Winston Churchill Statue Defaced With 'Zionist War Criminal' Graffiti in London

A 38-year-old man has been arrested in central London after the statue of Sir Winston Churchill in Parliament Square was sprayed with the words 'Zionist war criminal' and other pro-Palestinian graffiti in the early hours of Friday, according to the Metropolitan Police.

The incident turns a long-running culture battle over Churchill's legacy and the Israel–Palestine conflict into something very tangible and very visible, on one of the most symbolically loaded corners of Westminster. What is new here is not just another act of vandalism, but the explicit coupling of Churchill's image with the language of 'Zionist' politics and genocide, and the decision by an overseas campaign group to claim responsibility in real time.

Churchill Statue Graffiti Links Churchill To 'Zionist' Politics

Police said officers were called shortly after 4am on Friday to Parliament Square, where the 12ft bronze of Churchill stands on the north-east corner facing the Houses of Parliament. In photographs taken after the incident, the former prime minister's nameplate is obscured by red paint spelling out 'Zionist war criminal,' with 'Stop the Genocide' and 'Free Palestine' daubed across the sculpture and its stone base.

Further slogans — 'Never again is Now' and 'Globalise the Intifada' — were sprayed nearby in the same red paint. It is that last phrase that will particularly interest detectives and counter-extremism officials. Both the Metropolitan Police and Greater Manchester Police stated last December that those chanting 'globalise the intifada' at protests could face arrest, after reviewing the slogan in the context of recent terror attacks at Bondi Beach and Heaton Park synagogue.

The Met confirmed that a 38-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damage and remains in custody. No charge has yet been laid, and nothing about his identity or nationality has been publicly confirmed, so all claims about who he is or what group he belongs to should be treated with caution for now.

Dutch Activist Group Claims 'Zionist War Criminal' Action

A Dutch collective calling itself Free the Filton 24 moved quickly on social media to say the action was theirs. On its Instagram account, the group posted a short video that appears to show a man in red coveralls climbing onto the plinth and spraying the slogans. The back of the overalls bears the words 'I support Palestine Action.'

Free the Filton 24 describes itself as a network of 'family and friends' of 24 Palestine Action activists charged over a break-in at a UK site owned by Elbit, an Israel-based defence firm, in 2024. The Sky News report linking them to the Churchill graffiti is based on the group's own posts and should be read in that light.

One individual, giving his name as Olax Outis and saying he is Dutch and part of the group, has claimed online to be the person seen on the statue. In a written statement on Instagram, Outis said he defaced the monument 'to draw attention to the horrible human rights violations happening in a country that's run by colonisers who refuse to listen to their people.'

He went further, accusing the current British government of complicity. 'The current British Government should be dragged before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and as a representative of The Hague, I'm here to hold them accountable,' he wrote. None of these claims has been tested in court and his self-identification as the suspect has not been confirmed by police.

Outis also set out why Churchill had been chosen as the target. 'To be blunt: if someone would ever be completely out of their mind enough to erect a statue of Keir Starmer or Yvette Cooper, I would happily demolish such an effigy,' he said, adding: 'Churchill is but a symbol of the same political corruption.' The characterisation is his, not supported by evidence in the police investigation.

Outrage From Jewish Groups Over 'Zionist' Slogan

City authorities moved quickly to contain the fallout. The statue was cordoned off on Friday morning while cleaners worked to remove the red paint from the bronze and stone. A spokesperson for the Greater London Authority said: 'We are appalled by this vandalism to the statue of Sir Winston Churchill and work is under way to remove the graffiti as quickly as possible.'

Jewish community leaders reacted sharply to the use of the word 'Zionist' alongside the accusation of war crimes. Dave Rich, director of policy for the Community Security Trust, highlighted a photograph of the defaced statue shared on X, claiming that the graffiti also included a red triangle motif associated by some observers with Hamas. ''Free Palestine' and a Hamas red triangle, if you zoom in close enough. This extremism is never just a threat to Jews,' he wrote. The specific identification of the symbol has not been independently verified.

The Jewish Leadership Council said it was 'disgusted' by the targeting of Churchill. In a statement on X, it argued: 'In targeting the statue of a British hero who led this country in the fight against the Nazis, the perpetrator has found a perverse way to combine a hatred of Jews with a disdain for Britain.'

Phil Rosenberg, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, tried to pull the focus back to historical context. 'One of the greatest champions for liberty, who defeated the Nazis, defaced,' he posted. 'Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, inverted. Santayana's 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,' never truer.'

Churchill's statue, created by sculptor Ivor Roberts-Jones and unveiled in 1973 by his widow, Lady Clementine Churchill, has been here before. It is one of a dozen monuments in and around Parliament Square, including figures such as Nelson Mandela and Abraham Lincoln, and has been defaced several times during demonstrations over the past decades, making it a recurring canvas for Britain's unresolved arguments about empire, race and now, increasingly, the politics bound up in the word 'Zionist.'

Nothing in the police statements so far confirms whether Friday's graffiti will be treated as a one-off act of vandalism, a hate crime driven by anti-Jewish sentiment, or evidence of something more organised. Until that is tested in court, most of the claims circulating online — including those of responsibility and motive — will need to be taken with a grain of salt.