British police are letting pro-Palestine vandals run riot By Nicole Lampert

Lord Balfour's Portrait Being Vandalized

Spiked : This time last year, a female pro-Palestine activist took a blade and a can of red spray paint to the 100-year-old painting of Lord Balfour in Trinity College, Cambridge.

The perpetrator targeted the painting because Balfour was a signatory of the Balfour Declaration – the British Empire’s 1917 recognition of the aim to establish a Jewish state.

The crime was filmed and posted online for all to see. The perpetrator had a distinctive hairstyle (two plaits), as well as what looked like a £1,400 Mulberry backpack – something your average criminal usually doesn’t sport. She was also very clearly part of an outfit called Palestine Action, which claimed responsibility for the attack. With just a tiny bit of police work and some political will, uncovering the identity of the perpetrator would not have been a monumental task. And yet, a year after the historic painting was destroyed, Cambridgeshire Police have ended their ‘investigation’. They said only that they hoped new information may one day come to light.

Palestine Action seems to attack anything to do with Israel – including charities, banks, arms factories and even a bust of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann. The group was founded in the UK in 2020 by Huda Ammori and serial activist Richard Barnard. A recent Sunday Times investigation found that, since then, it has claimed responsibility for 356 direct actions. It has ram-raided factories with vans, broken into offices and smashed up equipment.

Palestine Action has vowed to continue its violent behaviour. Just this week, three activists occupied part of the Allianz offices in central London and covered the windows in red paint. They scaled the building to unfurl a banner demanding that Allianz ‘drop Elbit’, an Israel-based defence contractor, as an insurance customer. Police stood around for hours, apparently helpless to do anything, until the protesters were finally brought down and arrested.

Also this week, in Manchester, two Palestine Action activists were arrested after climbing on to the Aviva office in the city centre. Again, they covered the building’s windows in paint, set off flares and waved Palestinian flags. Aviva, Palestine Action claims, also has links to Elbit.

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