Prince Charles says and does the darndest things

The British Daily Mail last week published a 1986 letter from Prince Charles to an American friend in which the heir to the British throne urged the U.S. to “take on the Jewish lobby” and blamed “the influx of foreign Jews” for causing unrest in the Middle East.

The prince wrote the letter while he was enroute home from an official trip to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar with his then wife Princess Diana. The letter (which was not “leaked” but was found in a public archive) says in part:

“Tried to read bit of Koran on way out and it gave me some insight into way they [Arabs] think and operate. Don’t think they could understand us through reading Bible though!”

“Also I now begin to understand better their [Arabs’] point of view about Israel. Never realized they see it as a U.S. colony.”

“I now appreciate that Arabs and Jews were all a Semitic people originally and it is the influx of foreign, European Jews (especially from Poland, they say) which has helped to cause great problems. I know there are so many complex issues, but how can there ever be an end to terrorism unless the causes are eliminated?”

“Surely some U.S. president has to have the courage to stand up and take on the Jewish lobby in U.S.? I must be naive, I suppose!”

While there are groups that lobby for Israel (such as AIPAC) they are not “Jewish” in nature, rather their membership runs across religions and party lines. Generally, the phrases “Jewish lobby” or “Israel Lobby” are used without mentioning other “lobbies” or mentioning that Jews do not have a homogeneous position on anything; thus, “Jewish lobby” is a term which promotes a classic anti-Semitic canard that the Jews control the U.S. government.

The truth is the “pro-Israel lobby” does not wield any more influence than others. For example, they were not able to stop the U.S. from dealing with the PLO, with President Carter calling for a Palestinian State in 1976, just nine years after the Six Day War. Now compare that to the “Cuban lobby” which was able to prevent the U.S. from dealing with Castro-run Cuba for 56 years.

A spokeswoman for Prince Charles said the letter did not contain his views but he was simply relaying arguments he heard on his trip.

“He was sharing the arguments in private correspondence with a long-standing friend in an attempt to improve his understanding of what he has always recognized is a deeply complex issue to which he was coming early on in his own analysis in 1986,” the spokeswoman said. The spokesman added that Charles has a “proven track record” of support for both Jewish and Arab communities.

Indeed, the Daily Mail report has a “some of his best friends are Jewish” section.

“While the letter is inflammatory, there is no suggestion Charles holds anti-Semitic views. He has many prominent Jewish friends and in 2013 became the first Royal to attend a chief rabbi’s inauguration ceremony. In a speech that year, he expressed concern at the apparent rise of anti-Semitism in Britain.”

This is not the first report of Prince Charles’ sour attitude toward the Jewish State. The Daily Mail’s report added that in 2003, “it was reported the prince had not been to the US for the previous six years on Foreign Office advice, largely because of his criticism of U.S. policy in the Middle East.”

“A diplomatic source said at the time the prince had ‘in American terms and international terms, fairly dodgy views on Israel. He thinks American policy in the Middle East is complete madness’.”

In 2007, the Jewish Chronicle in Britain got a hold of an email exchange showing that Israel was trying to set up a visit from Charlie’s closest aids as a first step in getting the prince to make an official visit to the Holy Land. Charles, who is as popular in Saudi Arabia as Jerry Lewis is in France, rebuffed his aid’s desire to make the trip because there was no way the prince was going to travel to Israel.

In fact, since its founding in 1948, no member of the British royal family has visited Israel in an official capacity. Prince Philip was there in 1994 to attend a Yad Vashem ceremony to honor his late mother, and Prince Charles attended the funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, but both were considered private visits.

In 2010, another British paper, the Telegraph, revealed that Charles joined Prime Minister Gordon Brown in lending his voice to a charity which raises money for Hamas.

“A charity praised last week by Gordon Brown and the Prince of Wales has channeled hundreds of thousands of pounds to groups linked to Hamas, the banned terrorist organization, according to security sources,” the Telegraph reported. “The Prime Minister and the heir to the throne personally praised Muslim Aid, whose own accounts show it has paid at least £325,000 to the Islamic University of Gaza, where leading Hamas figures teach, and £13,998 to the al-Ihsan Charitable Society, designated by the US government as a “sponsor of terrorism” and a front for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group. Security sources also claim that Muslim Aid has helped channel a further £210,600 to six other organizations in the Gaza Strip since July 2009, all of which they say are linked to Hamas.”

Per Elliott Abrams, the number-two person at the U.S. National Security Council under President Bush 43, has suggested that the royal family’s refusal to undertake a state visit to Israel is a reflection of bias against the Jewish state. “The continuing failure or refusal of any royal to make an official or state visit to Israel is an anomaly that suggests bias, and undermines potential British influence in the region,” Abrams wrote for the Council on Foreign Relations in 2014.

It’s easy to feel bad for Britain’s Prince Charles, after all the guy’s main purpose in life is to wait for his mum to die so he can take over her job. He has spent his life looking for his “special purpose,” for a reason to exist. Perhaps disparaging Jews and the Jewish state is that “special purpose.”