Israel protests against India's "Hitler" eatery

The restaurant, which opened last week, was promoted with posters of the Fuehrer and Nazi swastikas, infuriating India's small Jewish population and sparking outrage in the community around the world.

"We hope the Indian authorities will ensure that Hitler being such a mass murderer did not get any rehabilitation," Daniel Zohar Zonshine, Israel's consul-general in Mumbai, told Reuters.

The multi-cuisine restaurant, which also has a lounge to smoke the exotic Indian water pipe or the "hookah", used publicity material on billboards featuring a red swastika carved in the name of the eatery.

Its owners, who removed a huge poster of Hitler initially installed at the entrance, have said they chose the German leader's name to stand out among hundreds of restaurants.

But India's remaining Jews -- most migrated to Israel and the West over the years -- say they could consider legal action.

Zonshine said he hoped the restaurant's owners would realise the hurt their action had caused to Jews.

"There is a limit to a gimmick. In India, we believe, if something like this hurts the sentiments of a community, it can be treated as a criminal offence," he said.

Authorities in Navi Mumbai, a Mumbai suburb, were not available for comment.

Navi Mumbai police chief Ramrao Wagh said he was yet to receive any complaint against the restaurant.

"In any case, I don't think any action is legally feasible," he told Reuters.

The restaurant's owners have said they were neither promoting Hitler nor the Nazi ideology, but would not change the restaurant's name.

They have said they would open two more branches in Mumbai with the same name by October.

original source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060823/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_india_israel_hitler