack now that occurs where someone wants to be anonymous in a dark alley,” Levin said. “This is an in-your-face brazen type of antisemitism.”
Soon after his anti-Semitic tirades began with Ye calling for “death con 3 on the Jewish people,” an enormous banner with the words “Kanye was right about the jews” was hung over a major Los Angeles freeway.
In May of this year, members of the white supremacist group Goyim Defense League dressed in Nazi uniforms and stormed the Beverly Hilton, yelling “the Nazis are coming.”
Also in Beverly Hills on the first night of Hanukkah in December 2021, hundreds of antisemitic flyers blaming Jews for the Covid-19 pandemic were left all over the streets and on people’s lawns.
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