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.

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.