Sitting in front of a Palestinian flag at her home in Terenure, Dublin, Miriam McNally, mother of activist and author Naoise Dolan waits for news of her daughter.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Dolan (33) was among more than one hundred activists including five other Irish citizens, detained by Israeli forces as they made their way to Gaza as part of the Thousand Madleens flotilla.
While McNally hasn’t spoken directly to the Exciting Times author, she has been given an update from consular services, who confirmed that Dolan is “alive and that she’s okay”. She also received a call from Independent TD Barry Heneghan, who was one of the activists on the intercepted flotilla, but who has since been returned home.
“He was kind of the last Irish person to be with Naoise as they arrived at port. So that was just amazing to hear that she was ok, because they were transferred from their small boat, the Milad, onto a bigger boat and that transfer process is not without risk,” she explains.
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“I suppose as a mother, my thoughts were, well, she could have fallen into the sea and drowned. It sounds a bit melodramatic, but when you have zero contact, you dream up all kinds of things that could happen,” she tells The Irish Times Women’s Podcast.
Before she left Ireland, McNally explains, Dolan had mentally prepared for the possibility of being detained by Israel: “As an autistic person, she goes through all the possibilities in her mind. So she processed all the risks and assured herself that she could deal with A to Z. But then on the boat and before they left, they had extensive training in kind of non-resistance, non-escalation, and actually de-escalating,”
While it’s a worrying time for the families of activists who are being held in Israel, McNally says, it’s important to remember “why they are there in the first place”.
“We bring it back to Palestinian mothers and fathers, who have been dealing with this for decades. Our activists have voices, they are European citizens, and they have embassies advocating for them… Palestinians have no voice”
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