ne 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.
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