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.