‘William: Fighting in Gaza must be brought to an end’, bellows the Daily Telegraph‘s front page today, next to an image of a distressed-looking Prince of Wales. Call me a Cromwellian, but what century are we in? I thought the days of British royals haughtily issuing moral instructions, least of all to foreigners, were behind us.

I find William’s intervention in the Gaza crisis deeply troubling. To be fair to him (briefly) he didn’t quite order the Israelis to quit their pursuit of Hamas. But he did signal his moral revulsion for the war. And that raises serious questions about the role of the royals. Do we really want our future king wading in on geopolitical matters? I don’t.

What about those wars, William?

My first question is this: why is William, it seems, more moved by this conflict than by other recent wars? He laments the ‘terrible human cost of the conflict’ and the ‘sheer scale of human suffering’. Okay. No one will deny that what is happening in Gaza is awful. But there has been human suffering in Yemen in recent years, too. And Myanmar. And Darfur. Where were his agonised reflections on those calamities?

Thousands have died in the Myanmar civil war in recent years. More than two million have been displaced. Hundreds of thousands have perished in the Saudi-Yemen conflict since 2014. Then there’s Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine. William made no grand official comment on that imperious outrage against humanity. Instead we had to rely on reports of things he was overheard saying at an event.

So what about those wars, William? Do you believe ‘too many’ were killed, as you now say about Gaza? If you did, why didn’t you say so, on official princely paper? That’s the trouble with his public emoting over Gaza, his press-released pain for the world to see: it invites speculation on his feelings towards other global conflicts. Will it now be a thing for the heir to the throne to hold forth on foreign wars? Or is it just this one? If so, then once again: why?

People will say this is ‘whataboutery’. And they’re right, it is. ‘Whataboutery’ is an entirely reasonable response to the cultural elite’s frankly feverish obsession with the Gaza war. Peruse social media and you’ll see people saying they can’t stop weeping over Gaza. Leftists and liberals have taken to the streets every other weekend to register their rage with Israel. Now even a royal personage has joined these ranks of the selectively outraged, those who feel a peculiarly intense grief for Gaza while often turning a blind eye to bloodier wars.

I want to shout ‘What about…?’ at all of them. No ‘pro-Palestine’ activist or tweeter or commentator has ever given a satisfactory response to the question of why Israeli militarism horrifies them more than other kinds of militarism, and why Palestinian suffering wounds them more deeply than other people’s suffering. Now, sadly, we are compelled to ask that question of the man who will be king.

The nation’s patience with royalty is likely to run thin

Then there’s the rather important matter of royal meddling in political life. As a republican I would say this, but I don’t want unaccountable sons of aristocratic privilege speaking on behalf of the nation. Who elected William to say the war in Gaza must end? Not me, not you, certainly no one in Israel.

That the Foreign Office and No. 10 okayed William’s statement, and reportedly welcomed it, is worrying. There seems to be some moral ventriloquism going on here. Nervous, perhaps, of saying anything too firm on Israel-Gaza, the government instead deploys popular Will as a political instrument to prod the debate along. Can we be more grown-up please, like a real democracy, where elected leaders set policy and the rest of us respond?

I sincerely hope William’s ‘extraordinary’ statement – as the Daily Mail calls it – does not signal the dawn of a new era of royal politicking. William’s grandmother went 70 years without exposing her feelings on world affairs. He should aspire to do likewise. The nation’s patience with royalty is likely to run thin the more they behave like old-world monarchs issuing decrees on political matters. I say this with kindness, William: be quiet.