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Pro-Palestinian Protesters Destroy Historic Balfour Painting at Cambridge
A pro-Palestinian activist slashed a historic 1914 painting of British foreign minister Arthur James Balfour at Cambridge University on Friday, March 8, saying his 1917 declaration was the reason the Palestinians lost their homeland to Israel.
The Palestine Action protest group posted on social media a video of a woman spraying red paint over the life-size portrait before cutting it repeatedly with a knife.
The group wrote on their website that “Arthur Balfour, then-UK foreign secretary, issued a declaration which promised to build ‘a national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine, where the majority of the indigenous population were not Jewish. He gave away the Palestinians’ homeland – a land that wasn’t his to give away.”
Palestine Action further claimed that “since 1948, the Zionist regime continued to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people, which has now culminated in an intensified genocide in Gaza, which 20 United Nations experts refer to as the second Nakba [catastrophe].”
British Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said he was “appalled by the moronic act of wanton vandalism,” adding in a post on X that “perpetrators should face the full force of the law.”
A spokesperson for Cambridge Police told media that “this afternoon we received an online report of criminal damage today to a painting at Trinity College, Cambridge. Officers are attending the scene to secure evidence and progress the investigation. No arrests have been made at this stage.” (JPost / VFI News)