Inspired by Palestinians, They Risked Their Lives to Reach Gaza By Boat
Americans from the Global Sumud Flotilla Describe Their Journey
This is a story about three Americans inspired by the Palestinian struggle for liberation who risked their own safety to stand in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
The Three Americans
Jessica Clotfelter, a former Marine based in rural Windsor, Illinois; Paul Reid, a graphic designer based in Portland, Oregon; and Carsie Blanton, a songwriter based in New Jersey.
They sailed on boats in the Mediterranean Sea throughout September to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza as participants on the Global Sumud Flotilla. Nineteen Americans made the full journey and were part of a fleet of more than 40 boats and 500 participants from around the world who tried to bring food, medicine and diapers to Gaza. Their boats did not reach the people of Gaza. Everyone in the flotilla was arrested and imprisoned by Israel. These citizens did what the leaders of most countries have failed to do: act with courage and risk their lives to stop a genocide..
Why They Risked Their Lives
Paul lived in the Middle East for almost five years studying Arabic. While there, he spent time in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. He also has sailing experience. He was inspired by the civilians who sailed on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in 2010 hoping to deliver humanitarian aid. When flotilla passengers refused orders not to breach the Israeli naval blockade, Israeli soldiers raided the flotilla killing nine passengers and injuring 30 more. One Israeli soldier was seriously hurt.
“And I always thought, wow, what an incredible thing to do. I wanted to meet the people that were doing those actions,” Paul told me in a Zoom interview last month.
Once he committed to the 2025 flotilla trip, he knew observers would wonder, “Why would somebody get into a boat and sail it into a storm? It would force them to reconcile: either these people are crazy or they really believe in something. Of course the goal was to bring aid into Gaza. It was also about changing the political reality. And to do that, you have to change people’s minds. And that’s where I felt the flotilla really had a lot of potential.”
Carsie is a songwriter whose music spans folk, swing, punk and protest songs. One of her advertisements for her West Coast tour in February proclaims, in a makeshift newspaper headline, “Protest Music Is Not Dead.” She promises to sing “music to inspire revolutionary optimism instead of more boring useless nihilism.” Her October tour was postponed due to her capture and imprisonment by Israeli soldiers. Each participant made a video to be released in the event of their capture. In Carsie’s video, posted on her Instagram account, she says: “I am an American citizen. I am a Jewish person. And I’m a musician. And for all of those reasons I consider it my duty to try and make a problem for my own government because my government is enabling a genocide in Gaza.” She hopes viewers of her video can “also make a problem for your government. You can try to organize with many other people and try to make it politically impossible for them to keep supporting the genocide.”
Jessica is a former Marine who joined the military when she was 17. She lives in a rural town in south central Illinois with a population of 1,079. I interviewed her in person and on Zoom for this story. She was in elementary school when 19 Muslim extremists, mostly from Saudi Arabia, crashed planes into the Twin Towers, the US Pentagon and a field in rural Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, killing more than 3,000 people. Jessica says she grew up in a climate of Islamophobia and serving in the military was a way for her to become a patriot. “Especially in rural areas, you know, military service is a really honorable thing,” she said. “And I think you’ll find a lot of people who join the military have a heart for service.” Much of her Marine combat training involved watching hours of suicide bomber videos. And like all Marines, she was trained to be a killer. She left the Marines in 2012 and stopped her work as a defense contractor in Kuwait in 2015.
Jessica’s studies in anthropology at the University in Illinois exposed her to a wider range of perspectives and challenged her. And on campus, for the first time, she met Muslims. Eventually, it was Jessica’s friendship with a Muslim mother in Gaza, Asma, that inspired her to join the Global Sumud Flotilla. When Asma pleaded for help on social media during the start of the genocide, Jessica reached back and they became friends.
“Treated Like Scum” by Israeli Prison Guards
All flotilla participants were captured by Israeli soldiers at gunpoint October 1 - 2. They were imprisoned and eventually released after nearly a week in captivity. Many participants from around the world posted videos describing their treatment by Israeli guards.
“I’m a Jewish American in Israeli detention, I was treated like scum in a way like you read about in books about the Holocaust,” Carsie said in a video posted on her Instagram page on October 8. “I was held in a cage with 57 other women and someone really, really needed a medic. And a guard came to us and said if you keep asking for a medic, we’re going to gas you. So I just want you to understand when we say they’re like Nazis, it’s not a difficult comparison to make. They are fascists. They believe that Palestinians are not people and it doesn’t matter how many of them die. And the way we were dehumanized was way less than the way Palestinians are dehumanized every day. And so I still can’t imagine what it is like to be a Palestinian in Israeli detention.” Upon detention, Israeli soldiers zip-tied the hands of the flotilla participants, blindfolded them and made them kneel on concrete for hours at a time.
Jessica tells me about an interaction she had with a guard while she was being processed into prison. “As soon as he saw that I was an American, he was disgusted,” Jessica said. “And he looked at me and said ‘You’re an American.’ I just stood there as we were taught in Barcelona at our training and did not look him in the eye. And he said ‘We usually like Americans, but we hate you. We hate your kind.’ He slammed his fist down demanding that she look at him and she did with confidence. But as she recalls this moment with me, she chokes up. “I was calm throughout the whole process. And he said that I’m going to rot in prison.” He asked her what her occupation was and when she said she was a teacher, “He just threw a fit,” Jessica recalls. ‘Disgusting. Perverse. You should not be around children.’ He said I was a terrorist and was supporting terrorism. He said there was no starvation in Gaza.”
Of the guards, Paul said “They treat you like animals at every turn. They would wake us up every couple of hours at night. Turn on the lights in prison. Open the door holding their guns and gizmos. They would make us leave and go to another cell and we would leave without bringing our stuff. And so we’d have to spend the rest of the night without a blanket or mattress on the cement floor.”
Caring For Each Other While In Israeli Custody
Most of the members of the flotilla were imprisoned at Ketziot Prison in the Negev desert. In an email reply to my questions, Carsie wrote: “The environment in prison was pretty consistently caring and supportive! There were songs, conversations, hugs, dance lessons. One or two of us would be let out each day to distribute food to all of the cells, and when we did that we would pass things between cells – pads, underwear, the two pens we collectively owned. (One was in the cell when we arrived; the other was snuck in by one of our comrades when they were allowed to visit their consulate).”
The comrade Carsie is referring to is Paul. “I snuck a pen from that meeting in my underwear. I brought it back to the cell and I brought it out. ‘I got a pen!’ and everybody’s like ‘you got a pen?’ And so I wrote in Arabic on the bathroom wall.” Paul recites in Arabic what he had written on the wall and then translates it to English. “Peace be upon you. I’m Paul from the United States. I was on the Global Sumud Flotilla. The world is with you. Our hearts are with you. Truth is with you. God is with you. Free Palestine!”
Carsie continued: “We figured out how to launder the little slips of paper between slices of cheese, then write on those and hide the pages in the hems of our sweats. This technology was distributed pretty quickly between the cells, using a communication system we developed based on the radios we used to communicate between boats during the flotilla!”
Jessica shared a cell with Carsie for part of her imprisonment as well as women from around the world who spoke Arabic. These women would read the Arabic on the prison walls and translate it into English. “Some would be poetry,” Jessica said. “ So many would be motivational things like, ‘This is the darkest day, but it’s not always dark and the light will come.’ There were calendars written and marked off. People were locked in here, you know, for how long? And just think of the countless horrors they suffered, and then seeing some of this beautiful, uplifting, hopeful resistance really moved a lot of us.”
What’s Next For Those in Solidarity with Gaza?
As this story is published, Palestinians in Gaza continue to be killed (approximately 69,000 killed, a vast under count, with one-third being children) by Israeli soldiers during the third so-called ceasefire in two years with bombs sent by the United States; settlers in the West Bank continue to kill Palestinians with impunity and occupy their homes; and the US became an occupier in Gaza after the United Nations Security Council unanimously (Russia and China abstained) approved a Trump-designed peace plan.
Participants from the September Flotilla engage in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation movement in different ways today. Paul and Jessica speak to members of Congress in Washington, DC about their experiences. They are demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners including the American, Mohammed Ibrahim , a 16-year old from Florida imprisoned in Israel since February. They are also demanding lawmakers co-sponsor House Bill HR 3565, known as the Block the Bombs Act. The act “prohibits the president from selling, transferring or exporting certain defense articles or services to Israel, except in specified circumstances.” Paul is speaking about his experiences publicly in churches, political rallies and at other venues. He told me his most difficult audiences are members of his extended family and those who fully support what Israel is doing to Palestinians. “Pick your favorite political nemesis,” Paul says. “We turn them into monsters and the problem is in dehumanizing them, we dehumanize ourselves. But I think we also need to realize this is brain science and our brains are really vulnerable to brainwashing.” Paul was about to fly to Texas just before I interviewed him to meet with a family member who, when Paul was captured by the Israelis, told his mother, “I hope Israel holds them for at least a year in prison for supporting terrorism.”
In a November 11 post on her blog, Carsie wrote: “I’ve been reticent to share much about the flotilla, not because it was triggering, just because it was a very rich five-week-long life experience and I usually don’t feel up to the task of condensing it.” She begins writing about what was beautiful about the experience including the water of the Mediterranean Sea, the Milky Way bright as milk, the other boats in their green, red and white lights looking like a Christmas tree. She ends her post with “We were five hundred people – and hundreds more on the ground, facilitating – propelled across the sea by wind, and the intermingled forces of love and rage.
“I sailed as a Jew, to show what ‘never again’ is supposed to mean. But also to try and live up to a song I had written the previous year, ‘The Little Flame’:
A hundred years, a hundred more
We throw our weight against the door
And even if we don’t survive
We keep the little flame alive.’”
Photos of Paul and Jessica were provided by Paul and Jessica. Photos of Carsie were taken from her Instagram and Facebook feeds or provided by the Global Sumud Flotilla.
Thank you for writing this Kim!