Posted on 03/08/2024 6:35:40 PM PST by nickcarraway
A painting of Lord Balfour, whose eponymous doctrine is considered the catalyst for the 1948 establishment of Israel and the subsequent Nakba, the Palestinian term referring to the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, was defaced in England on Friday.
The activist group Palestine Action shared a video on X of an unidentified protestor dousing Balfour’s portrait, a 1914 work by Philip Alexius de László, in red spray paint and then slashing the canvas nearly almost entirely to pieces. The work is housed at Trinity College, a school that is part of the University of Cambridge.
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The Balfour Declaration of 1917, one of the most controversial documents in 20th century history, was a public pledge by Great Britain declaring support for the establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The pledge was in the form of a letter from Britain’s then-foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, and was addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a prominent figure of the British Jewish community. That declaration formed the basis for the British Mandate for Palestine and paved the way for the establishment of the state of Israel.
The declaration, which called for the protection of “existing non-Jewish communities” civil and religious rights, has been deplored by Palestinians since its original announcement. On the occasion of the declaration’s centennial anniversary in 2017, the British government said that it should also called “for the protection of political rights” of Palestinian Arabs, and their “right to self-determination.”
Aside from Balfour’s infamy among Palestinians, the painting may have been targeted due to the University of Cambridge’s links with Israel. In February, Middle East Eye reporter Imran Mulla published an investigation detailing the university’s millions of dollars in investment in defense companies with contracts in Israel. Trinity College, the university’s best-known college, has invested approximately $80,000 last year in Israel’s leading arms company, Elbit Systems, according to the report. Mulla reiterated that finding on X on Friday in posts referencing the defacement of the painting.
The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians has since issued a legal notice to Trinity College, warning that its investments in Elbit System could make its officers, directors, and shareholders “potentially complicit in Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
The western secular Taliban strikes again. Destroying the art of their ideological enemies.
The palis were not displaced. They would’ve been able to maintain their homes and property. Instead they chose to believe pan-arabist leaders who vowed to destroy Israel. And then they actively fought against the Israelis and lost. They rolled the dice and it came up snake-eyes.
CC
Well, he signed off on it, as foreign minister at the time. But it wasn’t his idea, that came from the inner circle, the war cabinet.
As the current saying goes, FAFO!
“The palis were not displaced”
Some proportion were. There were cases where a neighborhood or village were told to leave, or were scared away. Certainly not all of them, or most.
Like most things, this was not black&white. There have been several offers to compensate property claims.
People who support terrorists are terrorists.
Israel knows how to deal with terrorists. Finally.
No different from the tallibunnies shooting Buddha in Bamyan.
Islam is a 1984 religion.
Ever hear of “eminent domain?” That’s a thing, you know.
As usual with this stuff the whole of the case is complex. The Arabs at the time were outraged that Jews were buying property from absentee landlords (the system was very feudal) and moving next door. That was unacceptable as it meant that the old tenants (mainly of grazing land) were displaced. Worse, they were being displaced by hated Jews.
So it was part economic and part bigotry. That came to a head when the religious authorities declared a jihad @1926.
The Nakba stuff came decades later.
I’ve read that many of the displaced left before Israel declared statehood. That sounds like they simply didn’t want to be subject to an Israeli government. And there is a significant number of Arab Muslim Israelis who weren’t dispossessed and live in peace.
CC
It is. But this wasn’t, for the most part, eminent domain. For this you have to understand feudal systems. The Lord owns the land, but the sharecropping peasants think that they have a sort of partnership claim on it too.
If your absentee landlord sells “your” land out from under you, where your grandpa and great-grandpa ran their goats, you might be upset.
Not in law, but by tradition.
Both true.Its a huge mixed bag. Lots of Palestinians also kept out of the “refugee” camps entirely and integrated into the population of other Arab lands, or all over the world, including the US. A disproportionate share of these other Palestinians were Christian or secular. I worked with at least five of these gentlemen, parents from what’s now Haifa, at an engineering firm I was with at one time.
What was gained through this juvenile act?
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