THIS IS ONE of several articles I’m writing against the clock before the Global Sumud Flotilla departs for Gaza. I will be on board. 

Our ships leave various Mediterranean ports between today and Thursday in a hundreds-strong delegation from 44 countries, the largest such flotilla mission ever.

This legal non-violent direct action movement began in 2010 in response to Palestinians’ calls to break Israel’s 2007 blockade. Ordinary people realised that their governments would never answer those calls, that they would continue to side with profit and white supremacy. They couldn’t let this happen without even trying to intervene; to give up would be to surrender their own humanity.

I can’t conceptualise what is happening in Western leaders’ heads now, what psychological tricks they play on themselves. They continue to sleep and eat and walk their dogs while on some level presumably aware they are abetting mass murder.

Micheál Martin himself acknowledged last May that Israel’s actions amount to a genocide, albeit long after the facts were already clear. He also knows that Ireland has not sanctioned Israel, grants regulatory approval for its war bonds to sell across the EU, and lets US planes potentially arming Israel pass through Shannon Airport without inspection. Do these two strands of information converge at all in his mind, or has he found a way to keep them separate?

I am not genuinely curious about the psychology of leaders exhibiting cognitive dissonance; what they’re doing is not complex. Israel’s Western collaborators prioritise their own short-term comfort above others’ lives — some mindlessly, some gleefully, some through copious mental gymnastics. Regardless of the internal process, the outcome is identical: Palestinians continue to be bombed and starved.

Joining the Global Sumud Flotilla was not a decision I took lightly, but nor was I conflicted over it. Palestinians have been resisting Israeli atrocities for decades. The obvious response is to stand with them.

Punished for standing up

Not only do Western governments lack that basic empathy, they hinder and punish civilians who act on their own.

The UK proscribed nonviolent direct action campaigners Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation for spray-painting a plane, and have since arrested hundreds, Irish citizens among them, for expressing solidarity with the group. Kneecap member Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh still awaits the outcome of a UK terrorism hearing intended, the rap group says, to distract from the genocide in Gaza.

In Germany, police just brutally attacked Irish Bloc Berlin protest group member Kitty O’Brien for protesting the killing of Palestinian journalists. A group spokesperson told The Journal: ‘They do this every week, and they’re getting worse […] However brutal this assault, it’s only a small fraction of the violent repression Palestinians are facing at the hands of Berlin police every week.’

In Germany and several other countries, escaping prison is not itself chargeable as a crime: the law recognises the human instinct to seek freedom. The equally human instinct to defend the freedoms of others enjoys no such protection.

Time to act

The response to this grim reality is not for ordinary people to keep helplessly scrolling through images of man-made famine interspersed with college acquaintances’ holiday pictures and Taylor Swift’s engagement. It’s to take matters into our own hands, led always by Palestinians and responding to their calls for action. Whatever happens on the boat, it cannot cause me more despair than doing nothing would.

I’ve already tried everything I could within the establishment’s hail-fellow-well-met rulebook, and several things outside it: I’ve pledged to boycott Israel, reported on protests and spoken at them, joined a collective fast, given mutual aid. I knew none of it would be enough when I did it, but it felt inhuman not to try.

That’s the same impulse driving me to sail for Gaza. I have real confidence in the power of non-violent direct action that I could never muster for signing open letters, for contacting politicians. I’ve begged my leaders well aware of the futility, simply because giving up was not an option. The flotilla, on the other hand, is an action I truly believe in.

From Ireland, you can follow our journey from the Global Movement to Gaza Éire pages on Instagram and TikTok; we’re safer the more visibility there is. Check those pages for details of local demonstrations supporting us across the country, including this Dublin walk along the Dodder on 31 October.

The Global Movement to Gaza is worth tracking for another reason: its long-term scope extends beyond the flotillas to broader international civilian-led resistance. Not everyone can get on a boat to Gaza, but the movement has many other roles that need filling. If our leaders were going to do anything, they would have by now. We can stay complicit with them, or we can act.

Palestinians will not give up until Palestine is free. If we want to call ourselves human, nor can we.

Naoise Dolan is an Irish novelist, essayist and critic. Her two bestselling novels Exciting Times (2020) and The Happy Couple (2023) have been published in over thirty territories.