Duke of Sussex to share stage with Holocaust survivor who hails Hamas as 'heroes'
Prince Harry will share a platform with a trauma expert who has likened Hamas terrorists to the Jewish “heroes” of Nazi resistance and accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing”.
The Duke of Sussex is set to take part in a live-streamed Q&A with members of the public to promote his memoir, Spare, in an “intimate” event on Saturday discussing “living with loss” and “personal healing”. His book describes in detail his grief following the death of his mother, Princess Diana.
He is set to appear in conversation with Dr Gabor Maté, the Hungarian-Canadian Jewish Holocaust survivor, addiction and trauma expert, speaker and physician.
However, it has emerged that Dr Maté, 79, has defended Hamas terrorists as “heroes”, likening them to the resistance fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
In November 2021, the Islamist terrorist group, Hamas, was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK. This means that members of Hamas or those who invite support for the group could be jailed for up to 14 years.
Writing for The Toronto Star in 2014, Dr Maté said: “There is no understanding Gaza out of context - Hamas rockets or unjustifiable terrorist attacks on civilians - and that context is the longest ongoing ethnic cleansing operation in the recent and present centuries, the ongoing attempt to destroy Palestinian nationhood.
“The Palestinians use tunnels? So did my heroes, the poorly armed fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto.”
The Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943 was the largest, symbolically most important Jewish uprising, and the first urban uprising in Nazi-occupied Europe. It came following mass deportations to the Treblinka extermination camp. After a month of fighting, the uprising was quashed and the Polish ghetto was burned to the ground.
In the same article Dr Maté appeared to defend Palestinian rocket fire at Israeli civilians, saying: “Out of impotent defiance, they fire inept rockets, causing terror for innocent Israelis but rarely physical harm.”
Hamas is ‘nothing compared to terrorism of Israeli government’
The Jewish Chronicle also reported that during the 2021 Gaza conflict, Dr Maté said in a live-stream broadcast that Hamas was “nothing compared to the terrorism of the Israeli government”, claiming that Israel wanted to take over the whole land of “biblical Palestine” beyond the Jordan.
He also went on to describe Gaza as “the world’s largest outdoor prison” and has also defended the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, against charges of anti-Semitism.
Dr Maté is also an outspoken supporter of the decriminalisation of drugs and has used the Amazonian and hallucinogenic plant, ayahuasca, to treat patients. Prince Harry has previously revealed how psychedelic drugs, including ayahuasca, were like “medicine” in dealing with his grief and trauma.
He was born in Budapest in 1944, with his maternal grandparents killed in Auschwitz when he was just five months old. He was also separated from his mother while his father was subjected to forced labour by the Nazis.
The Duke and Dr Maté, who is the author of The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture, will “discuss living with loss and the importance of personal healing” before the Q&A.
Representatives for Prince Harry, Dr Maté, and Penguin Random House, publisher of Spare, were approached for comment.
