A British Activist Slashed A Painting Of Lord Balfour Whose Declaration Led To Israel Taking Over Palestinian Land
Lord Arthur James Balfour wrote the Balfour Declaration, which helped pave the way for the eventual creation of Israel.
A pro-Palestine protester has spray painted and slashed a historic painting of Lord Balfour in Trinity College at the University of Cambridge in the UK.
In the video, which has since gone viral, a woman can be seen spraying red paint on the painting before using a sharp object to slash open the canvas of the Lord Balford painting.
Lord Arthur James Balfour was the former prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905.
In 1917, while serving as the foreign minister, he wrote the Balfour Declaration, which is a letter endorsing establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
The declaration, which endorsed establishing a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, not only increased popular support for Zionism around the world, but helped pave the way for the eventual creation of Israel.
The woman is from Palestine Action, a British protest network that aims to dismantle the UK’s complicity in Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians.
The group said the Balfour Declaration “paved the way for ethnic cleansing” of people in Palestine.
“He gave away the Palestinians homeland — a land that wasn’t his to give away,” it said in a press release.
Pointing to the ongoing war in Gaza, the group said Britain’s support “for the continued colonization of Palestine hasn’t wavered since 1917”.
It pointed out that Elbit Systems, Israel’s biggest weapons manufacturer uses Britain as a manufacturing outpost to build arms which are “battle-tested” on Palestinians.
The group said that it will continue to protest until Elbit is shut down and British complicity with the colonization of Palestine ends.
Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza has killed more than 30,000 and injured over 72,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, since Oct. 7.
