Prince Harry has warned of a “deeply worrying rise in anti-Semitism” in the UK following a series of anti-Semitic attacks against the country’s Jewish community.
In an op-ed published by the left-wing British magazine New Statesman on Thursday, Prince Harry outlined his fears of what he called a “divided kingdom” and urged people to distinguish between protests against the Israeli government and prejudice against Jews.
He did not explicitly name Israel in this work. Instead, he referred to countries whose actions “raise serious questions under international humanitarian law” and acknowledged that “videos from Gaza, Lebanon and the wider region of destroyed communities and entire neighborhoods flattened to rubble have shaken people to their core.”
Israel’s war in Gaza, which began in the wake of a deadly Hamas terrorist attack in October 2023, has sparked global protests and an independent United Nations investigation concluded in September last year that the country had committed genocide against Palestinians in the enclave.
But Prince Harry warned that the “two realities” of protest and bigotry are “dangerously conflated”.
“When anger is directed against Jews, Muslims, and other communities, it ceases to be a cry for justice and becomes more corrosive,” he wrote.
Prince Harry referred to recent “lethal violence in London and Manchester”, including the attack in October in which two Jewish worshipers were killed at a synagogue in Manchester, and the stabbing of two Jewish men in broad daylight in north London last month.
Before the stabbing, London’s Jewish community was already reeling from anti-Semitic attacks targeting synagogues and other public buildings.
“We cannot answer injustice with more injustice,” Harry said. “If we do so, we are extending the cycle rather than ending it. The only way to break the cycle is to refuse to inherit it. That means unequivocally opposing anti-Semitism wherever it appears, recognizing that anti-Muslim hatred and all forms of racism come from the same well of division.”
He also said he was “acutely aware of my own mistakes” about an apparent mistake he made in 2005 when he attended a costume party wearing Nazi costumes.
The British royal family is careful to avoid overt interference in politics, but Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, have become more outspoken since stepping down as working royals.
