Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on an official visit to Palestine and UAE and Oman. This three-nation tour started yesterday when PM Modi reached Jordan. To reach Palestine, it is necessary to go through Jordan. In Amman, King Abdullah II of Jordan received PM Modi. PM had tweeted expressing his formal gratitude to King Abdullah II for allowing the transit.
https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/961615952579145728?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
PM Modi had posted on facebook about his Palestine visit. In the Facebook post PM had mentioned that he would be the First Indian Prime Minister to make an official visit to Palestine.
PM Modi’s post sent some Congress twitter handles into a frenzy. Congress had always preached support for Palestine but in all these years not a single Congress Prime Minister had made an official visit. Gaurav Pandhi, Congress functionary tweeted calling PM Modi ‘a liar’. He claimed that it was Nehru who had first visited Palestine and not PM Modi.
https://twitter.com/GauravPandhi/status/961829683301048323?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Gaurav Pandhi’s attempt at ‘fact checking’ was soon called out by twitterati as wrong and baseless. The fact is Jawaharlal Nehru had visited Gaza in 1960 and met General Inder Jit Rikhye who was stationed with the Indian troops along with UN forces in Gaza. But Gaza was under Egyptian control at that time. Palestine declared itself as an independent state only in November 1988.
Gaurav Pandhi’s massive gaffe was not taken kindly by twitter users. Many reacted to his false ‘fact checking’ and tweeted reacting to his attempt to malign the PM.
https://twitter.com/srirambjp/status/961909592333701120?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
This is not the first time Congress handles have circulated fake news. But social media is a brutal place and every time fake news peddlers get called out by alert users.