National Post (National Edition)
Israel falls in love with Prince William.
WILLIAM’S VISIT TO ISRAEL REVEALS A DEEP UNDERSTANDING OF THE JEWISH DNA
Israel is besotted with Prince William, whose three-day whirlwind tour here and to the West Bank wrapped up Thursday. On the first-ever official royal visit to Israel, the Prince and likely future king presented as a slightly less charismatic version of his celebrity mother, Diana Princess of Wales, but he has clearly inherited her ease of intimacy and interest in the lives and challenges of “real” people living outside the rarefied bubble of royalty, political leaders and diplomats.
Event curation and choreography were brilliant from start to finish. The orderly and diverse trip skilfully navigated myriad explosive issues with just a few “tut tuts” (that would resonate primarily among diplomats) disrupting the flow.
He began on Tuesday morning with a visit to Yad Vashem, the museum in Jerusalem memorializing the murdered Jews of Europe. Considered a mandatory stop on any official tour, the Prince managed to imbue his with a genuineness that left the Israeli media — a notoriously critical lot — awestruck. At the end of his brisk tour through the exhibits, the Prince sat with two elderly men who had been whisked out of Germany at the 11th hour on a “Kindertransport”: trains that removed young children from imminent disaster and into the arms of strangers in the United Kingdom. One man explained to the Prince that he was five years old at the time. The pain reflected in William’s face, body language and questions, the father of three very young children, could not be feigned.
And then, there were all the little gestures. Like his mother, Prince William gets up close and personal. Unscripted, he sat on a simple bench, in order to engage, eye to eye, with these survivors. No podiums or velvet ropes separated this Prince from the people.
In fact, on the few occasions when he was led around and cordoned off, he gravitated always to the edges so that he could press the flesh and joke around and be as normal as a Prince possibly can, and not some aloof, superior, pampered, cloistered, detached automaton.
Nothing in the life of a royal is unplanned, and the opportunities for spontaneous encounters with the public are limited. But the Prince pulled these off with what seemed to be unscripted aplomb.
Walking down Rothschild Boulevard — Tel Aviv’s answer to the East Village, Park Avenue, Kreuzberg and Soho (any Soho) — Prince William bantered with Netta Barzilai, the Israeli celebrity winner of the Eurovision 2018 song contest. As a study in contrasts, they could not be more extreme: tall, lean, preppy William strolling aside short, full-figured, funkily-attired, multi-coloured mop-haired Netta. After grabbing a coffee at one of the iconic kiosks dotting the boulevard, William was clearly drawn to the crowds hanging out.
This vibe imbued his whole visit within Israel proper. In sweltering heat, he turned up at Tel Aviv’s Frishman Beach, chowed down on watermelon, chatted with random beachgoers and kicked around a ball a bit. Perhaps his most astonishing feat, given his attire — long pants, dress shirt and closed shoes — was doing it all without breaking a sweat. He later joked that when he comes back he’s definitely bringing his “swimming trunks.”
No matter the context, the Prince’s EQ was evident. At Yad Vashem, in the sombre silence immediately following his ceremonial relighting of the eternal flame, wreath laying and choir singing, as he exited the hall, he stopped to chat with a few of the young girls who had sung so movingly. Like his mother, he is not afraid to feel, touch, react.
Moments later, writing in the Yad Vashem guest book, William expressed an understanding of the Israeli and Jewish DNA that Canada’s prime minister would do well to heed (in light of the latter’s serial attempts to pasteurize the Holocaust as a more general humanitarian lapse). Prince William very thoughtfully expressed his understanding of the singularly Jewish nature of the Holocaust, writing, in part:
“It is almost impossible to comprehend this appalling event in history. Every name, photograph and memory recorded here is a tragic reminder of the unimaginable human cost of the Holocaust and the immense loss suffered by the Jewish people ... We must not forget the Holocaust — the murder of 6 million men, women and children, simply because they were Jewish.”
You have suffered indescribably, he conveys, and I understand that such trauma does not dissipate in a generation, perhaps not in centuries. But we must all work and strive, together, to forge a better, more peaceful future.
Which is exactly what he did say, that evening, in his brief but poignant remarks to those attending a recep- tion at the residence of the United Kingdom’s ambassador in Israel. He also praised the indomitable Israeli spirit, a marvel that is reflected in the unparalleled innovation developed in the “start-up nation” and the youthful, vibrant diversity that is Tel Aviv.
Much of Wednesday was spent in Ramallah and the West Bank, where he met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and assured him that the Palestinian people “have not been forgotten.” The British press remarked on the significant Palestinian security presence during this visit, which featured a visit to a health clinic and a brief, heavily controlled walkabout in Ramallah.
William fittingly closed out his visit with a pilgrimage, as the official itinerary called it, to the burial place of his paternal great-grandmother, Princess Alice of Greece, interred in Jerusalem. Honoured in 1994 as a “righteous among the nations” for her role in saving a Greek Jewish family from murder by the Nazis, Alice was, at the time, living in greatly reduced circumstances in Athens and risked everything in this 13-month heroic act. Speaking at the ceremony posthumously honouring his mother, Prince Philip said: “I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special. She would have considered it to be a perfectly natural human reaction to fellow beings in distress.”
William mentioned several times the family’s pride in her selfless bravery. Alice, it seems, understood that she could leverage her privilege to help the wretched and reviled; an intuition that Diana refined to an art form. William, it appears, intends to take it all to the next level.
“The proof,” as the British are fond of saying, “is in the pudding. ”