Swastikas and homophobic comments were reportedly printed in an eighth-grade yearbook of the United Nations International School in New York, a UN-affiliated institution that teaches the children of diplomats.

The school canceled the eighth grade’s end-of-year party over the incident and has launched an internal investigation, the Ynet news site reported Thursday, citing Israeli and Jewish parents of students at the school, where a swastika was also found etched in a boys’ locker room earlier this year.

UNIS, where annual tuition costs run up to about $50,000, is also facing a lawsuit from earlier this year by a Jewish veteran French teacher who claims the institution has ignored repeated complaints about antisemitic and anti-Israel abuse from both students and staff.

The Ynet report did not include pictures or quotes from the yearbook, but UNIS spokesperson Lupe Todd-Medina confirmed to the news site that school yearbooks had contained “hateful language.”

“We are shocked by the hateful language found in the junior school yearbooks and unequivocally condemn identity-based harm,” the spokesperson said. “Upon learning of the incident, school leadership immediately confiscated the remaining yearbooks and launched a comprehensive investigation.”

Israeli diplomats whose children attend UNIS slammed the school’s response for speaking broadly about “identity-based harm” without explicitly........

© The Times of Israel