{"id":70900,"date":"2025-10-10T23:09:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T23:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/70900\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T23:09:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T23:09:09","slug":"singer-carsie-blanton-on-what-she-experienced-in-prison-in-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/70900\/","title":{"rendered":"Singer Carsie Blanton on What She Experienced in Prison in Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCarsie Blanton<\/a> needed to say farewell to her guitar. The singer-songwriter was somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean sea on a sailboat last week when the 10-person crew decided to play some music. They passed around the guitar, sang a song or two, including Blanton\u2019s \u201cLittle Flame<\/a>\u201d (sample lyric: \u201cPrison cells\/Freedom Rides\/Keep the little flame alive\u201d), then decided to give Blanton\u2019s instrument a proper burial at sea.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe reason? Blanton\u2019s boat, part of a 40-plus-ship, nearly 500-person coalition traveling towards Gaza<\/a> as part of the Global Sumud Flotilla, was anticipating being intercepted by the Israeli military later that evening.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tA week or so later, Blanton is speaking to Rolling Stone, back in the United States after she and several hundred others were detained at Ketziot, a sprawling Israeli prison complex in the Negev desert. Blanton is a folk singer and songwriter who\u2019s been self-releasing records and touring the country for the past decade. She\u2019s opened for Paul Simon, and her most streamed song is a heartfelt tribute to John Prine called \u201cFishin\u2019 With You.\u201d In 2019, Rolling Stone named her an Artist You Need to Know<\/a> as she discussed her increasing willingness to use music to agitate: \u201cI don\u2019t give as much of a damn about making people comfortable as I used to,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tToday, Blanton, who is Jewish, is relieved to be home, outraged by how she and her fellow detainees were treated while in detention, and resolved about her purpose as an artist-activist-influencer on the flotilla: to spread the message and raise awareness about what she and many human rights organizations and scholars have termed a genocide in Gaza perpetrated by Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tA day after arriving back in the U.S, Blanton is exhausted, enraged, and quick to laugh at the dark absurdity of some of what she experienced. \u201cI\u2019ve discovered my own wish to create work that is useful to the movement instead of just making commodities for record labels,\u201d she says. \u201cArt is worth so much more than capitalism pretends.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tOVER THE PAST six weeks, images, clips, reels, news stories, and footage of human rights activists sailing towards Gaza have flooded the West, in large part due to the high-profile participation<\/a> of Greta Thunberg<\/a>. That\u2019s precisely the point of the Global Sumud Flotilla, as Blanton, who signed up in mid-to-late August, sees it: The goal was media attention, as much or more than tangible aid. (The\u00a0Times of Israel<\/a>\u00a0has referred to the flotilla as carrying \u201ca symbolic amount of humanitarian aid.\u201d) \u201cThe political strategy of the flotilla is to basically create a media storm,\u201d she says. \u201cWe had people from 40-plus countries and every boat included some social media people and journalists. The point is to make everybody think about what is going on in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis year\u2019s effort is the biggest yet, but humanitarian aid flotillas are not a new concept: Pro-Palestinian activists have used this way of objecting to Israel\u2019s blockade of Gaza and its maritime border for more than a decade and a half, attempting to deliver aid by sea. Each year, the flotillas have been intercepted by the Israeli army. \u201cThe purpose is to take a bunch of people who come from privileged countries who have powerful governments and force their governments to deal with Israel,\u201d Blanton says. \u201cBy using our bodies we are trying to use political pressure on our home countries. Coming out of this experience, what I most want to share is the understanding that as a private citizen you can put yourself in a position that creates political pressure for your government, and that\u2019s the point of all protest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEveryone participating in this year\u2019s Global Sumud Flotilla was expecting to be detained; indeed, some may have chosen that route rather than signing paperwork<\/a> that would have led to them being deported sooner. But what Blanton was not prepared for was how she and others were treated during detention. After soldiers intercepted her boat, Blanton was sent to a Naval base in Ashdod, where she was processed, signed some papers, and had a quick court hearing. Then, she says, \u201cI was zip-tied, thrown in a very cold van, waiting a couple of hours, then they eventually put someone else in [the van] with me and drove us to another processing place in a little outdoor cage.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tBlanton spent four nights and five days in detention. After not receiving food for 30 or so hours, the detained activists were given rice and tomatoes the first two days, followed by an unexpected day of bread, hummus, chicken, and cheese. Each night, she says, the detainees were woken up in the middle of the night and moved around to different cells. Every few hours throughout the night, guards turned on the lights and counted them. Blanton also says that outside her cell, there was a documentary regularly playing about the events of Oct. 7, 2023, when a horrific Hamas attack killed roughly 1,200 Israelis and resulted in several hundred hostages being taken.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe activists were regularly moved around to assorted cells and outdoor cages while awaiting processing and court hearings. Blanton says detainees were routinely denied their medication and were crammed into overcrowded cells.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a recent statement to PBS<\/a>, Israel\u2019s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, defended the flotilla activists\u2019 treatment at Ketziot.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was proud that we treat the \u2018flotilla activists\u2019 as supporters of terrorism,\u201d Ben-Gvir told PBS. \u201cAnyone who supports terrorism is a terrorist and deserves the conditions of terrorists\u2026If any of them thought they would come here and receive a red carpet and trumpets \u2014 they were mistaken. They should get a good feel for the conditions in Ketziot prison and think twice before they approach Israel again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite what she describes as inhumane treatment and conditions, Blanton says the detention was full of art, political theory, and solidarity. She says many of the women were on their periods at the same time: \u201cMost of the cells said \u2018Free Palestine\u2019 in menstrual blood before we left.\u201d (Detainees were separated by gender.)<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd she says that her time in Israeli prison resulted in some of the most inspired dialogue she\u2019d ever had on leftist ideas and tactics. \u201cI found myself in a cell with members of parliament from Spain and Brazil and Greece, and we were all just sitting there with nothing to do all day, discussing different forms of Marxism. We would get switched around in the cells and it\u2019d be like, \u2018I just talked to the Brazilian MP and she said this; what do you think about it, Greek MP?\u2019 If we had been there any longer we would have definitely started the revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEventually, detainees began hearing from representatives of their respective countries. Blanton didn\u2019t speak with any U.S. officials until Sunday, three days into her detention. By the time she and the other American detainees met with U.S. officials in Israel, she says, \u201cWe were pretty pissed off because everyone else had already spoken to their consulate, and our assumption was the U.S. and Israel are buddies, so probably we\u2019d get to speak to them pretty soon and have some weight to throw around,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was quite the opposite. The impression we got is that the U.S. would prefer we hadn\u2019t done [what we did] and that they didn\u2019t really want to get us out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat impression continued two days later, on Oct. 7 of this year, when Blanton and the other Americans were released from Ketziot. They were woken up early that morning and put on a bus to Jordan, where their interaction with a U.S. embassy member, Blanton says, differed substantially from other freed detainees\u2019 interactions with representatives of their home countries.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEveryone else had snacks and hugs and \u2018Here\u2019s a phone, here\u2019s some money,\u2019\u201d Blanton says. \u201cOur lady shows up from the embassy and was like, \u2018Hey, I want you to know that we\u2019re not going to babysit you. You\u2019ve gotten yourself in a bad situation and the U.S. is not able to provide any money for tickets home or help.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe U.S. embassies in Israel and Jordan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBlanton broke down later that evening, when the freed flotilla activists were treated to an unexpected banquet at the Landmark Amman Hotel in Jordan. Strangers began approaching her and thanking her for what she\u2019d done. \u201cWe woke up in an Israeli prison, we haven\u2019t showered, we are stinky, tired, confused and upset, and after several hours we end up in a penthouse of this five-star hotel in Amman eating this extravagant buffet with a chocolate fountain,\u201d she says. \u201cThat was very overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe next day, Blanton flew home to New York\u2019s JFK Airport alongside a handful of other activists. When they landed, they were greeted by ICE agents, who questioned one of the Americans for 10 minutes, then escorted the group through the airport. There was a press scrum and a celebratory gathering organized at the airport, and Blanton thinks \u201cthe point was to keep us from meeting the crowd.\u201d After the ICE agents escorted them through a specific exit,\u00a0 she adds, \u201cWe wandered around the airport and found 300 people having a rally for us on the other side of the baggage claim.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn her first full day back in America, Blanton is still processing what she experienced. She remains surprised by the degree to which the flotilla activists were denied basic prisoner rights, and wonders how her treatment compares to what Palestinians experience in Israeli prisons. She is eager to spread the message that someone need not be a public figure with a social media following in order to engage in the type of non-violent protest she\u2019d just engaged in, that most of the flotilla participants had been just that: normal people \u2014 schoolteachers, retired folks, stay-at-home moms \u2014 with no strong background in activism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTo me, that\u2019s the extraordinary story that\u2019s not being told, and I think it\u2019s important for people to understand,\u201d she says. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to be some kind of special person with money or a platform to do a political intervention. Anyone can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tBlanton had to cancel an upcoming tour, but she\u2019s already thinking about how to use her art moving forward. The detainees had spent much of their time in prison singing songs in Arabic that one of the flotilla activists, a Palestinian musician from New Zealand named Rana Hamida<\/a>, had taught them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe were singing in prison because we needed to,\u201d she says. \u201cMusic is a much deeper and more important experience than what we in the quote unquote music industry tend to frame it as. The music industry is total bullshit and always has been. We need to find something bigger to commit our lives to as musicians. With this experience, I was like, \u2018OK, I\u2019ve found something.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carsie Blanton needed to say farewell to her guitar. The singer-songwriter was somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean sea…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[56273,430,156,16945,5873,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-70900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-carsie-blanton","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-gaza","tag-israel","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}