Members of the Pilgrim Foundation Community have accused Israeli police of punching and kicking them and pulling them along the ground by their hair. They said the police ordered them onto a ship where they spent the night under armed guard.
Speaking to The Irish Times from a Cypriot ship anchored in Haifa harbour, Ms Helena O'Leary, who set up the group about 10 years ago with her husband, Dr Dermot O'Leary, said she was still in shock at the treatment received by the 25 people, who live as a community in Co Wexford.
"The only word around here at the moment is bewilderment. We are trying to explain to the handicapped children why their parents were hit with batons and punched in the ribs. We are all stunned."
She said the group, including seven handicapped children, were Irish Catholics who had been turned away despite their only wish to see the Holy Land. "We are pilgrims to the Holy Land, we are not that spectacular. We are not a cult, we are a group who live together as a community involved in social issues within the Catholic faith."
She said the group often protested outside the Department of Justice about asylum issues and ran a centre for handicapped children which was funded partially by the Eastern Health Board.
"We are here in peace to show these kids this country and the holy sites and we have been treated like animals," she said.
She said they went to Israel at the invitation of Catholic friends there and planned to stay for at least three months.
"We wanted the children in particular to see the Holy Land and held several meetings with the Israeli Embassy before we left informing them of our plans," Ms O'Leary said. The Israeli Embassy refused them a visa, she said, but would not tell them why. They left Ireland a few weeks ago and travelled to Greece. After leaving the ferry which brought them from Greece on Sunday morning, the group approached immigration control at Haifa Harbour.
Ms O'Leary said they waited there for four hours while the authorities consulted on whether to admit them. "They came back to us and said `you have to get on the boat'. We were completely flummoxed. When we asked them why they said `we are not telling you anything'," she said.
Two members of the group then went down to a local police station to make phone calls back to Ireland and to the Irish Ambassador to Israel, Mr Brendan Scannell. "When we got there, they asked the two people to go into a cell. They said, `You must be crazy, we are not going into a cell'," she said.
After making some phone calls, the two people went back to the immigration centre to join the rest of the group. "At that stage, they said get on the bus, we queried it and they said get on the bus," she stated.
"As I was talking to Brendan Scannell, they told us to get off the phone and said there was no more time. When we objected they rushed at us, some of them had batons drawn. One of our group had his fingers bent back and had to get treatment later. Another person was kicked in the ribs. Because we are a non-violent group, we did not fight back. If we had, I have no doubt we would have sustained serious damage. It was like being in Guatemala or somewhere in the 1960s," she said.
She said the police dragged her husband, Dr O'Leary, by the tie along the ground, while bundling the rest of the group onto their bus. She said the door of the bus was broken in the struggle. She said at no time were the handicapped children harmed, but they were frightened.
"It was like we had entered another world, where people could be treated appallingly without anyone raising an objection," she said.
The group was then put back on the ship, secured in a single room guarded by armed police, Dr O'Leary said. "It's awful to be treated as if you are barely human," he said.
Ms O'Leary, a psychologist, said the group were Catholics who believed the church was not concentrating on the social justice element of its teaching. She described as "crazy" news agency reports that they had $300,000 in their possession when they arrived in Israel. "We had a small amount of money each for the trip."