For Prince William's Israel Visit to Mean Anything, There's One Thing He Must Do
When news broke of Prince William’s upcoming official visit to Israel, I was tempted to treat the news as I do all other dispatches concerning the royal family: By rolling my eyes, sighing softly, and wondering why these waxen wallydrags still managed to interest anyone but their unfortunate subjects. But the facts, as they so often do, began to chafe, and a rethinking of my position was in order. Even if, like me, you see the Windsors as a slightly less elegant version of the Kardashians, the visit is still one you should contemplate, as it is, incredibly, the first official one.
In a maddening and wonderful essay on the subject, the British historian Andrew Roberts explained that “although Her Majesty the Queen has made over 250 official overseas visits to 129 different countries during her reign, neither she nor one single member of the British royal family has ever yet been to Israel on an official visit.” And it’s not that the elderly monarch doesn’t travel much: She’s been, Roberts helpfully recounts, to “Libya, Iran, Sudan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan and Turkey. So it can’t have been that she wasn’t in the area.”