Pro-Palestinian activist destroys portrait of Lord Balfour at Trinity College

A Palestine Action activist destroyed a portrait of Lord Balfour painted in 1914 by Philip Alexius de László and kept at Trinity College, University of Cambridge: she first sprayed it with red paint and then cut the canvas beyond repair. Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905, he wrote in 1917 as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the famous Balfour Declaration, considered a pivotal moment in the history of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.

A Palestine Action statement said the activist “sprayed the artwork with red paint, symbolizing the bloodshed of the Palestinian people since the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917.” “Arthur Balfour, then foreign minister of the United Kingdom, issued a declaration,” it continues, “in which he promised to build ’a national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine, where the majority of the indigenous population was not Jewish. He ceded the Palestinian homeland, a land that could not be ceded.”

The statement goes on to say that “after the Declaration, until 1948, the British burned indigenous villages to pave the way; this was accompanied by arbitrary killings, arrests, torture, sexual violence including rape against women and men, the use of human shields and the introduction of house demolition as collective punishment to suppress Palestinian resistance. The British were initiating the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, realizing the Zionist goal of building their ”home“ over what were Palestinian communities, towns, villages, farms and ancestral lands, rich in heritage, culture and ancient archaeological history.”

“Britain’s support for the continued colonization of Palestine has not wavered since 1917,” he concludes. "Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms supplier, which uses Palestinian prisoners in Gaza as a human laboratory to develop their weapons, uses Britain as a manufacturing outpost. The Israeli arms manufacturer builds weapons in factories across the country and works closely with the British government. Palestine Action promises to continue its direct campaign until Elbit is closed and British complicity with the colonization of Palestine is ended."

Pro-Palestinian activist destroys portrait of Lord Balfour at Trinity College

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