Was it an anti-Semitic hate crime? No one wants to say so, but what else do you call swastikas burned into the lawn along with obscenities and slurs about fascism?

Vandals burned swastikas and obscenities into the lawn of a Jewish family, splattering windows with eggs and fouling the front porch of their home.
Two swastikas were spray-painted in the road in front of Ginger Ragans' two-story home Sunday and a third was etched onto her lawn, along with the word "Fascist" and an obscenity scrawled in the grass. Her trees were draped with toilet paper and someone had urinated and defecated on the porch.

Gwinnett County police are investigating the vandalism in the town northeast of Atlanta and are uncertain whether to classify it as a hate crime, spokesman Darren Moloney said.

Ragans, 36, who has lived in the neighborhood for 10 years, said the incident likely was the work of neighborhood teens retaliating against her for her work as a neighborhood liaison for a community watchdog program.

In a recent edition of the community's newsletter, she mentioned that cameras had caught groups of teens hanging around the tennis courts long after the county's midnight curfew.

Now let’s be honest here. If this had been an attack against the home of a black community activist that included a burning cross and the word “nigger”, it would be quickly labeled as racist – and rightly so. The choice of slurs and symbols here are obviously motivated by the Jewish heritage of the victims. In my book, that is a hate crime – even if the trigger was the involvement in the community watch program.

And the fact that there is any hesitation in labeling this as anti-Semitism is proof of a bigger problem with anti-Semitism than anyone wants to admit.

Posted by: Greg at 10:16 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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