On 31 October, the activist group “Leeds Students Against Apartheid” occupied the Michael Sadler Building at the University of Leeds and put a list of demands to the institution’s administration. Ten days later, they vacated the building. It remains unclear what, if anything, the University offered the group to ensure their departure.
In a post shared on Instagram, the pro-Palestinian group proudly proclaimed that they had “decided to take the [Michael Sadler] building” because “the UEG [University Executive Group] had decided to stop our meetings”. In a subsequent video, a keffiyeh- and sunglass-wearing member of the group, seemingly reading from a prepared speech on his phone, explained that they were “occupying multiple lecture rooms in different floors to kind of build pressure on the university”.
The declaration of occupation came with the usual list of demands: “Cut ties with Weapon Manufacturers. Cut ties with Israeli institutions. No War Criminals on campus. Acknowledge the ongoing genocide on Gaza.” However, the group also added an additional requirement that Leeds sever ties with the University Jewish Chaplaincy [UJC], “which employs Zionists under the guise of chaolaincy [sic]”.
This comes after two previous rabbis from the UJC were driven from the Leeds campus this past year alone. Back in February, the then Jewish Chaplain, Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch and his family were driven into hiding after numerous death threats. As an IDF reservist, Zecharia had briefly returned to Israel after the October 7 attacks, but resumed his Chaplaincy duties at Leeds at the beginning of this year.
Shortly after their return, however, Zacharia and his family began receiving hundreds of hateful phone calls threatening to kill Zacharia, rape his wife, and murder their two children. Shortly afterwards, a large protest calling for the rabbi’s dismissal was organised by the Leeds Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Leeds Socialist Worker Student Society. Eventually, Deutsch went into hiding with his family, leaving his post at Leeds and with the UJC.
A few months later, the University Jewish Chaplaincy hired Rabbi Ariel and Sonia Pariente to replace Deutsch, assuming responsibility for universities in Bradford, Hull, Huddersfield, Leeds, Sheffield, and York. Although Parientes had moved all the way from Jerusalem to England with their three children to take the position, their tenure proved short-lived.
A campaign to get the couple dismissed got going when student groups at Leeds discovered a number of provocative social media posts made by Sonia Pariente. One of the posts reshared on her social media last November read “The life of an Israeli has a higher value than the life of a pali”. The uncovering of these posts led 22 student groups, including the aforementioned Leeds Students Against Apartheid Coalition, to issue a joint statement demanding “the Removal of Racist Chaplains Rabbi Ariel and Sonia Pariente”.
The groups claimed that the campaign against the Parientes was part of their “ongoing fight against the University’s complicity in the Zionist assault on the colonised people of Palestine and the people of Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria.” As soon as the complaints against the chaplains were made, the University of Leeds forwarded them to the UJC.
Although chaplains are usually treated as honorary members of the University, with access to several institutional benefits, they are formally employed by the UJC. According to The Jewish Chronicle, the UJC decided to take “swift action”, terminating Ariel and Sonia Pariente’s contracts within 24 hours of receiving the complaints. This has left West Yorkshire without chaplaincy representation once again, as the UJC still struggles to find a replacement.
However, some student groups at Leeds do not consider the dismissal of the Parientes sufficient, and insist that the UJC itself ought to be banished from campus. The group that occupied the Michael Sadler building has said that it “will continue to reject normalization of the Zionist entity, pressuring this institution [the University of Leeds] until it implements our demands”. These demands include the severance of “all ties” with the University Jewish Chaplaincy.
Despite the University not heading these demands, the occupiers from the Leeds Students Against Apartheid Coalition confirmed on Monday, in yet another Instagram post, that they had ended their protest, seemingly voluntarily. However, they urged the “management team to take this relatively small escalation as a powerful reminder of what they can expect in the future if they don’t meet our demands”.
In case it needs saying, students of course have a right to protest anything they want to, including the associations, investments, and hiring decisions of their university. This right includes a right to dress up in masks and sunglasses and post silly videos with far-reaching demands on social media. No university should punish its students for such activities. However, students do not have a right to occupy university buildings and physically exclude staff members and their fellow students from teaching facilities. Nor do they have the right to send death threats to members of staff with whom they disagree.
Student protests are often a healthy part of university life, but the actions of several students at Leeds over this past year were not merely protests. Occupying and defacing buildings is vandalism. The threats to Rabbi Deutsch and his family were most likely criminal offences, and certainly breaches of the University’s code of conduct. For these actions, students and other members of a university can be punished. In future, we encourage students at Leeds and elsewhere to express their disagreements with university policy by engaging in peaceful protest.