Mick Hartley

Josh Glancy in the Sunday Times talks to Nava and Zecharia Deutsch, Jewish chaplains at Leeds University – ‘We’re coming to kill you’: Jewish chaplains reveal campus threats – receiving 400 abusive calls in one night:

Nava Deutsch was naive the first time one of the calls came in. She had no idea what was about to happen.

It was the afternoon of February 8. A woman with a Yorkshire accent asked Nava how she was, and whether she thought students were safe on campus. Nava and her husband are chaplains at the University of Leeds, looking after Jewish students. She replied that yes, she did think students were safe on campus. She assumed it was a Jewish mother on the phone, worried about antisemitism.

The next question revealed the caller’s hand: “Your husband just got back from committing genocide? How can our kids be safe on campus? How many babies did he kill?”

Nava recalls: “My heart started racing. I just never expected anything like that.”

Phone calls started pouring in. WhatsApp messages too. Death threats. Rape threats. Nava’s husband, Zecharia, a rabbi, began to receive them as well. The couple quickly realised they were under a very real threat, and that their small three-bedroom house in Woodhouse, Leeds, had become a target.

“Tell that Jewish son of a bitch we’re coming for him,” said one male caller, speaking in a Yorkshire accent. “We’re coming to his house and we’re going to kill him, and you as well you f***ing racist bitch. Stupid little slag.”

Another caller said: “You killed innocent Muslims, and they’re going to get you. I promise you now, we’re going to get you, I’m going to get you. We’re going to follow you home from Leeds, you and your wife, and we’re going to do the f***ing same as you’ve been doing in Israel. Us Muslims are going to come for you, you dirty Zionist motherf***er.”

As about 400 calls and messages came in over one long evening and deep into the night, the couple rang the police. “One of the policewomen had tears in her eyes,” Nava recalls. “She said she’d never seen such disgusting messages.”

The written messages, which have been reviewed by The Sunday Times, were, if anything, worse. “On way now u dirty whore,” said one. “Gonna bend y over and f*** u up ya daft immigrant bitch. 15 min away tell your husband to get ready, f***ing immigrants.” Others were so sexually graphic as to be unprintable. […] The terraces of Woodhouse were a long way from the Holy Land, but the Deutschs settled in quickly. “Everyone in Leeds was very friendly, everyone called you ‘love’ and ‘dear’,” says Nava.

They had an interesting if unremarkable two years in Leeds, hosting Sabbath luncheons and study sessions. Then October 7 happened. And the world changed.

As a reservist, Zecharia was recalled to Israel after October 7th, and served as a guard for military supply convoys going in and out of Gaza at the height of the conflict, bringing food, medicine and ammunition. A video he posted to a WhatsApp group was leaked – and the abuse began.

Just after Zecharia returned home, a series of posts by the Muslim Association of Britain, Dilly Hussain, an online influencer, and Mothin Ali, who has subsequently become a prominent Green Party councillor in Leeds, provoked a torrent of threats and menace. In a TikTok post, later deleted, Ali referred to Zecharia as a “creep” and a “low-life” and said that “Leeds University should be protecting its students against this kind of animal”. He accused him of going to the Middle East to kill women and children.

Shortly after that, the phone threats started coming in. “I’m gonna shag you in front of your husband and kick the f*** out of u,” one message said. “We know your address,” said another caller. “We’re ten minutes away.”…

Rightly or wrongly, it’s not all that hard to see why students, particularly Muslim students with a strong emotional connection to the conflict, ended up protesting about a campus member serving in Gaza. For them, in a state of heightened emotion, the Deutschs became a local lightning rod for their distress over the Middle East.

But much of the worst and most menacing vitriol came from some of their Muslim neighbours, stirred up by Ali and others. Ali became a controversial figure in May when he was elected as a Green Party councillor. During his victory speech he promised to “raise the voice of Palestine” while in office and shouted “Allahu Akbar”. Last month Ali gained plaudits for attempting to calm rioting in his borough of Harehills.

“I feel that Ali should be dealing with issues related to Leeds, rather than the Palestinian cause,” says Zecharia. “I have no respect for him.”…

When shown evidence of Ali’s tirade against the Deutschs at the time, the Green Party told the Daily Mail that it “believes in free speech”.

The Deutschs’ sharpest disappointment is reserved for the university, which appears to have wished the issue away rather than properly addressed it. When the Deutschs sought to be involved in a Jewish event on campus after Zecharia’s return, rather than guaranteeing their safety the university suggested it might be better that the couple not attend.

The couple were contacted by student union representatives and while there has been some contact from the University of Leeds, which was involved in discussions about the couple’s security, the Deutschs say that nobody from the university has been in touch at any point to express any personal concern.

“It’s surreal,” says Nava. “I feel like people in authority are scared and intimidated. I would expect them to have more backbone. We are surprised that on a personal note they didn’t reach out to us. Absolutely nothing. These are people we worked with for three years. These people are leaders, but this whole time, no one took responsibility.”

There it is, in a nutshell. This appears largely, if not entirely, to be a case of Muslims fired up by local hate preachers – presumably with the by-now familiar backing of the Free Palestine left. It's the same dynamic that got five pro-Gaza single issue MPs elected in strongly Muslim areas. And the authorities meanwhile – the Greens, the university – look the other way.