Activists affiliated with an anti-Israel group, Palestine Action, have slashed and otherwise damaged, at Cambridge, England, a historic portrait of Lord Balfour, whose Balfour Declaration played a key role in the establishment of the Jewish state. 

In a press release issued by the group on its website, the activists stated that “Palestine Action ruined a 1914 painting by Philip Alexius de László inside Trinity College, University of Cambridge of Lord Arthur James Balfour — the colonial administrator and signatory of the Balfour Declaration.

“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. Calls for a second Nakba were repeatedly made by Israeli leaders before October 7th.” 

Lord Balfour has been a frequent target of anti-Israel demonstrations due to his role in a seminal November 1917 foreign policy letter known as the Balfour Declaration. 

The document, written by the Earl while he was Britain’s foreign secretary during World War I and addressed to Lord Rothschild, who was a leader of the English Jewish community, was the first to declare support for a “home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, the strip of land that is now Israel. 

At the time, Palestine was under the control of the Ottoman Pasha at Damascus. Upon the Ottoman Empire’s collapse with its defeat in World War I, the British were in 1922 given, by the League of Nations, a mandate to govern Palestine. The Balfour Declaration has long been celebrated by Jews and widely lamented by Palestinians. 

Palestine Action first victoriously posted a video of the destruction of Lord Balfour’s portrait on X, formerly Twitter. “Breaking: Palestine Action spray and slash a historic painting of Lord Balfour in Trinity College, University of Cambridge,” the group’s post stated 

The vandalism of the portrait marks an escalation in the tactics of far-left European activists, who have long targeted the continent’s panoply of cultural treasures to draw attention to their causes. Yet previous attempts have been limited to reversible protests, such as throwing tomato soup on a painting covered by glass. 

According to Britain’s National Portrait Gallery, there are 140 portraits of Lord Balfour. Only a select few of them, though, including the one vandalized at Cambridge, were paintings, with most being photographs. Philip Alexius de László, the painter of the portrait just destroyed, was one of the greatest portrait painters in history.

In a statement to the Sun, a spokeswoman for Trinity College at Cambridge wrote, “Trinity College regrets the damage caused to a portrait of Arthur James Balfour during public opening hours. The police have been informed.” She added, “Support is available for any member of the College community affected.”

The woman responsible for the vandalism has not been identified. Users on X noted her strange choice of attire, as she appeared to be wearing a $1,000 Mulberry Cara backpack. 

“If she was from the local Council estate, McDonald’s wouldn’t hire her with a conviction for criminal damage,” one user of the social media site quipped in response to the speculations over the woman’s backpack. “With her posh background, a conviction probably wouldn’t stop her waltzing into a cushy job at some NGO or in Academia,” the user added.