The protest group Palestine Action slashed a painting of Lord Balfour housed at the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College.
Lord Arthur James Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, played a significant role in establishing the state of Israel. In 1917, Balfour wrote a letter to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, a leader of the Zionist movement in Britain, expressing the British government’s support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, the common name for the region as part of the Ottoman Empire.
The Balfour Declaration is considered a pivotal moment in the history of the decades-long conflict between Palestinians and Israelis because it marked the first time a major global power recognized the aim of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This recognition bolstered international support for Zionism and set the stage for the establishment of Israel in 1948.
The painting of Lord Balfour, created in 1914 by Philip Alexius de László inside Trinity College, became the target of Palestine Action. The group specifically aimed at the Lord Balfour painting, citing his declaration as the catalyst for the “ethnic cleansing of Palestine by promising the land away—which the British never had the right to do.”
According to Palestine Action, the aftermath of the declaration until 1948 witnessed British actions including burning down indigenous villages, arbitrary killings, arrests, torture, sexual violence including rape against women and men, the use of human shields, and the introduction of home demolitions as collective punishment to repress Palestinian resistance.
This period of violence by both British and Jewish people in Palestine during the establishment of the Israeli state is referred to as the Nakba, during which more than 750,000 people were forced into exile.
The Cambridgeshire Constabulary, the local police force, stated in a release that it received an online report of criminal damage to a painting at the university. They mentioned that officers are attending the scene to secure evidence and progress the investigation, with no arrests made at the time of the statement.
