Vandals desecrated a mezuzah, a Jewish religious object placed on entrances and doorways, at the front of an apartment in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, smearing feces on the mezuzah case. A., the mother of a national-religious family living in the Hadar neighborhood of Haifa, told Arutz Sheva Wednesday about act of vandalism, which she discovered when she returned home. “When I got back to the apartment I saw the mezuzah smeared with dog feces, and I just started to cry. It was terrible.” A. noted that the feces had been carefully smeared so as to only cover the mezuzah case, without the surrounding area being covered. “Whoever worked on this wanted it to only go on the mezuzah. I’m relieved that my children didn’t see this. It’s just an absolute hate crime.” This is not the first time Jewish or Israeli national symbols have been targeted in the Hadar neighborhood – an area with a significant Arab population, as well as a large number of non-Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. A. said the police officers who responded to her complaint downplayed the incident. “The police who came here said that this only amounted to ‘causing damage’, and they refused to take fingerprints, and said that this has happened a few times before in our neighborhood. Unfortunately, something has happened to this neighborhood. An Israeli flag won’t last here more than a few hours.” Shmuel Sasson, the leader of the national religious community in A.’s section of Hadar, said the incident was a “red line”. “It is terrible that in a neighborhood where we worked so hard to build up so much tolerance and make connections with such a wide array of communities here, unfortunately a red line of hatred was crossed today, leaving a stain on the neighborhood.”