Startled residents of Gardner, Louisiana, alerted the sheriff last weekend over a black-and-white ‘welcome home’ sign in Hebrew that they thought bore a menacing Islamist message.
The Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office and local news station KALB “were contacted by several residents who were concerned about the signs and that they might have been terror messages written in Arabic,” KALB reported Friday.
The “mysterious” sign actually says “Welcome Home, Yamit,” in a boxy Hebrew scrawl, likely by a non-native Israeli or child.
“The sheriff’s office says not to worry, they are actually ‘welcome home’ signs written in Hebrew and not in anyway affiliated with ISIS (Daesh),” KALB reported.
Small-town Louisiana ppl. thought this sign "might have been terror message written in Arabic" http://t.co/zqjJKyPvzE pic.twitter.com/ws5Xaqbvw9
— Lanie Lee Cook (@lanieleecook) August 23, 2015
The homemade sign is a far cry from the Islamic State (Daesh) banners, bearing the Shahada.