The National Jewish Assembly (NJA) is appalled by the decision of the Speaker’s Chaplain, Reverend Mark Birch, to insert a partisan reference to “Gaza” into the House of Commons’ morning prayers – an act that represents not spiritual leadership, but political virtue-signalling cloaked in clerical robes.
That the Chaplain would invoke Gaza – and Gaza alone – during a religious moment intended to unify Parliament reflects the growing moral cowardice infecting Britain’s institutions. Not one word was offered for the Israeli hostages still languishing in Hamas tunnels. Not a whisper for the Jewish children murdered on October 7. No mention of the civilians in Israel under rocket fire, or the global Jewish communities facing escalating hate. Just a pious nod to the fashionable cause of the hour, applauded by leftist backbenchers and Hamas sympathisers outside Westminster alike.
NJA Vice Chairman Keith Rowe said: “This was not a prayer. It was a sermon aimed at appeasing a mob. It reflects the same moral disfigurement we’ve seen in the NEU’s alliance with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign – a campaign that excuses terrorism while vilifying the world’s only Jewish state. The Chaplain has undermined the neutrality of Parliament’s most sacred traditions to curry favour with the loudest and most radical voices in the room.”
The NJA notes with deep concern that this incident mirrors our longstanding warnings about the creeping politicisation of public life – particularly within the education system, where pro-Palestinian extremism, often cloaked in the language of compassion, has gone unchecked.
This episode was not an aberration. It is part of a pattern. From teachers’ unions aligned with agitators, to prayers hijacked for propaganda, Britain’s civic spaces are being bent to the will of ideological campaigners who reject balance, truth, and basic decency.
The NJA demands a full review of parliamentary prayer practices and a public clarification from the Speaker affirming that the House of Commons is not a pulpit for partisanship. Britain deserves better than this sanctimonious theatre.
