They also expressed concerns that the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) carried out a risk assessment for Irish citizens taking part in the flotilla protest and found that there was a possible risk to life.<\/p>\n
The activists are to formally request a Defence Forces vessel accompany the next flotilla mission, comparing it to Irish naval vessels working in the Mediterranean in the mid-2010s to help rescue stranded migrants fleeing to Europe.<\/p>\n
Sixteen Irish citizens were among hundreds detained by Israel in September after it intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla, a civilian fleet carrying aid to Gaza.<\/p>\n
Organisers of the flotilla said that as well as raising awareness about the plight of Palestinians, the flotilla’s aim was to show that aid can be brought to Gaza by sea.<\/p>\n
Sarah Clancy, a community worker who lives in Galway, said that she had expected to arrive “in the waters off Gaza and hand over the aid”.<\/p>\n
But the boats were intercepted by Israeli authorities and Ms Clancy and others were detained in prison, where they were reportedly threatened, denied medication and given limited amounts of food.<\/p>\n
“The very last night we were in prison – we didn’t know it was the last night – the very last night we were there, I had an extreme fear that they were going to kill someone,” she told the Press Association.<\/p>\n
“Because the situation went from zero – a situation where we were arguing that we wanted to have mattresses – and ended up with a tactical unit, with Alsatians, pinning us against the back wall of our cell with guns tipping our chest.”<\/p>\n
She said that they had been trained beforehand so they would not overreact, and warned that making the decision to go on the flotilla is not one that should be made lightly.<\/p>\n
Although she said that she is not traumatised by what happened to her personally, she is upset at the thought of Palestinian adults and children being kept in those conditions.<\/p>\n
She also said that she still checks overhead for drones back in Ireland after having to check for them while at sea.<\/p>\n
Another flotilla demonstration is being planned for several months’ time, organisers have said.<\/p>\n
Leigh Brosnan, a barrister who lives in Dublin who was also part of the flotilla, said there is an international legal team examining the treatment of citizens while in Israeli custody.<\/p>\n
She said that there is a psychological impact for Irish citizens who were taken to the Israeli prison which has been “aggravated” by being “ignored by the very people who purportedly are there to represent them on an international stage”.<\/p>\n
“They’ve been left in the dark essentially, left without any meaningful engagement, and left without any care or compassion, to comment on and to acknowledge the wrongs that were done to them,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I thought it was very interesting that the DFA civil servants accepted the fact that loss of life was part of the risk analysis that they were conducting.<\/p>\n
“I find that extremely concerning (that) zero concrete action was taken to protect my life, despite it being known and the government being on notice that may occur.”<\/p>\n
She said of the next flotilla: “We will be looking at putting a formal request to the DFA to consider dispatching a vessel and or looking at other mechanisms of more concrete support, as opposed to just lip service or a gesture or a virtue-signalling statement.”<\/p>\n
Ms Clancy added that aid agencies at the land borders with Gaza and naval vessels from different countries should have joined the flotilla to help get aid to Gaza.<\/p>\n
“That’s why people supported us. I think they might have found us individually annoying, (but) they want that to happen,” she said.<\/p>\n
“If the navy boats were with us, there’s no reason there shouldn’t be boats full of aid (going to Gaza).<\/p>\n
“So I think in that respect, we failed. I absolutely think we can succeed, and we will succeed the next time, because of the momentum that we had – 30,000 people put their names down to go on the last flotilla from all over the world.<\/p>\n
“I would say we’ll have 100,000 who want to go this time.<\/p>\n
“I think that they will either build up and build up and build up until the point at which they can’t be refused.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They also expressed concerns that the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) carried out a risk assessment for Irish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,68,6,71,11,12,15,16,5,72,112802,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-244651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-gaza","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-palestine","21":"tag-press-association-pa","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-world","25":"tag-world-news","26":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115758830980760003","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}