Simi Hate-Crime Victim Is Baffled by Series of Attacks : Vandalism: In an effort to stop the anti-Semitic incidents, Tom Mouzis puts up sign saying he isn’t Jewish. A neighbor takes offense.

It was a case of bigotry and mistaken identity--a huge swastika and the word “JEW” etched over the weekend on Tom Mouzis’ lawn in Simi Valley. The incident was the third since July where someone had killed the TV producer’s grass by pouring gasoline onto it in the shape of anti-Semitic and hate symbols, he said Monday. He was at wit’s end.

The attacks baffled Mouzis because he is not Jewish.

And they pushed him to do something Saturday night that he now regrets--tacking a 3-by-5-foot sign to his garage door that proclaimed, “PLEASE STOP! WE ARE NOT JEWISH.”

A Jewish neighbor took the message as a slap, and police asked Mouzis early Sunday to take down the poster.

“I had offended a Jewish person in the neighborhood who drove by Sunday and saw the sign and thought I was slamming the Jewish faith, which I’m not,” said Mouzis, 37. “I don’t want to see Jews targeted, I just want it to stop.”

Simi Valley’s patrol division is investigating the vandalism, but has no leads, detective Sgt. Andrew McCluskey said Monday. The department’s detective division is expected to decide today whether to take the case, he said.

There have been no reports of anti-Semitic graffiti in Simi Valley during the last three years, said Rabbi Michele Paskow, head of Congregation B’nai Emet, the city’s only synagogue.

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But Jewish children sometimes complain that others call them names at school, and such behavior is never acceptable, she said.

“I’m really disappointed to hear that that happened,” Paskow said. “Whether you’re Jewish or not, it’s not the point. This is unacceptable behavior.”

She said she understood how Mouzis’ fear drove him to post the sign, but she added: “I can understand why the Jewish people would be offended.”

The attacks also have angered some of Mouzis’ neighbors. They said vandals have thrown eggs at their homes and toilet paper in their trees, but the three attacks on Mouzis’ home were the first incidents of bigotry along quiet, tree-lined Mayfair Street.

“Whether they’re Jewish or not, I think it’s really unfortunate somebody would do that,” said neighbor Sharon Ross, who said she moved from Canoga Park to escape crime.

Rita Williams, who lives across the street, said, “The smell of gasoline in the middle of the night would set your nerves on edge. Up until this time, this has just been this little pocket of paradise.”

Mouzis said he has already installed a 150-watt floodlight and plans to install two motion-triggered lights to thwart another incident.

The first one, on July 4, was kind of puzzling, he said. Someone poured gasoline onto the grassy slope by his house in the shape of a circled letter A, a symbol for anarchy sometimes used by white supremacists.

“Kids,” he figured, and let it go.

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Then on Sept. 15 he awoke to find another circled A on the slope and a swastika scrawled in dead grass on the parkway between his sidewalk and the street. Mouzis said he reported it to police.

At least once since then, his bedroom windows were bombarded with eggs, and trees in his front yard were festooned with toilet paper. And someone carved a swastika and an obscenity into a dirt circle where he planned to plant a tree, Mouzis said.

Then on Friday night, he and his wife tried staying awake to catch someone in the act, because previous attacks had come on Friday nights.

When she heard someone outside, Shelley Mouzis, 37, said she shined a flashlight through the window, illuminating a shadowy figure in the fog. When the figure ran down the street, Tom Mouzis bolted from the house after him, but could not find him, he said.

The next morning, the couple discovered an eight-foot-wide swastika etched into the slope, along with the word “JEW” in foot-high letters.

Struggling for a reason for the attacks, Mouzis said, he remembered that the family who sold them the house last December was Jewish. But the attacks did not begin until July--when the Mouzises had already lived there for seven months.

“I’m starting to get a real feeling for what other races and religions had to go through in history,” Mouzis said. “You don’t get the full feeling for what they’ve gone through until you go through it yourself.”

He added: “I didn’t take it personally because I’m not Jewish, but if I were Jewish, I’d be very scared.”