New Delhi: Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s X post criticising Israel for “committing genocide” in Gaza and starving Gazans amounts to ‘shameful deceit’, the Israeli ambassador to India has said, in remarks that the grand old party has called “totally unacceptable”.The Ministry of External Affairs has not commented on the issue.Vadra on Tuesday (August 12) said on X that the “Israeli state is committing genocide” and pointed to Gazan health ministry figures as of last week stating that Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip had killed over 60,000 Palestinians, including 18,430 children.“It has starved hundreds to death including many children and is threatening to starve millions. Enabling these crimes by silence and inaction is a crime in itself,” Vadra said, adding that the Indian government’s ‘silence’ on the matter is “shameful”.Two hours later, Israel’s envoy to India Reuven Azar responded to Vadra on X, saying that “what is shameful is your deceit”.Azar, who is also Israel’s non-resident ambassador to Sri Lanka and Bhutan, claimed that Hamas’s “heinous tactics of hiding behind civilians, their shooting of people trying to evacuate or receive assistance and their rocket fire” is instead responsible for the “terrible cost in human lives” in Gaza.Hunger in the Gaza strip is caused by Hamas’s attempts to “sequestrate” the two million tonnes of food aid that Israel has “facilitated” into the territory, he continued.“Gaza population has grown 450% in the last 50 years, no genocide there. Don’t buy Hamas numbers,” the diplomat wrote.Congress communications in-charge and Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh said the party ‘condemned’ Azar’s remarks.While it is “too much” to expect the Modi government to “take serious exception and objection to the ambassador’s response”, the Congress does so and finds it “totally unacceptable”, Ramesh, who also characterised Israel’s actions as genocide, wrote on X.Pawan Khera, the Congress’s media and publicity chairperson, said that it is “unprecedented and intolerable” that “the ambassador of a state accused of genocide worldwide would target a sitting member of the Indian parliament”. “It is a direct affront to the dignity of Indian democracy.”Asking if external affairs minister S. Jaishankar would address Azar’s “attempt to intimidate” Vadra, Khera tagging the diplomat said that the “international community is witnessing, in real time, the killing of civilians in Gaza – including those queuing for aid”.Following Hamas’s terror attack in Israel on October 7, 2023 in which it killed some 1,200 Israelis and took about 250 others hostage, Tel Aviv launched a brutal military campaign in Gaza with the aim of eliminating Hamas, amid which over 61,000 Palestinians have lost their lives, per the coastal strip’s health ministry as of August 9.Numerous organisations, including a special committee of the UN, and scholars have likened Israel’s campaign in Gaza to genocide.The International Criminal Court in November 2024 issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-defence minister Yoav Gallant as well as against Hamas leader Mohammed Deif for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. The International Court of Justice in an advisory opinion earlier that year said that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal.From May 27 till the end of last month, at least 1,373 Palestinians were killed while seeking food, most of them by the Israeli military, the UN’s human rights division has said.India, which has not commented on Azar’s remarks, said late last month that a “ceasefire must be put in place” in Gaza, whose people it pointed out “grapple daily with acute shortages of food and fuel, inadequate medical services and lack of access to education”.Its remarks – in which it did not name Israel directly – represented what could be the Indian government’s strongest statement yet about the humanitarian toll of the Israel-Hamas conflict.Prior to the remarks, which were delivered at the UN Security Council by India’s permanent ambassador to the UN P. Harish, India in June stood out in abstaining from a UN General Assembly resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, drawing opprobrium from opposition parties.India’s approach to voting on Gaza-related issues has not been uniform, with it having voted in favour of a different resolution in December that had called for a ceasefire.