Since Israel’s creation, no member of the British royal family has paid it an official visit, although Queen Elizabeth’s husband, Prince Philip—whose mother is buried on the Mount of Olives—and Prince Charles have both come in an unofficial capacity. This summer, the House of Windsor will finally break with longstanding policy and send Prince William on a formal visit. The researchers of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Center (BICOM) ask what caused the change:

As Brexit approaches, the British government’s [new foreign policy] requires it to reach out to friends and allies outside Europe; the government views Israel as a key future trade partner, especially where technology and innovation are concerned. This motivation, coupled with the strong pro-Israel positions of many in the British government as well as the anomaly that the royal family has never visited Israel, most likely generated the idea that a visit to Israel, [including] the West Bank, as well as to [London’s] key ally Jordan, was an elegant solution to the long-running absence of a visit. Moreover, having visited Israel [along with] Jordan may subsequently make it easier for the royal family to arrange future visits to other key allies in the Middle East . . . if they so wish.

The first British monarch to come to the Holy Land was Richard I, who arrived with his army during the Third Crusade. There were also a few royal visits in the 19th century:

In 1862, Queen Victoria’s eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, then the twenty-year-old prince of Wales, who later became Edward VII, visited Jerusalem as part of a five-month tour of Egypt and the Ottoman empire. . . . [T]he prince arrived in Jaffa on March 30, before visiting Jerusalem accompanied by Turkish cavalry and staying in tents pitched between the Damascus gate and the Gate of St. Stephen’s (Lions’ Gate). He subsequently visited the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, and the Tomb of David, where the [Muslim] keepers of the site objected to opening the door as they felt it too holy for Christians to see it.

Before leaving Jerusalem on April 10, [the prince] was treated by the [local] pasha to a lunch [of] over 62 dishes. Prince Albert Edward also bathed in the Dead Sea and the River Jordan as well as visiting Hebron, Jericho—where he wrote that he experienced evening entertainment of 20 to 30 Arab women dancing in a “wild fantastic way”; Nablus—where he became the first Christian to visit the mosques; Solomon’s Pools—where according to his diary he unsuccessfully tried to shoot some birds; and the Sea of Galilee. According to the Israeli scholar Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, the trip set the standard for others to copy up to and after the World War I.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.