UK – Britain’s Prince Charles Turns Heads at Peres Funeral With Personalized Royal Kippah

THE ALGEMEINER – Britain’s Prince Charles turned some heads at the funeral of the late Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem on Friday with a personalized kippah bearing his official crest.

“One heck of a royal yarmulke on Prince Charles at the Shimon Peres funeral,” Peter Baker, the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, tweeted.

The Heat Street news site asked its Twitter followers, “Isn’t it more than a little tasteless to make your funeral headgear all ‘me me me’?”

This was not the first time Prince Charles has worn the kippah in question. As previously reported by The Algemeiner, he also wore it three years ago to celebrate the official induction of the UK’s new chief rabbi.

The prince was making only his second-ever visit to Israel for the Peres funeral. His first trip to the Jewish state took place two decades ago, when he attended the November 1995 funeral of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

On Thursday, Haaretz journalist Allison Kaplan Sommer tweeted, “It’s nice that Prince Charles is flying in for Peres’ funeral. But it also continues the Royal Family’s policy of only visiting dead Israelis.”

According to the UK’s Telegraph newspaper, the British Foreign Office determined “a long time ago” that visits to Israel and the Palestinian Authority were “too politically fraught for the royals to be involved in.”

Peres — who served as Israel’s president from 2007-2014 and was also twice prime minister, once in the mid-1980s and again in the mid-90s, died at the age of 93 on Wednesday two weeks after suffering a stroke. His funeral was attended by dozens of top leaders from around the world, including US President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton.