The defender of faith
by Melanie Phillips:
King Charles III is the latest British monarch in the Davidic tradition.
So is this going to be good for the Jews?
Following close behind this question about the accession of King Charles III — the latest iteration of the question interminably asked by diaspora Jews about every development in national life — has been a reproach voiced scarcely less frequently: “Why didn’t the Queen ever find time in her engagements abroad to visit Israel”?
Behind both questions lies a fundamental misunderstanding. Members of the Royal Family undertake no engagements overseas unless the UK Foreign Office wants them to do so. The Queen failed to visit Israel not because she didn’t want to go. It was because the British government didn’t want her to go.
The reasons aren’t hard to fathom from Britain’s historic ambivalence about the Jewish national home. This dates back to the UK’s shameful betrayal of its mandate to settle the Jews in Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s. It extends to its current sanitising of Palestinian intransigence and the repeated Foreign Office mis-statement that Israel is in “illegal occupation” of the disputed territories.
In fact, first Prince William and then Prince Charles, as he then was, did make friendly official visits to Israel in 2018 and 2020. This was almost certainly due to a shift in the government’s attitude.
And that was probably due to the increasing number of pro-Israel ministers in the administrations of both Theresa May and Boris Johnson, combined with the developing relationship with Israel by the Gulf states towards which the British government has long been obsequious.
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