Sarah Clancy, a well-known community worker based in Co. Clare, was among the Irish contingent sailing to Gaza with aid who were abducted in international waters last night by Israeli armed forces. She was sailing on board the Spectre along with Senator Chris Andrews and others, when attacked.

Sarah has given staunch service to communities across Ireland over many years.

Commenting on the attacks and abductions, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, said “As I watch Israel’s illegal abduction of the only humans who have risked their lives to break Israel’s unlawful blockade, my thoughts are with the people of Gaza, trapped in Israel’s killing fields. Shame on Western governments first and foremost, and their complicit inaction.”

Sarah has been co-ordinator of the Clare Public Participation Network for almost a decade, with the organisation this week preparing for its tenth anniversary celebrations, as she is striving to oppose genocide in Palestine. She previously held roles with SpunOut, Amnesty International Ireland and the Galway One World Centre. 

She has been documenting the flotilla’s journey on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/sarah.clancy.520). Just before 7pm last night she provided an update on the situation when the flotilla of 41 boats was within 100 nautical miles of Gaza.

“Still okay here in our boat, but we definitely have military boats arrived at the front of the flotilla.”

Still hoping some of the boats might make it through, she said, “We want to break the illegal siege that has been on Gaza since 2007 and we want to deliver aid and solidarity to the people in Gaza. And we send them our love from all our boats, no matter what happens this evening,” she said in her last broadcast before Israeli forces cut communications.

Sarah making her last video broadcast before the Spectre was attacked – click image to hear Sarah.

Before travelling, Sarah wrote about the value of the flotilla in her local newspaper The Clare Champion.

“Our intention is to… open up a humanitarian corridor through which the Palestinian people in Gaza will be able to access and arrange for goods to be delivered through their own territorial waters, as would be their right except for the illegal blockade which Israel and its allies have subjected them to since 2007,” she wrote.

“Even before the current UN declared entirely deliberate famine and the relentless two year long genocidal assault on the people of Gaza, this blockade was illegal and immoral. However it has been tolerated nonetheless by all western governments, and actually most governments from around the world, and despite all we have seen in this last two years it is still in place.”

She said she had been shocked at the condition that some children coming to Ireland from Palestine were in, years before the genocide even started.

“I remember a few short years ago in Kinvara, seeing the effects of this blockade on the bodies of the twelve year old soccer players who were invited from Gaza to come on a tour of Ireland by super activists from around Ireland who were trying to create an opportunity for these children to experience a carefree few weeks even once in their childhoods.

“These charming and spirited boys from Gaza in their dazzling pink kit outplayed the Kinvara kids hands down, but honestly, to everyone who saw them, they looked about the average size and weight of much younger children, maybe 9 or 10 years old.

“Even then global power politics was playing out on the small and utterly blameless bodies of children.”

She said she was delighted to be travelling on the flotilla. “During one of the most horrifically evil periods of contemporary history, life has thrown me a chance to see a glimpse of another possible world. I couldn’t be more grateful for this chance.”

Sarah is originally from Galway and last month she told the Connacht Tribune about attacks on the flotilla by drones when berthed in Tunisia.“The entire flotilla could have blown up causing severe injury and death. The heat was so intense it burned through life jackets, which are fire retardant. These are clear attempts to sabotage us.”

She said that the experience was more worrying for her partner Anne Mulhall than for herself: “She is anxious. It is harder to be at home watching this unfold. She would love to be here also, but couldn’t get the time off work, and it was decided that I would go. She wants just as much to be here, but is back home minding our dog.”