After announcements that a chaplain who has served in Gaza would be coming to the University of Sheffield campus this week, a group of students and community activists staged a peaceful protest aimed at preventing him from doing so.
“We refuse to allow Deutsch to step onto campus,” wrote the protest organisers in a widely circulated WhatsApp message announcing the action.
Last October, Israeli Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch was called up to serve as part of the reserve unit for the Israeli Defence Forces. In a video clip leaked to the Jewish Chronicle, Rabbi Deutsch said: “What Israel is trying to do is to destroy the evil which is the most moral thing possible. We are also trying to deal with the civilians in Gaza in the best way possible.”
One female student, who did not want to be named, said in a speech at the protest: “Whilst our fellow students find themselves stuck at Rafah, stuck in nylon tents, stuck between life and death, Zecharia Deutsch is able to come and go as he pleases.”
Around a hundred activists arrived for a protest on campus with banners at midday on Wednesday, 14 February. Several guards were stationed around the University’s Belief, No Belief, and Religious Life Centre, where the university’s chaplains are based.
“How can students watching their homes be bombed from afar think that they would feel safe going to the chaplaincy for support?” said Dr Lisa Stampnitzky, a Lecturer in Politics at the University, during the protest.
“This university has a government mandated duty under the Prevent legislation to prevent students from being drawn into violent religious extremism.”
Rabbi Deutsch is primarily a chaplain at the University of Leeds but also serves as an associate chaplain at several Yorkshire universities, including the University of Sheffield. He is not employed by the University of Sheffield, but by the organisation University Jewish Chaplaincy (UJC). After returning to the UK from fighting in Gaza and receiving threats, police advised him, along with his family, to go into hiding.
Previously, protesters sent a letter signed by over 11,000 students, staff, and community members asking the university to stop employing Zecharia Deutsch.
The University of Sheffield responded to a request for comment: “The University of Sheffield’s Belief, No Belief and Religious Life Centre includes a diverse team of chaplains from different faiths and perspectives. For Jewish students, we have a link to the UJC, a local Orthodox Rabbi and a Reform Judaism adviser, and it is important that we maintain an extensive provision for current and future Jewish students.”
