Ireland’s President, Catherine Connolly, is in London, doing the rounds with King Charles – sandwiches, small talk, the full diplomatic biscuit tin. She arrived in the manner of all visiting heads of state; gracious, stylishly dressed, saying nothing that could be used against her before the vol-au-vents had cooled.
Meanwhile, somewhere on the high seas between Cyprus and Gaza, her 69-year-old sister has been kidnapped.
Or intercepted. The Israelis prefer intercepted. The distinction matters enormously to one party and not much to the other, and the party to whom it does matter is currently in Israeli custody, which suggests the Israelis have won that particular argument. At least for now.
Dr Margaret Connolly – GP, activist, and apparently one of the few people in western Europe who still believes a flotilla will shift Israeli policy – sailed as part of a 60-vessel convoy toward Gaza to ‘break the siege’. The ships were boarded by the IDF in a scene that has become so reliably repetitive it practically runs on autopilot.
The ships sail. The Israelis intercept them. Everyone films everything. A statement is released. Various foreign ministers express grave concern. The assorted activists are fed challah sandwiches and put on an El Al flight back to whence they came.
What distinguishes this particular interception from its predecessors is the small biographical detail that the woman on deck is the sister of a sitting head of state, currently engaged in a state visit to a close Israeli ally approximately 3,000 kilometres away. Dr Connolly had approached the venture with admirable forward planning. She recorded an SOS video statement in advance, to be released in precisely the circumstances that predictably transpired: ‘If you are watching this video, it means I have been kidnapped from my boat in the flotilla by the Israeli occupying forces and I am now being held illegally in an Israeli prison.’ If presented with a declaration that she entered Israel illegally she will not sign, she said. There is something almost affecting in the preparation – the packed bag, the pre-recorded martyrdom, the quiet certainty that events would unfold exactly as they did. Because they always do. She has, in other words, been kidnapped in a kidnapping she more or less scheduled into her calendar.
The IDF, for their part, played Britney Spears – ‘Oops! I Did It Again’ – on a loop as commandoes boarded the ships. Perhaps they were inspired by footage of the President’s sister and her fellow travellers singing Kumbaya on deck and thought they’d raise the tempo.
Back in London, reporters asked the President whether she had spoken to her sister. She had not. Her schedule, she explained, had been very busy. But she expressed sisterly concern, which is perfectly understandable when your aging sibling is in the hands of what the President described, several times, as a ‘terrorist state.’
Officials in Dublin are ‘closely monitoring the situation’ – which is to say someone has been assigned to refresh X at regular intervals and escalate anything that begins to resemble a crisis. The Taoiseach and the Foreign Minister have expressed concern at some volume and, as yet, to no particular effect, which is the natural condition of Irish foreign policy when it bumps up against a country with a functioning navy.
Dr Margaret knew exactly what she was doing
But here’s the thing about Dr Margaret: she knew exactly what she was doing. While Ireland is experiencing a chronic shortage of doctors, she packed her bag and apparently left a locum in charge of her practice. She boarded a vessel toward a blockaded coastline in the knowledge that she would almost certainly be removed from it. One may think it strategically pointless and morally serious at the same time. These things are not mutually exclusive.
But strategic pointlessness, when it is the President’s sister engaging in it, acquires a different quality of awkwardness. The President of Ireland was, at that precise moment, the guest of a monarch whose government is among the closest western partners, strategically and economically, of the state that had just detained her sibling. Catherine Connolly’s diary of official engagements and Margaret Connolly’s present coordinates do not overlap. They do not even come close. The two women are, geographically and diplomatically, about as far apart as it is possible for two sisters to be while remaining on the same planet and in the same news cycle.
But there it is. One Connolly taking tea with the King. One Connolly being taken, more or less as predicted, by a UK ally. Ireland’s first family, doing Ireland things, on opposite sides of the world.
Margaret, at least, knew what was coming. She said so herself, on camera, in advance.
You have to admire the preparation, if nothing else.
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