The Rattlecap: Interviewing EUJPS
- Rattlecap Writers
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
EUJPS is Edinburgh University’s Justice for Palestine Society in Edinburgh. As strong advocates for the Palestinian cause, they have experienced tremendous pushback and repression from Edinburgh University’s senior management and administration, exacerbated since October 7, 2023. To give a more in-depth look as to their goals, values, experiences and inner structure, the Rattlecap sat down with a member of EUJPS, in an honest interview, to understand the activist group in its depths. The member will be referred to here as ‘X’, to preserve their identity and EUJPS will be referred to as JPS, which is how they are informally known on campus.
Rattlecap: Alright, let’s start with the basics! Who are you and what relation are you within the group JPS?
X: Hi. JPS has a horizontal structure meaning there are no leadership positions such as president, or any sort of committee. It revolves around what everyone is able to contribute in terms of organising. I do research, social media, and graphic design, others are based in press or events for example. But the structure of the society is not typical of what Edinburgh University is accustomed to.
Rattlecap: Alright so, JPS is not associated with EUSA (Edinburgh University Student Association), as in a registered and official EUSA society like, for instance, Sex on Campus?
X: No, it is not. If JPS was registered under EUSA there would have to be official committee members who are registered to EUSA through their legal names and student numbers. But due to disciplinary actions threatened by the university, those members would potentially have to carry the risk of facing said actions as the university could label them as organisers of certain actions (i.e. an occupation). We also have political objections to EUSA as a body affiliated with the university and wouldn’t want to contradict our criticisms of them by being a EUSA society. Also, if we were registered as such, we would be constrained and not allowed to be so overtly political as EUSA is bound by charity law.
Rattlecap: Alright, if it is not an official student society then, what is the overall aim of JPS?
X: To summarise in a sentence, we are working primarily towards the goals of divestment, an academic boycott of Israel, and more broadly to change the perception of Palestine on campus through community organising and community building, education, and fundraising.
Ultimately, we want the university to recognise its financial, academic and institutional complicity with the occupation of Palestine and the genocide in Gaza. We are doing this in line with the Thawabet: the fundamental principles of Palestinian liberation.
Rattlecap: Could you explain what divestment is?
X: Divestment is the financial act of pulling investments from a company one is investing in. So primarily we are working towards divestment of four companies, which are Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Blackrock. The university holds approximately £75 million in these companies. The first three (Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon), are all direct investments adding to roughly £17 million total. These have multi-billion dollar deals with Israel and its military. They have also been referred to by a senior Israeli intelligence leader as comparable to arms manufacturers since the AI and the software they provide is so central to the occupation and Israeli military initiatives. Blackrock is a bit different; the university holds about £57 million in this company but as an indirect investment, as it is an asset manager. That £57 million investment still renders the university complicit in the financial activities of Blackrock which invests $8 billion in Lockheed Martin and $5 billion in Northrop Grumman which are two of the primary arms manufacturers for Israel. So, all four of those companies facilitate war crimes.
Those companies and the University of Edinburgh have been called out in the UN report by Franscesa Albanese From an Economy of Occupation to an Economy of Genocide, which portrayed our university as one of the most entangled institutions in the genocide. Therefore, these investments are not trivial, even according to the United Nations.
Rattlecap: Could you also explain the Thawabet for those who may be unfamiliar?
X: The Thawabet is the fundamental principles of Palestinian liberation. There are five principles: Palestine is indivisible; Palestine has the right to self-determination; Jerusalem (Al-Quds) as the capital; the right to resist and the right of return. These are also pinned on the JPS Instagram (@eu_jps).
Rattlecap: Thank you. Let’s talk a bit about relations with the university and the student body. We know there have been talks with the university administration, could you tell us some more about that? Was there a productive outcome?
X: Basically, these talks between JPS and the SLT (senior leadership team) were ongoing from November 2023 and formally ending in November 2024. At the end of the encampment (In June 2024), we felt we were in a good position to get divestment; it was looking optimistic, but it didn’t happen. The University said they were going to set up a working group in order to review the investments, but the working group has only really just been set up now - a year and a bit later – and it has done nothing. There was another court meeting recently, where it was meant to be discussed, but it got put off. Long story short, these negotiations were a long bureaucratic process that kept directing us from people to people without changing anything. The new working group is seen as another bureaucratic tactic to try and appease JPS without actually divesting. Since the negotiations with the university collapsed, JPS has been working to put pressure on the administration and on EUSA to force divestment.
Rattlecap: Is the new UOE Palestine Coalition a part of this new method?
X: This has been developing over the past year. It came about around the time that the negotiations collapsed, since there was a lot more pressure on JPS with threats of disciplinary action from the uni. In the angry emails that JPS would get from SLT, they would say that JPS was only a “small minority of students”, but this coalition, composed of student societies for Palestine, is helping to counteract that, by showing the university that we are the majority and not a fringe minority.
Rattlecap: Going back to the emails sent to JPS by the administration, would you call them threatening?
X: The emails were sent to the JPS email and yes, they were threatening in regard to disciplinary action.
Rattlecap: Has anyone been affected by this disciplinary action?
X: Not in recent years. JPS is very secure in its structure and makes sure that people’s identities are anonymous when they are doing more disruptive actions like occupations of university buildings. During the encampment, the university said that they were going to look at who was logged onto the Wi-Fi and use that to identify people but that never succeeded.
Rattlecap: A lot of JPS posts mention the Balfour Declaration. Would you mind explaining what this is?
X: The Balfour declaration was enacted by Arthur Balfour in 1917. He was, at the time, simultaneously chancellor of this university and foreign secretary of the UK. This eponymous declaration formalised British support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, which would later become Israel. Effectively, he signed away Palestine to pave the way for Israel to become an ethno-religious settler state. As he was the university Chancellor at the time, his portrait used to hang in Old College – we think it has been taken down now – but JPS wants a formal acknowledgement of this as Edinburgh’s colonial legacy. It’s discussed at length in this Race Review.
Rattlecap: Something else that has been mentioned by JPS is the IHRA definition of antisemitism. How does this link to the aim of the society?
X: The IHRA definition is the International Holocaust Remembrance Associations’ definition of antisemitism. In it, it gives a series of examples of things that should be taken as antisemitism; i.e. criticism of Israel’s legitimacy, actions and what are effectively war crimes.
Rattlecap: So, this is the official definition of antisemitism provided by the University?
X: Yes, meaning the university condemns any criticism of Israel as antisemitism, a dangerous opinion to have that greatly harms free speech and anti-Zionism on campus. This is why it is very strongly opposed by Kehillah – the university’s anti-Zionist Jewish group. Kehillah argues that the definition itself is antisemitic as it silences a whole host of Jewish opinions that oppose Zionism, conflating Judaism with Zionism, reducing Jewish voices to a monolith and tries to diminish pro-Palestine activism on campus.
Rattlecap: Thanks. Moving on to the idea of university property, is it true that martyr memorials were removed when set up?
X: Yes. There was a martyr memorial set up at old college during the encampment, specifically in May 2024, but it got taken down and the pictures of martyred children were thrown into the bin. JPS set up a new one after this but that got taken down as well – it was taken down the same weekend that the Israeli ambassador to the UK was coming to visit Edinburgh on invitation by Peter Mathieson. So, they removed pictures of dead Palestinian children when the Israeli ambassador came. It was put back up in September 2024, but Lucy Evans (Assistant Principal and Deputy Secretary of students) told JPS to take the martyr memorial down as it was seen to prevent the university being “a community for all”.
Rattlecap: That’s actually insane and a blatant demonstration of their Zionist agenda. To move on to another question: aside from the coalition and actions and events organised internally, how have you mobilised the wider student body?
JPS: Grad walkouts were a major event for JPS.
Rattlecap: What came of it?
JPS: Massive media attention. During the month of it, JPS Instagram got millions of views. It got posted on eye-on-palestine (@eye.on.palestine). Every single ceremony had some sort of disruption but the biggest walkouts were the social and political sciences. I think there were 18 walkouts in total.
Rattlecap: How are you guys keeping momentum with your key principles in JPS?
JPS: Fundraising, through clothes sales, sometimes selling food at film screenings or bake sales outside the library. All proceeds go directly to families rather than charities as this is a lot less direct. It is all the families that members of JPS have some sort of link to. For example, the extended family of an ex JPS member.
There is also the educational aspect – reading groups and film screenings. These are publicly advertised on Instagram.
Rattlecap: And to round this off, is there anything you would like to add as important or that people should know about?
X: An alumni – Suha Omar - has written an article on the impact of the knife attack at the library rally, and the effects of this, going into a discussion on the university’s complicity rooted at the administration.
This can be read here:
Rattlecap: Thanks so much for your time, and as always, From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.
Editorial Note: The Rattlecap Stands with EUJPS, in favor of divestment and in the unconditional liberation of Palestine.
Image Credits: EUJPS
