Surely one of the first things you learn at ISIS Fantasy Camp is to make sure you behead the right statue.

At the University of Manchester, two activists with the organization Palestine Action—essentially a Dungeons & Dragons club for the checkered-facemask crowd—smashed the glass case holding the bust of Chaim Weizmann, Zionist leader and Israel’s first president, and stole the statue. But because Weizmann’s bust was alongside a second bust, and because the members of Palestine Action are morons, they stole both statues—after which they seemed to brag that they had stolen two busts of Weizmann.

They filmed themselves doing this, presumably so that if they are caught they can ask for leniency on account of their evident learning disabilities. The activists appear to then beheaded the statue of Weizmann, which was their target all along, but confirmation has yet to arrive. Presumably their much-deserved humiliation will prevent them from beheading the second bust, which they also thought was Chaim Weizmann.

Who was the other statue? The answer to that is far more revealing of this whole affair, as well as the ideological battles behind it, than our keffiyeh-clad burglars intended.

The collateral damage in this case was a bust of Professor Harold Dixon who, like Weizmann, was a chemist at the university over a century ago. Though the busts of Dixon and Weizmann shared a display case, they were not always so chummy. Weizmann believed he was due a higher academic position than that which Dixon recommended to the hiring committee. Nonetheless, Weizmann’s position came with excellent access to the research facilities he would need to study bacteriology.

Weizmann’s big scientific breakthrough came when he was trying to produce elements for making synthetic rubber. His chemical solution also happened to produce acetone. That’s when his fellow chemist came through for him. Dixon told Weizmann about the British government’s search for an efficient way to produce acetone that didn’t rely on imported crops. This was during World War I, and the military needed acetone for the war.

Weizmann’s process worked, and the government official contracting with Weizmann notified someone in the military, which used acetone to produce a smokeless gunpowder alternative. Its previous acetone production relied on imports from Germany, with which Britain was now at war. Weizmann was made a munitions adviser; he had come up with the only method to produce acetone domestically and on the scale needed for an empire at war.

Although the story that Weizmann was rewarded for his service with the Balfour Declaration isn’t true—his biographer Jehuda Reinharz is adamant and convincing on this count—the connections Weizmann made and the favor he won in the eyes of the government certainly helped his later Zionist pleas find sympathetic ears. The Balfour Declaration was made on Nov. 2, 1917. The Palestine Action stunt at the University of Manchester was in protest of the 107th anniversary of this momentous document.

The chowderheads who kidnapped the busts of Weizmann and Dixon have thus demonstrated two important characteristics of the Western “pro-Palestine” movement.

The first is that, although much of this activism is taking place at universities, its practitioners are not learning anything about their supposed passion project. Any true champion of Palestine ought to be able to tell Chaim Weizmann from Harold Dixon.

The second is that, on top of their general ignorance is a deep loathing of the West and their fellow humans and the freedom they all enjoy. Weizmann was in that display case because he was a hero to Britain. I suppose I wouldn’t be shocked if the men and women of Palestine Action preferred Germany to have won the war, though their real German idols would only emerge a couple years after Weizmann helped save the world.

Recognition of the Weizmann-Dixon partnership is a tribute not to the state of Israel and the survival of the Jewish people but to the survival of the United Kingdom. This knowledge would not likely change Palestine Action’s actions. But it is a reminder that hatred of the Jews is part and parcel of the hatred of Jewish contributions to civilization, very much including freedom, democracy, scientific advancement, and academic institutions such as those taken for granted by masked poseurs who steal statues.