Hundreds of small Israeli flags set out on the grounds of Heritage Church in McKinney were pulled up overnight ahead of the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, the church's senior pastor said.
Len McLaughlin said the church placed 1,200 flags around the property, one for each of the roughly 1,200 people killed in the attack.
"We feel it is biblical and deeply spiritual to be a church that supports Israel," McLaughlin said. "... We feel it is important to take a moment to remember those folks, and in their memory, we put the flags up."
When he got to the church Tuesday morning, McLaughlin said, he found hundreds of the flags yanked out of the ground and piled up.
"They pulled all of them up and stomped all them all of them into the ground, really just showed total disrespect," he said. "... They came in the darkness of night. They're cowards who did this. They're not patriots."
McLaughlin filed a police report. He also said the church has received threats over the display and plans to add security while the flags remain up.
"I wouldn't want anybody to go to jail over it, but I certainly would like for them to be fined and treated as criminals because what they did was criminal," he said.
