September 3, 2025

Faith-based protests over Gaza are on the rise and likely to continue / By MICHAEL TANGEMAN.

Fr John McGowan OCD knows a thing or two about terrorism.

A member of the Discalced Carmelites and longtime parish priest, what McGowan knows he learned first-hand while living and working at the Carmelite house in the Notre Dame Centre in Jerusalem from 1998-2003, seeing the devastating impact of a terror campaign of suicide bombings of buses, restaurants and shopping centres that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians during the Second Intifadah.

“You had to go out, you had to have exercise. But you never knew if you were going to come back,” he said, “and that’s not exaggerating.”

As he headed into central London on the morning of 9 August from his parish of St Joseph in the Buckinghamshire village of Chalfont St Peter, McGowan also knew he was himself almost certainly about to be arrested later that day on terror-related charges, even though his only offence would be to engage non-violently in an act of passive civil disobedience to protest Britain’s refusal to withdraw support for the Israeli government over its relentless campaign of bombing of Gaza.

Despite the risk of arrest, Fr McGowan pressed on to join the growing ranks of faith-based activists willing publicly to protest against their government’s continued supply of military arms and component parts for use by the Israeli military in Gaza.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE at The Tablet online, here.