Pro-Palestine protesters have sprayed and slashed the University of Cambridge’s historic painting of British statesman Lord Balfour who paved the way for a Jewish state in the Middle East. The Mail has more.
Protest group Palestine Action shared a video of a demonstrator destroying the portrait and spraying it with red paint.
A woman is seen on the footage defacing the painting with a sharp object before spraying paint from a can over Balfour’s face.
The Conservative politician gave his name to the Balfour Declaration – a public statement issued by the British Government to create a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, paving the way for the founding of Israel in 1948.
The declaration, made in 1917, was contained within a letter from Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a British Jewish leader.
Among the declaration’s lasting consequences was increased support for Zionism within the Jewish community, and it formed part of the founding of Mandatory Palestine.
Balfour succeeded his uncle Lord Salisbury as Prime Minister in 1902 and served until his resignation in 1905.
He later became Foreign Secretary under David Lloyd George, but was excluded from the small war Cabinet and the inner workings of Government.
The oil on canvas painting, currently housed at the University of Cambridge, was by artist Philip Alexius de Laszlo and was completed in 1914.
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