• Activists spray colour on Balfour portrait at University of Cambridge

LONDON: Thousands of protesters marched in central London on Saturday to call for a ceasefire in Gaza amid ongoing bombardments by Israel. Regular marches protesting Israel’s aggression have seen dozens arrested. The march, from Hyde Park Corner to the US Embassy, was the fifth major demonstration of the year so far in the capital.

“We will continue to protest until a ceasefire is called, and until there is an end to all UK complicity with Israel’s decades long oppression of the Palestinian people,” march organiser Ben Jamal said ahead of the protest.

Itai Galmudy, the organiser of a counter-protest on Saturday, said pro-Palestine demonstrations had created “no-go zones for Jewish people” in the capital and “ballooned into anti-Israeli hate marches”.

“We will just not accept that Jews can’t go out in the street because somebody wants to protest,” he said. “We think it’s enough. We don’t want to live in fear and we will not accept it.” London’s Metropolitan Police have also criticised the protests, saying the cost of policing such events had reached 32.3 million ($41 million) since Oct 7.

Balfour portrait ‘ruined’

On Friday, a pro-Palestinian UK protest group said one of its activists had “ruined” a portrait on display of Arthur Balfour, the British politician whose declaration helped lead to Israel’s creation. Police confirmed officers had received an online report of criminal damage to a painting at the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College, in south-eastern England.

Palestine Action, which describes itself as a direct-action network of groups and individuals, posted video footage online of the activist spraying the artwork with red paint from a cannister and then slashing the surface of the framed painting multiple times.

The Balfour Declaration was a 67-word letter in 1917 from Britain’s then-foreign secretary to Lionel Rothschild, a prominent British Zionist, supporting the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

The document is credited with eventually helping to spur the creation of Israel in 1948, which also led to the displacement of around 750,000 Palestinians and decades of strife between the two communities.

Published in Dawn, March 10th, 2024