Pro-Palestine vandals have stolen two busts of Israel’s first president from a glass cabinet at Manchester University.

Palestine Action seized the sculptures of Chaim Weizmann as part of a string of co-ordinated attacks to mark the 107th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration on Saturday.

Arthur Balfour, then foreign secretary, outlined plans to form “a national home for the Jewish people” in a letter to Lord Rothschild, which was endorsed by the Government on Nov 2 1917.

The activists claimed Weizmann had “lobbied Balfour into assisting the Zionist colonisation of Palestine” when they both lived in Manchester at the start of the 20th century.

In a video published by the group, a pair of masked and hooded individuals frantically hack at the glass cabinet with mallets before loading the sculptures into their bags.

A caption accuses Weizmann of securing the Balfour Declaration, which the group labelled as a “British pledge” that set in motion the “ethnic cleansing of Palestine”.