Anti-Israel vandals targeted the home of an Orthodox Jewish family when it was away from its home in the Seward Park neighborhood of Seattle on the Sukkot holiday.
The Seattle Police Department stated earlier this week that officers responded to an “initial bias complaint.”
Police were given surveillance footage, which showed two people, just before midnight on Sunday, “removing the victim’s American and Israeli flags from their property, damaging them and replacing the flags with a Palestinian flag on the flagpole,” the department said.
“The suspects are then seen painting ‘free Gaza’ on the mailbox and ‘Jews for Palestine’ on the driveway,” according to the department. “Residents were not home during the incident. Residents were contacted this morning and felt the property damage was committed based on their national origin.”
The suspects have yet to be identified, and the department is investigating, according to the police report.
In the nearly 10-minute surveillance video, which begins at 11:39 p.m. and which the homeowners shared anonymously with JNS, a suspect, who appears to be male, hoisted himself onto the flagpole at the front of the residence so that he could pull down the flags. The other suspect, who appears to be female, assisted.
The second suspect took a Palestinian flag out of a tote bag and helped the first suspect tie it to the flagpole. The two then spray-painted the driveway and tore up the flags.
Initially, one suspect hid the torn flags in the bushes, but a few minutes later, the two retrieved the flags and hung them over the mailbox.
