Moment Dutch pro-Palestine activist vandalises Winston Churchill statue with graffiti calling ex-PM a ‘zionist war criminal’
This is the moment a pro-Palestine activist is filmed defacing Sir Winston Churchill’s statue outside the Houses of Parliament in the early hours of Friday morning.
The monument was defaced shortly after 4am with slogans including ‘Zionist war criminal’, ‘Stop the Genocide’, ‘Never again is Now’ and ‘Globalise the Intifada‘.
The Dutch phrase ‘groetjes uit den haag’, which appears to translate to ‘Greetings from the Hague’, was also spray-painted on.
The Metropolitan Police said officers were at the scene of the graffiti ‘within two minutes’.
A 38-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damage and remains in custody.
A Dutch pro-Palestine activist has claimed responsibility for the incident.
Olax Outis said in a statement online that he came to the UK to ‘deface a statue of one of history’s most well-known war criminals, Winston Churchill’.
He claims to be part of Free the Filton 24 NL (Netherlands), an affiliate pro-Palestine group of Free the Filton 24, which formed after activists were remanded in prison for allegedly breaking into the Filton, Bristol site of defence company Elbit Systems and vandalising its equipment.
Pictured: The moment a pro-Palestine protestor jumped up onto Sir Winston Churchill’s statue and graffitied it
The incident occurred at 4am on Friday morning, police said
Churchill’s statue, located only metres from the Houses of Parliament, was vandalised overnight
Outis said: ‘I’ve defaced a monumental statue honouring a murder-horny bigoted w***er, to draw attention to the horrible human rights violations happening in a country that’s run by colonisers who refuse to listen to their people, who waste tax payers’ money to repress the population, who, according to the United Nations, are in violation of the Genocide convention.’
He added: ‘He (Churchill) was the Keir Starmer of his time. Covering his statue in red paint is as close as one can get to doing the same to the politicians currently harming the people of the UK.’
The activist claimed the Netherlands has been ‘complicit in the Palestinian genocide for decades’, saying the country is ‘the largest investor in Israeli colonialism in the world’.
Westminster heritage wardens were pictured covering the graffiti with tape and plastic bin bags on Friday morning.
The area has been cordoned off and was being cleaned.
Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge said: ‘Absolutely disgraceful – Churchill is the greatest champion of freedom in our history.
‘A truly great man who stood up to, and defeated, the most evil war criminal of them all.’
Matt Vickers, deputy chair of the Conservative Party, told GB News in reaction to the incident: ‘Its disgusting and vile. Whoever is doing this needs to be held to account.
Dutch pro-Palestine activist Olax Outis (pictured) has claimed responsibility for the incident
Westminster heritage wardens begin covering the graffiti with tape and plastic bin bags
In 2020, Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter activists defaced the statue with claims Churchill was a ‘racist’
Matt Vickers, deputy chair of the Conservative Party, said the vandals need to be ‘held to account’ over the incident
‘When we were in office we brought forward legislation to help tackle this.
‘This is an attack on democracy, this is an attack on this country, its culture and its history.’
Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice described the incident as ‘appalling desecration’, linking it to the Green Party’s by-election win in Gorton and Denton on Friday.
Addressing Green leader Zack Polanski, he said: ‘Do you condemn this criminality by your pro Gaza mob?’
Al Carns, Labour’s Armed Forces minister, also hit out at the incident, saying Churchill was a ‘great man’ who provided freedom to Britain.
‘The very reason that you have the right to protest is because this great man stood up against tyranny and Nazism,’ he said.
‘His leadership provided you the freedom and the security to object and to stand up for what you believe in.
‘To disgrace his legacy is a prime example of utter stupidity and a lack of understanding as to what this great nation is all about.’
The images have sparked fury online, with one X user saying: ‘Without Churchill there’d be no Britain left to protest in.
Another wrote: ‘I don’t want to share a country with people who think Churchill’s honour should be besmirched and who physically deface his statue.’
The Met Police arrested a 38-year-old man on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damage
The slogans ‘Stop the genocide’ and ‘Globalise the intifada’ were spray-painted on the statue – along with a red triangle, which is allegedly a Hamas symbol
One critic said that ‘an attack on this statue is an attack on the heart of Britain’
A third said: ‘He is a sacred symbol for the British. An attack on this statue is an attack on the heart of Britain.’
Meanwhile a fourth simply wrote: ‘Disgusting – pure anti-British hatred.’
The Campaign Against Antisemitism has claimed the red triangle graffitied on the statue is a Hamas symbol used to denote ‘targets for violence’ by activists.
A spokesperson for the group said: ‘The red triangle is a symbol used by Hamas over the past several years to delineate targets for violence and by activists worldwide to show solidarity with the terrorist group and support for its methods and objectives.
‘This vandalism underscores how vile and unpatriotic these extremists are. They don’t just hate Jews: they hate Britain.’
A Met Police spokesperson told the Daily Mail: ‘Shortly after 04:00hrs on Friday, 27 February a man was seen spraying graffiti on the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square.
‘The first officers were on the scene within two minutes. The man – who is 38 – was arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damage.
‘He remains in custody.’
The slogan ‘Free Palestine’ was graffitied on the monument
The area was cordoned off on Friday morning to clean the monument
The bronze monument has stood outside the Houses of Parliament since 1973.
It has been vandalised several times in the past, including during protests.
The 12ft-tall statue was scrawled with graffiti accusing Sir Winston of being a ‘racist’ in June 2020 during a Black Lives Matter protest triggered by the death of George Floyd in the US.
Later that year, in October, an Extinction Rebellion activist was ordered to pay more than £1,500 after defacing the statue by painting ‘racist’ on its plinth during a climate protest.
The monument is one of 12 statues on or around Parliament Square, most of well-known statesmen such as Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela.
The Government last year announced new laws making it a criminal offence for protesters to climb on the statue of Britain’s war-time leader.
And in December both the Metropolitan Police and Greater Manchester Police announced anyone chanting the controversial slogan ‘Globalise the intifada’ would face arrest.
The decision by the two police forces came in the wake of the Bondi Beach terror attack, and the terror attack at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester on October 2.
According to author Michael Makovsky, Zionism was ‘central to the core of his (Churchill’s) being’.
The former prime minister reportedly ‘became enamored of the romantic notion of Jewish restoration to their ancient homeland’, saying in 1908: ‘I am in full sympathy with the historical traditional aspirations of the Jews…
‘The restoration to them of a centre of true racial and political integrity would be a tremendous event in the history of the world.’
And in 1921 Churchill was charged with implementing the Balfour Declaration – a letter supporting the ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’ – as colonial secretary.
Only a few months later he said: ‘Wherever the footprints of the Jew in Palestine are found you have prosperity, progress and scientific methods of cultivation, and where there was a wilderness you now find vineyards.’
This is a breaking news story. More to follow.