A severed baby doll covered in fake blood was left outside a Palestinian American family’s home in Ohio — with the doll’s head impaled on a makeshift stake under their “Free Palestine” flag.
Police in the Toledo suburb of Sylvania Township launched an investigation after the gruesome display was discovered around noon Monday, CNN reported.
Surveillance video from a neighbor’s home shows a man dressed in dark clothing walking up to the family’s “Free Palestine” flag and placing something under it, according to an incident report.
A similarly dressed man was observed minutes earlier mowing the grass in the median across from the targeted property, though it was not immediately clear that it was the same man, the report said.
Police have not said whether the incident is being investigated as a hate crime, something the country’s leading Muslim civil rights group has called out.
The gruesome discovery was made Tuesday in the Toledo suburb of Sylvania Township, where the homeowner has lived for years.
The Cleveland branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) described the incident in Sylvania Township as “anti-Palestinian” and called on local, state and federal authorities to monitor and investigate “crimes related to the rise of Islamophobia.”
“We hope the Sylvania Police Department will do its due diligence in gathering all the information they need to identify the perpetrators and consider bringing hate crime charges,” Faten Odeh, interim executive director of CAIR-Cleveland, said in a statement.
“We should all feel safe in our neighborhoods and be able to showcase our heritage without fear of hateful reprisals from our neighbors,” Odeh added.
The homeowner who found the mutilated doll covered in fake blood was advised by local police to “be careful,” and just hours later, someone removed a Palestinian flag from a tree on the family’s property, according to the nonprofit.
The Palestinian flag was then taken down by someone, according to a Muslim civil rights leader.
The family that owns the house is Palestinian and has lived in Sylvania Township for years without conflict with neighbors, Odeh told USA Today.
Tuesday’s incident is being investigated as criminal threatening and trespassing, police said. So far, no arrests have been made.
CAIR’s national office said it has documented a sharp increase in reported incidents targeting Muslims since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas on Oct. 7.
From October 7 to November 4, the organization said, it received 1,283 requests for assistance and reports of bias — a 216% increase from the same period the previous year.
At the same time, antisemitic incidents targeting Jews have also been on the rise in the US and around the world since the start of the conflict, according to experts.
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
