Prince Charles Will Visit Israel and the “Occupied” Palestinian Territories

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Prince Charles has accepted an invitation to take part in the Fifth World Holocaust Forum in January. That’s all well and good. But what wasn’t well and good was the British government’s announcement that his itinerary will include a visit to what is described as “occupied” Palestinian territories.

The story is here.

Britain’s Prince Charles has accepted an invitation by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin to take part in the Fifth World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in January.

The event, titled “Remembering the Holocaust, Fighting Anti-Semitism,” is a joint project by the World Holocaust Forum Foundation and Yad Vashem. Scheduled for Jan. 23, 2020, it will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and make a clear statement that antisemitism has no place in global society.

Rivlin said that the upcoming forum will be taking place at a “very important historical moment … with the voices of Holocaust denial and antisemitism once again rising.”

He added that no quarter would be given to any individuals, organizations, politicians or heads of state who “falsified the truth” or tried to ensure that the Holocaust was forgotten.

There is one politician, and would-be “head of state,” who has been especially vile in his “falsifying the truth” and trying “to ensure that the Holocaust was forgotten.” That person is Mahmoud Abbas, whom Prince Charles will also be visiting in what his government calls “occupied Palestinian territories.” The Prince would do well, before he meets with Abbas, and possibly is taken in by his well-honed no-one-here-but-us-accountants routine, to find out about the Palestinian leader’s’ doctoral dissertation for the Russian Institute of Oriental Studies, in which he claimed that fewer than one million Jews died in the Holocaust, and even insisted that the Zionists and Nazis had been in cahoots. That should provide a salutary shock for Prince Charles, and if it does not change his mind about meeting Abbas – it would be hard to back out now — at least the Prince, no longer unaware of Abbas’ unsavory beliefs, will not stoop to praise him. Prince Charles might also be informed about other aspects of Mahmoud Abbas. There are the antisemitic schoolbooks, and the shows on Palestinian television where children waving pretend guns or real knives promise to “kill the Jews” — all part of the PA under Mahmoud Abbas. The Prince might also find out that Abbas and his two sons have amassed a fortune of $400 million, by diverting aid money to themselves. He would learn that Mahmoud Abbas, having been elected to a four-year term in 2005, has remained in office without elections since then, for fifteen more years of grand theft.

British Ambassador to Israel Neil Wigan said he was pleased that the prince had accepted Rivlin’s invitation and that on his upcoming visit would “see a bit more of Israel.”

The United Kingdom also revealed that the prince’s itinerary will include a visit to the “occupied” Palestinian territories, where he will be a guest of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Prince Charles last visited Jerusalem in 2016 to attend the funeral of Shimon Peres on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II. He also represented the queen at the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin.

The Prince should find out at the “Fighting Antisemitism” event in Jerusalem about today’s chief carriers of the disease in the West – that is, the tens of millions of Muslims who now live in Western Europe and North America. Will he learn about the murderous attacks on Jews by Muslims in Paris, Toulouse, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin? Will he learn about the murders of Ilan Halimi, Sara Halimi, Mireille Knoll, Rabbi Sandler and his children, and so many others? Will he find out that the source of this Islamic antisemitism is the Qur’an itself? For the Qur’an describes Jews – as  Robert Spencer’s helpful compilation makes clear – as “inveterately evil and bent on destroying the wellbeing of the Muslims. They are the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82); as fabricating things and falsely ascribing them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); claiming that Allah’s power is limited (5:64); loving to listen to lies (5:41); disobeying Allah and never observing his commands (5:13); disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109); feeling pain when others are happy or fortunate (3:120); being arrogant about their being Allah’s beloved people (5:18); devouring people’s wealth by subterfuge (4:161); slandering the true religion and being cursed by Allah (4:46); killing the prophets (2:61); being merciless and heartless (2:74); never keeping their promises or fulfilling their words (2:100); being unrestrained in committing sins (5:79); being cowardly (59:13-14); being miserly (4:53); being transformed into apes and pigs for breaking the Sabbath (2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166); and more.” If he finds this out, surely he will refrain from praising Mahmoud Abbas, but offer at the end of their meeting only a tellingly curt “goodbye.” It would be terrible for his own standing were Prince Charles  to attend the “Fighting Antisemitism” event and then find himself, just days later, out of ignorance praising someone who happens to be one of the world’s most virulent antisemites.

There is a second matter, too, that needs to be addressed. The British government has described Prince Charles as including in his itinerary “occupied Palestinian territories.” The Prince needs to find out why that description is both offensive and wrong. The British held the Mandate for Palestine, and they certainly should know why it is inaccurate to call the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) “occupied Palestinian territories.” Prince Charles has a month to study up on the Mandate before his Israel trip. That’s plenty of time for him to discover that all the territory from the Golan in the north to Beersheva in the south, and from the Jordan River in the east to the Mediterranean in the west, was assigned under the Mandate to become the future Jewish National Home, which then become the State of Israel. When the 1949 Arab-Israeli war ended, Jordan held the territory it renamed “the West Bank” — a toponym meant to efface “Judea and Samaria,” which were too Jewish for the Jordanian Arabs to stomach. Jordan had no legal claim to the West Bank; it was the military occupier of land that belonged to the Jewish state. With its victory in the Six-Day War, Israel was finally in a position to enforce its pre-existing legal claim to what from 1948 to 1967 had been “occupied Jewish land.”

Prince Charles can ignore what the Foreign Office Arabists, the BBC, and admirers of Jeremy Corbyn want him to say, and instead carefully offer another formulation. He can refer simply to “the territories,” dropping both of those incorrect and tendentious adjectives — “occupied” and “Palestinian” – from their description. Or better yet, he could avoid referring altogether to those territories, and merely specify the city being visited, as in “I will visit, I am now visiting, I paid a visit to, Ramallah.” Abbas and his “Palestinians” will pick up on this and be furious, but what can they do? Denounce Prince Charles, which would only bring more attention to his deliberate phrasing that so offends them? And the Prince, who in recent years has shown himself to be a genuine friend of British Jewry, will have done more, by saying less, to undermine and correct that noxious phrase “occupied Palestinian territories.”

First published in Jihad Watch.