La Jornada – Pro-Palestine activists destroy Lord Balfour’s portrait in Cambridge

London. a group worker Palestinian action A portrait of Lord Arthur Balfour, the British politician who wrote a 1917 declaration of support for a “home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, was destroyed at Cambridge University on Friday.

In a video posted on social networks

Police confirmed that they have received information about the incident and are investigating. “No arrests have been made at this time,” he said.

For its part, Trinity College said in a statement it “regrets the damage caused to the painting during the public opening hours of the establishment”.

In another statement, Palestinian action He believes the act “symbolizes the bloodshed of the Palestinian people since the publication of the Balfour Declaration in 1917.”

It also condemns the current military operation launched by Israel in Gaza in retaliation for the bloody attack by Hamas on October 7, which resulted in at least 1,160 deaths, most of them in Gaza, according to an AFP report based on official sources. Were citizens.

After a devastating five-month war, 30,878 people have been killed in Gaza, according to Islamic Movement officials, and 1.7 million residents have been forced to flee their homes because of the fighting, according to the United Nations.

In his statement on November 2, 1917, Arthur Balfour, who was British Prime Minister and then Chancellor, supported “the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine” in a step toward the creation of Israel in 1948.

The statement condemned Palestine Action, saying, “The British launched the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, thereby fulfilling the Zionists’ desire to make their home in Palestinian communities, villages, farms and ancestral lands.”

The Balfour Declaration, addressed to the eminent British Zionist Lord Walter Rothschild, called for “nothing” to impair “the civil and religious rights, or the rights and political status granted, to the non-Jewish communities in Palestine”. For them, the Jews have in another country.

Palestine Action describes itself as a “direct action network” which aims to expose “British collusion” with the State of Israel.

In October, militants of this organization covered the facade of the BBC headquarters in the British capital with red paint, and in January six members of the group were arrested on charges of disrupting the development of trading on the London Stock Exchange.

BREAKING: Palestine Action spray-painted and defaced a historic painting of Lord Balfour at Trinity College, Cambridge University.

Written in 1917, the Balfour Declaration began the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by promising to expropriate land – something the British never had the right to do. pic.twitter.com/CGmh8GadQG

– Palestine Action (@Pal_action) 8 March 2024