No friend to Israel
Clearly, either the Israel embassy in London or the Times has a sense of black humour. In its report of today’s Jewish Chronicle story about how the initial enthusiasm by Prince Charles’s private secretary Sir Michael Peat to accept an offer to visit Israel was slapped down by others in the Prince’s household for fear that HRH might be used to help Israel burnish its international image (heaven forbid), the Times volunteered that the invitation by the Israel embassy had been issued
in the hope of building on the traditionally strong relations between Israel and the British Royal Family.Such relations have of course been traditionally not just not strong but invisible. As the story makes clear, there has never been an official visit by the Royal Family in the six decades of Israel’s existence. Yet Prince Charles, whose affinities with the Islamic world are well documented, thinks nothing of visiting Saudi Arabia (and formally receiving its King when he visited the UK last month). He bestows royal favour upon one of the most repressive and dictatorial regimes on earth, and which is the wellspring of the war of conquest being waged against his own country, but refuses to visit the one democracy and true ally of this country in the Middle East in case he might ‘burnish its international image’.
Obviously, Sir Michael’s own decent and entirely rational reaction was slapped down by the innate prejudice of the Royal household at Clarence House. Despite the humiliating attempts by forelock-tugging British Jewish leaders to smooth this incident over on the grounds that
'Prince Charles is a great friend of the Jewish community,’he is certainly no friend of Israel nor Jewish peoplehood.