Pro-Palestine activists stole the wrong statue in a raid on a university after mistaking a professor for Israel’s first president.

Palestine Action stole two busts from the University of Manchester, claiming they depicted Chaim Weizmann.

Weizmann served as the first president of Israel from 1949 until his death in 1952.

But it has now emerged that one of the sculptures is of Prof Harold Dixon, a chemist at the university from 1886 until 1922.

In the early hours of Saturday, activists filmed themselves using hammers to smash a glass display case in which the busts were kept.