(Jewish Group) My Family Was Proud To Display A Yard Sign Identifying Us As Jews. Then...

[Behind the Aegis]

My Family Was Proud To Display A Yard Sign Identifying Us As Jews. Then A Stranger Targeted Us.

A suburb in Brisbane, Australia.
The fire in our front yard began quickly, almost casually.

A disheveled, middle-aged white man walked down the sidewalk, talking to himself about “persecuting Jews.” He glanced at the sign my family put on our front fence over a year ago that reads, “Abortion Bans Are Against Our Religion.” The sign was a gift from our rabbi, who received it from the National Council of Jewish Women.

The man barely slowed down as he held a lighter to the sign before walking on. Several minutes later, a different man walking in the opposite direction saw the smoke and the flame. He hurried to our porch, grabbed our garden hose and put out the fire. Then he, too, walked away.

My family and I did not witness any of this as it happened. We were home, but my husband was in the backyard, I was working in my office, and our 10-year-old daughter was reading in her bedroom. We didn’t see the charred sign until later that Saturday afternoon.

Our home security camera, which we originally installed to deter package thieves, had recorded the entire sequence of events, as well as the arsonist’s antisemitic rant.

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