A staff member at the United Nations Mine Action Service, who is currently hospitalized in Israel, was discovered to have two prominent pro-Nazi tattoos, a source with knowledge of the matter told JNS.
The employee, who was injured in a booby trap attack in Gaza, was first taken to a hospital in Gaza before being transferred to Israel for further care, JNS understands.
The United Nations has blamed Israel for the attack that injured the staffer, although the Jewish state doesn’t operate in that part of Gaza, and the attack was likely a trap set by Hamas, according to the source.
The man has a tattoo on an arm that states, in German in heavy black letters, “my honor is loyalty,” which the Anti-Defamation League describes as the motto of the Waffen SS.
“It is a reference to the organization’s loyalty to Adolf Hitler,” per the ADL website. “Since World War II, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists around the world use this German phrase, or its equivalent in English or other languages, as a hate slogan.”
On the other arm, apparently, the U.N. staffer has a large tattoo of the face of an SS soldier or officer, wearing a Nazi hat, sunglasses and a collar with apparent Nazi symbols.
It was not immediately clear if the staffer was alert and aware of his surroundings. It also was not immediately what the man’s current role is at the United Nations, although JNS understands that he is connected to the Mine Action Service.
“I’m aware of the tweet showing the tattoos,” Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, told JNS. “Don’t know anything further, including which person is involved.”
“Our focus right now us getting medical care for the wounded people,” Haq added.
Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, sent a letter to Guterres on Thursday demanding that the global body conduct a “thorough investigation.”
“Such antisemitic expressions are unacceptable,” the Israeli envoy said. “We request to know exactly what the U.N. will be doing to expunge blatant expressions of Jew-hatred among its employees.”
“As a representative of an international institution that had been established in the wake of World War II by the Allies to uphold international peace in a post-Nazi world, this is unacceptable and deeply concerning,” Danon wrote.
“As was said here, the discovery of these tattoos becomes part of a larger tableaux of anti-Israel, antisemitic activity in the U.N. system,” Daniel Mariaschin, the CEO of B’nai B’rith International, told JNS. “It is well long past time for the organization to forcefully and meaningfully address it.”
Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch, told JNS that “sadly, this is not an isolated phenomenon.”
“Antisemitism pervades the United Nations. On April 1, the U.N.’s top human rights body is planning to renew Francesca Albanese for another three-year term as an investigator targeting Israel, even after she was recently condemned by France, Germany, Canada and the United States for antisemitism and Holocaust distortion,” Neuer said.
“Keep in mind that Albanese was formerly an UNRWA official, and that in a public fundraising appeal for UNRWA, she wrote that ‘America is subjugated by the Jewish lobby,’” he added.
Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights lawyer and CEO of the International Legal Forum, told JNS that “sadly, this is not surprising nor is it an isolated incident.”
“Just today, the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres noted that ‘the poison of racism continues to infect our world,’” added Ostrovsky, who is also a senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security. “It would have been more accurate to say that the poison of Jew-hatred and antisemitism has infected and ravaged the United Nations like a cancer.”
“If it wasn’t enough working side-by-side with Hamas and helping maintain the ongoing captivity of hostages, now U.N. officials are also carrying the tattoos of the Waffen SS death squad,” he added. “The United Nations was created in the wake of the Holocaust, upon the ashes of the 6 millions Jews murdered. Today it has become the world’s foremost purveyor of antisemitism, seeking to carry out the indistinguishable agenda of Hamas and Hitler.”
The global body has long faced criticism over Jew-hatred. Israel has presented evidence that staff members of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency participated directly in the Oct. 7 attacks, and that a significant number of UNRWA employees have ties to Palestinian terror groups.
Jewish U.N. employees who spoke anonymously with JNS in 2024 said that anti-Israel propaganda is “completely organized and supported at the highest level by the U.N.” and that the global body “is being instrumentalized by Hamas” since Oct. 7.
“Lots of people are hiding the fact that they’re Jewish,” a Jewish U.N. employee told JNS last year. “They’re not saying they’re Jewish out of fear.”
Established in 1997, the U.N. Mine Action Service, which is a “specialized service of the United Nations located within the Department of Peace Operations,” per its site, “works to eliminate the threat posed by mines, explosive remnants of war and improvised explosive devices by coordinating United Nations mine action, leading operational responses at the country level, and in support of peace operations, as well as through the development of standards, policies and norms.”