February 22, 2006
United Nations officials are investigating a recent spate of anti-Semitic incidents against staff, including the scrawling of Nazi swastikas in a log book intended to upset an Israeli security officer. "These unfortunate incidents are well-known to us and are being investigated internally," a UN spokesman told the "New York Sun" newspaper. He confirmed that an Israeli national who works for the UN's security force came across swastikas drawn by a fellow guard in an official book both men they shared, and that following the incident there were two cases in which guards performed a Nazi salute. "The drawing of a swastika represents hate and anti-Semitism, and it is specifically reprehensible in a year that the General Assembly for the first time passed a resolution on the Holocaust," Israel's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Carmon, told the "New York Sun. "It is also important to look at the way the internal UN system handled the case, and we expect that it will find the correct way to deal with it." The newspaper also reports of a separate incident at the UN in Vienna in which a female employee was assaulted.
