Earlier this month, Exciting Times author Naoise Dolan was among the hundreds of activists detained by Israeli forces as they made their way to Gaza as part of the Thousand Madleens flotilla.
Speaking to The Irish Times Women’s Podcast on how she and her fellow activists were treated in custody, she says that “the prison guards were a whole different species. I think that’s partly because Israel is this intensely competitive hierarchical society and so, they needed to prove their place by degrading us”.
Dolan says that generally the less senior the Israeli official was, the more “openly brutal” they were to the activists. “They would click their fingers at us like they were summoning animals. They would call us animals sometimes. They would threaten us with tear gas”.
“They would arbitrarily handcuff us. They would make us kneel – almost like mass; tell us to enter a variety of positions without explaining why and barge into our rooms all hours of the day”.
Dolan’s fellow Irish flotilla activist Professor Veronica O’Keane also described the conditions they endured for five days while they were awaiting deportation.
“Some of the women started menstruating because of the stress,” Dr O’Keane explains.
“They were actually denied sanitary towels for some time. We had to repeatedly bang on the door to acquire them”.
“So the levels of hygienic discomfort were very intense”.
Although both O’Keane and Dolan criticise their treatment at the hands of the Israelis, they are keenly aware of their privilege as EU citizens.
“The fact that I’m a white woman with an EU passport, that was what gave me the leverage to do this in a way that would be far too risky for most Palestinians,” Nolan says.
“And I think as an artist, sometimes you have to have the humility to say, I’m not doing this as an artist: this is a human being who cares about other human beings”.
You can listen back to this conversation in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
In association with Kildare Village.
