Pro Palestine Activists 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.
The group targeted the painting, claiming that it symbolised the "bloodshed of the Palestinian people since the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917."
Lord Balfour was the Foreign Secretary who signed a letter known as the Balfour Declaration which ruled the British government's support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people in Palestine."
A spokesperson from the group said: "Arthur Balfour, then UK Foreign secretary, issued a declaration which promised to build 'a national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine, where the majority of the indigenous population were not Jewish.
"He gave away the Palestinians homeland, a land that wasn’t his to give away.
"After the Declaration, until 1948, the British burnt down indigenous villages to prepare the way; with this came arbitrary killings, arrests, torture, sexual violence including rape against women and men, the use of human shields and the introduction of home demolitions as collective punishment to repress Palestinian resistance."
Anna Melnykova, "Palace of Labor (palats praci), architector I. Pretro, 1916", shot with analog Canon camera, 35 mm Fuji film in March 2022.
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