A widely distributed photo of an unidentified United Nations employee in Gaza whose arms display pro-Nazi tattoos is “deeply concerning” to Israel. While UN officials tell the Sun they are looking into the matter, they also protest that the incriminating photo was taken without the Nazi sympathizer’s consent. 

It is “important to respect that this is an individual who is seriously injured and unconscious in a hospital bed,” a spokesman for the UN Office for Project Services tells the Sun. “Should these social media posts be found to be accurate, publishing images of unconscious victims without their permission would constitute a serious violation of privacy.”

Several UN OPS workers were injured and one was killed at their Gaza facility Wednesday, after an “explosive ordinance that was either dropped or fired at the infrastructure and detonated inside the building,” according to a UN spokesman, Farhan Haq. The UN is yet to determine the origin of the attack on the facility. 

The injured UN OPS personnel were evacuated to an Israeli hospital. That is where the arms of one of the injured men was photographed, followed by social media distribution world-wide. No other identifying parts of the man’s body, such as his face, were made public. 

One of the man’s arms displays the German-language words “meine ehre heisst treue,” or “my honor is loyalty.” According to the Anti-Defamation League, the notorious Nazi Schutzstaffel’s military wing, known as Waffen SS, adopted that slogan to express loyalty to Adolf Hitler. Another arm depicts a Nazi soldier, complete with a hat, sunglasses, and SS insignia on the coat collar. 

Israelis see the discovery of a UN OPS Nazi-sympathizer as yet another reason to suspect bias among officials of the world body. “Bottom line: a UN worker in Gaza is running around with an SS slogan tattooed on his arm,” a prominent Israeli journalist, Ben Caspit, writes on X. 

UN OPS is “looking into social media posts about a member of personnel with tattoos of an inappropriate and discriminatory nature,” its spokesman tells the Sun, adding that the body “takes any allegations of this nature extremely seriously. Any form of hate speech or symbolism is unacceptable. Fighting hatred, discrimination, racism, and inequality are among the core principles of the United Nations.”

Israel needs to know “what the UN will be doing to expunge blatant expressions of Jew-hatred among its employees,” its ambassador at the world body, Danny Danon, wrote in a letter to Secretary-General Guterres. “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.”