Organization activists Palestinian Action (AP) destroyed a portrait dated 1914 of Lord Arthur James Balfour who, as Foreign Secretary of the British government, supported in November 1917, during the First World War, the creation of a “national home” (a State) for the Jewish people in Palestine. Painted by the Anglo-Hungarian artist Philip Alexius de László (1869-1937), the work was on display at Trinity College, Cambridge University, where an activist threw red paint on it and “stabbed” it with a box cutter. The group distributed images of iconoclastic “direct action” on networks.
Unlike the “symbolic” protests of ecological and environmental activism in large museums in the northern hemisphere, where the works are protected with glass and can withstand waterfalls of soup or paint, yesterday the oil painting was completely destroyed. The Municipal Museum of Fine Arts of Tandil (Mumbat) has two female portraits painted by László, and the National Museum of Fine Arts, an oil on canvas dated 1933, Portrait of Mrs. Elizabeth G. de Hirsch.
In reality, the document known as the “Balfour Declaration” had been conceived and drafted by Leopold Amery, a member of Winston Churchill’s war cabinet, and not by Balfour.
“Palestinian Action sprays and slashes historic painting by Lord Balfour at Trinity College, Cambridge University. Written in 1917, the Balfour Declaration began the ethnic cleansing of Palestine promising to give up the land, something the British never had the right to do,” reads AP’s X account.
“He gave away the homeland of the Palestinians, a land that was not his to give away,” reads the AP website. After the Declaration, until 1948, the British burned 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 suppress Palestinian resistance.” That period, which coincides with the year of the founding of Israel, is called in Palestine “the great catastrophe” (Nakba). More than 750,000 Palestinians had to go into exile.
UK Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said he was “horrified by the stupid act of senseless vandalism”. “Perpetrators should face the full weight of the law”, he added in a post on his X account (so far, his post has more responses than “favs”). According to the police, there were no arrests.
Last week, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had called for police surveillance to be strengthened in the face of protests by protesters in the United Kingdom over the thousands of civilian deaths and the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Sunak said people had a right to protest, but he could not use support for Palestinians in Gaza to justify backing Hamas.
In a statement, Trinity College regretted “the damage caused to a portrait of Arthur James Balfour during public opening hours.” “The police have been informed. Support is available to any affected member of the university community,” he says.
AP referred to the current conflict between Hamas and Israel, which began after the October 7 terrorist attack, in which more than 1,200 people were murdered and men, women and children were kidnapped. “In the last 154 days of genocide in Gaza, Israel has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, injured more than 72,000, and displaced more than 1.9 million: 80% of Gaza’s population.” As the number of Palestinians killed during the conflict is provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, Israeli officials have questioned the figure.
The pro-Palestinian group reported that it would continue its “direct action campaign until Elbit is closed and British complicity with the colonization of Palestine ends.” Elbit Systems is an Israeli company that manufactures weapons and defense technology for Israel and other countries, and has had a headquarters in the United Kingdom since 2005. The company has also signed contracts with Argentina to modernize tanks and military aircraft.
“Her Majesty’s Government welcomes the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use its best efforts to facilitate the realization of this objective.it being clearly understood that nothing will be done that could prejudice the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities existing in Palestine, or the rights and political status of Jews in any other country,” reads the famous “Balfour Declaration.” .
With information from the Reuters agency
Themes
Other Art and Culture news
Good news. What are you going to read with your child tonight? Five stories for peace and a mural for readers
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/lanacionar/V6TJHYFZ2VGXBGDA32Z7JUCPIE.jpg)
Liliana Porter’s big year. “Art tries to make sense of what we still don’t know what it is about.”
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/lanacionar/BXDQRBXIC5FSLMRTQAGH5XSIIQ.jpg)