Israel Lodges Strong Protest With India Over Sanjay Raut's 'Hitler' Post

On Friday, the Israeli Embassy lodged a strong protest with India regarding a post by Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

The Israeli Embassy conveyed its dissatisfaction to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla through a strongly-worded letter, India Today reported citing sources.

This was in response to the "anti-Semitic" comments made by the Shiv Sena (UBT) Rajya Sabha MP, which seemed to justify the Holocaust against the Jewish community.

On 14 November, Sanjay Raut reposted a report about the difficult circumstances at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, supplementing it with his personal comments in Hindi.

His comments roughly translated to "he now understands why Hitler hated Jews so much".

However, the Rajya Sabha MP deleted his tweet after facing a severe backlash.

The report reposted by Sanjay Raut depicted the distressing scene at Al-Shifa Hospital where premature babies were crying after Israel's offensive.

During World War II, the Holocaust represented the systematic genocide of European Jews perpetrated by Nazi Germany and its accomplices. Over the course of 1941 to 1945, approximately six million Jews were brutally murdered across German-occupied Europe by locking them in a gas chamber.

Since the onset of the Israel-Hamas conflict in early October, Raut has been vocal about his opinions. Over the past month, he has compared the ruling BJP to the Palestinian terror group Hamas and insinuated that India's backing of Israel was due to the supply of the Pegasus "snooping" software to the Centre.

Israel initiated its offensive in Gaza following a terror attack by Hamas on 7 October in which over 1,400 people were killed.