A painting of Lord Balfour housed at the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College was slashed by protest group Palestine Action.

The painting of Lord Balfour was made in 1914 by Philip Alexius de László inside Trinity College. The Palestine Action group specifically targeted the Lord Balfour painting, describing his declaration as the beginning of “ethnic cleansing of Palestine by promising the land away—which the British never had the right to do.”

    • iain@feddit.nl
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      8 months ago

      Or leave it: I think it’s improved this way: a terrible man, a mediocre painting, in context with the ongoing genocide he put into motion. It invites the viewer to wonder what kind of legacy the rich folk who paid for these paintings have.

      • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Hope they put it in the Genocide museum, not on the wall of a university as some hero

        • bbuez@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I would say its new torn status would make it a perfect fit for said museum

      • Lhianna@feddit.de
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        8 months ago

        He was the one who promised the Zionist movement their own state in Palestine (which at the time was in the hands of the Ottomans).

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          On top of that he was a racist and antisemite.

          Also don’t forget how the Brits promised to the Arabs, just a bit earlier, how they would support the funding of independent states if the Arabs were to rebel against the Ottomans.

          I think a statue should be erected to him, but a tarred and feathered one.

          • blazera@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            the problem is people were already there. Getting their “own state” meant, and still does, forcibly removing the people already there, usually by death.

            • Tja@programming.dev
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              8 months ago

              Poland was given a lot of territory in the west and the Soviet Union took a lot of territory from the east, without mass killings. And yes there were people in all of those regions.

              In fact a lot of borders changed after WW2, and the only (or one of very few) place this devolved into a decades long murder fest is the middle east.

            • WoahWoah@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Ah. That makes sense. So basically like all contemporary governments in the Americas and Australia and…

              Well. Most places except the imperial powers I suppose. Even then, idk! Seems kind of shady.

      • stoly@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        He specifically created the problems we are dealing with in the Middle East. He figured that you could displace a group of people and let the heat stay away from Europe. Basically modern Israel was created as a terrorism target so that western powers didn’t have to deal with it. Also notable that he was a territorial governor is the area as part of the former British empire.