From the past few days, a claim stating that Israel’s govt has named one of their fighter jets to “Soumya”, paying tribute to the Indian nurse who lost her life during a Hamas airstrike, has been broadly circulating across the social media platforms. It is also being claimed that Israel has avenged her death by striking back at Hamas. A Facebook post posted by a member of fan club group of BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra, which shares the same claim, as of now, garnered over 3.8k likes and has been shared 625 times.
#सौम्या_संतोष केरल की एक नर्स जो इज़राइल में नौकरी करती थी और हमास की बमबारी में उसकी मृत्यु हो गई। इज़राइल ने उसके शेव को पूरे राजकीय सम्मान के साथ भारत भेजा। #इज़राइल ने सौम्या का बदला लेने के लिए अपने फाइटर जेट का नाम सौम्या रखा और हमास पर सबसे भीषण एयर स्ट्राइक के लिए उस जेट को अन्य जेट के साथ उड़ा के सौम्या को श्रद्धांजलि दी। (#Somya_santosh a nurse from Kerala who was working in Israel and got killed in the bombing of Hamas. Israel has sent her body with State honours to India. #Israel has also named one of their fighter jets as ‘Soumya’ to take the revenge of her death and flew that jet along with their other jets to pay a tribute to her.)
FactO check:
After thorough research, we found that this claim is false and bogus and Israel’s government has not named any of their jets as ‘Soumya’ and didn’t do any airstrike on Hamas particularly for the purpose of avenging the death of the Indian nurse. Besides, as per The Quint, the Image of an Israel fighter jet which is being widely shared with the “Soumya” written on it is a Chinese Chengdu J-10 fighter jet and the image is distorted to falsely claim that Israel paid tribute to the Indian nurse.
Conclusion: Israel didn’t name their jet(s) as Soumya. Also, Israel never claimed that it did airstrikes on Hamas to avenge the death of Indian nurse. The above claims are completely false and baseless.