Another disturbing event took place in Britain last week, although one less directly threatening to Jews’ physical safety. Following the example of some climate protesters who have taken to vandalizing cherished pieces of art in recent years, a woman slashed and spraypainted a portrait of Lord Arthur Balfour, the author of the 1917 declaration, hanging in Cambridge University.

In response, the editors of the New York Sun took the moment as an occasion to look back at the statesman, whose deeds will outlive his portrait, and to recount his 1906 meeting with the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann:

Balfour was then running for Parliament. They fell into a conversation about Theodor Herzl and a plan to settle Jews in Uganda. “Mr. Balfour,” Weizmann, a chemist by trade, said, “supposing I were to offer you Paris instead of London, would you take it?”

Balfour replied: “But, Dr. Weizmann, we have London.”

“That is true,” Weizmann responded. “But we had Jerusalem when London was a marsh.”

Balfour leaned back and eyed the chemist. Then he said: “Are there many Jews who think like you?”

That’s when Weizmann uttered the immortal words: “I believe I speak the mind of millions.”

Balfour . . . was the subject of 140 portraits. The one destroyed today was by Philip Alexius de László, one of the greatest portrait painters of his time. We pray that his painting will be restored and protected for centuries to come. And that Balfour’s family, heirs, and admirers will be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Last week, the New York Times reported, based on unnamed sources within the Trump administration, that the president had asked Israel not to carry out a planned strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. That is, somebody deliberately gave this information to the press, which later tried to confirm it by speaking with other officials. Amit Segal writes that, “according to figures in Israel’s security establishment,” this is “the most serious leak in Israel’s history.” He explains:

As Israel is reportedly planning what may well be one of its most consequential military operations ever, the New York Times lays out for the Iranians what Israel will target, when it will carry out the operation, and how. That’s not just any other leak.

Seth Mandel looks into the leaker’s logic:

The primary purpose of the [Times] article is not as a record of internal deliberations but as an instrument of policy itself. Namely, to obstruct future U.S. and Israeli foreign policy by divulging enough details of Israel’s plans in order to protect Iran’s nuclear sites. The idea is to force Israeli planners back to the drawing board, thus delaying a possible future strike on Iran until Iranian air defenses have been rebuilt.

The leak is the point. It’s a tactical play, more or less, to help Iran torpedo American action.

The leaker, Mandel explains—and the Times itself implies—is likely aligned with the faction in the administration that wants to see the U.S. retreat from the world stage and from its alliance with Israel, a faction that includes Vice-President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and the president’s own chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Yet it’s also possible, if less likely, that the plans were leaked in support of administration policy rather than out of factional infighting. Eliezer Marom argues that the leak was “part of the negotiations and serves to clarify to the Iranians that there is a real attack plan that Trump stopped at the last moment to conduct negotiations.”