COLERAIN TOWNSHIP, Ohio — Residents of one Colerain Township neighborhood are sharing their concerns after a neighbor put up a Nazi flag.
Zarhon Jones has lived in the same house with his family for the last 10 years. He said they've never had reason to be concerned about letting the kids in the family play outside, until now.
"I don’t think the flag is scary itself, I think him and what he could do is scary," he said. "What if he just decides to do something? See a Black kid on his doorstep, decide to do something that we going to regret even letting them out?"
Rabbi Ari Jun, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said the flag can be cause for concern for multiple minorities because of the beliefs of groups who tend to use swastikas.
"Their hate isn’t restricted to Jews. These are groups who have historically had hate for Catholics, who’ve had hate for Blacks, who’ve had hate for Asians," he said.
Jun said about five months ago, the JCRC was receiving reports of antisemitic incidents once a week. Now, they get these reports multiple times a week.
"If I’m a Jewish resident of Cincinnati and my neighbor starts to hang a Nazi flag and I know just five days earlier people had hung banners from overpasses calling for Ireland to be saved from the Jews, I know that students in our school have been subjected to high amounts of antisemitism, all these sorts of things, it’s going to make me feel very much worse than if I knew my city wasn’t a place for this," Jun said.
Cincinnati isn't alone in seeing a rise in antisemitism. The Anti-Defamation League reports a 337% increase in antisemitic incidents between October and December, compared to that same time period the year before.
WCPO reached out to Colerain Township Monday to find out if they can do anything about the flag. They said it falls under free speech protections.
Jun said there are still things people can do to work towards a solution.
He said it's important to report these types of incidents. You can do that here. Jun also said it's important for people to push back.
“Pushing back doesn’t have to look like yourself engaging in flagrant behavior, but it means when you hear comments, when you see things that aren’t OK, you speak up and you say they aren’t okay," said Jun.
WCPO talked to the homeowner, who said he stands by placing the flag outside his house. He expressed his opinions on the Jewish faith and said the flag was in response to several other kinds of flags placed around the neighborhood.
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