Letters to the Canary: what do you think of Palestine Action destroying the Balfour painting?
The Canary receives a lot of emails from members and subscribers, on various topics – which the team are really grateful for. We always aim to respond. However, we thought what a waste it was that we’re the only ones that get to read your opinions and musings on politics, society, and the world. So, in December 2022 we decided it was time for a weekly letters page – exclusively for members.
Since then, thanks to the response from so many people we’ve opened up our letters page to everyone who reads the Canary.
Letters to the Canary: our platform is your platform
It’s fairly straightforward. We want letters of no more than 400 words on a subject that fits Canary values and is related to news and politics. Ideally, we’d like your thoughts on our articles or something that’s currently in the news – as we want the page to spark debate.
One such example has been a story we broke on Friday 8 March. Members of Palestine Action damaged a painting of “Lord” Balfour – the colonial administrator and signatory of the Balfour Declaration.
An activist slashed the homage and splashed the artwork with red paint, symbolising the bloodshed of the Palestinian people since the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917. Predictably, corporate media have lost their minds over Palestine Action defacing a painting. Also somewhat predictably, the Canary thinks the group’s action was brilliant.
So, what do you think? Do you agree with what Palestine Action did? Do you disagree? Let us know.
Get involved
Please note that caveats apply as they do for our writers:
1. We will not publish anything that we consider discriminatory, abusive or containing hate speech.
2. Sending a letter for publication does not guarantee we publish it.
3. We won’t be paying for letters.
4. The Canary reserves the right to edit your letters as we see fit.
You’re free to swear if you wish, and also free to respond to other members’ letters as well. To give you an idea of what other people have written, you can read previous editions of the letters page here.
So, off you go! Email your letters to membership[at]thecanary.co – then every Saturday we’ll publish a selection of them. Our platform is also your platform. Get writing and we look forward to seeing what you come up with!
Featured image via the Canary
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My only concern with the protester damaging the picture – glorifying Lord Balfour for his colonialist, and no doubt, evil role, in furthering the theft of the People’s wealth from the People – is for the very brave protester who will be at the mercy of mouth-frothing supporters of the British system for maintaining profound inequality which underlies all colonialism and, in particular to-day, Israel’s violent, not to say, psychopathic, theft of Palestinian land.
My gut instinct is “burn the fucker to the ground evil racist old git” but my art and history-loving head says “Shouldn’t we at least know what the little establishment toady looked like or who the artist was. Then my political head says No thousands of people have been slaughtered by anyone who fancies it in the name of religions that are not Islam in a part of the world which is almost wholly Muslim. Therefore crying over an unnecessary piece of art and not even a good one is shameful. Stick a photo of it in a book and add the truth in words in the gallery for every colonialist conceit just for learning about what they did and leave the real art to real artists and not just glorified establishment keepers.