The Murder of Aysenur Eygi

This is a clear case of a member of the Israeli military gunning down an unarmed American citizen.

An Israeli soldier fatally shot an American citizen and peace activist, Aysenur Eygi, in the head on Friday while she was participating in a peaceful protest against an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Haaretz reports on what witnesses to the shooting saw:

Three eyewitnesses present at the protest in the West Bank town of Beita, where a 26-year-old American-Turkish human rights activist was shot dead on Friday, told Haaretz that Israeli troops shot her for no reason and there had been no clashes at the time.

Like the murder of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli sniper in May 2022, this is a clear case of a member of the Israeli military gunning down an unarmed American citizen. The IDF’s account of this killing—that their soldiers were responding to a rock-throwing “instigator”— is no more credible than the story that they spun two years ago when one of their men shot a journalist in the head. There must be a credible independent investigation into Aysenur Eygi’s murder, and the shooter must be made to answer for the crime.

Multiple witnesses all testify to the same thing that happened on Friday. According to a statement from the International Solidarity Movement, the organization to which Ms. Eygi belonged, “Aysenur was more than 200 meters away from where the Israeli soldiers were, and there were no confrontations there at all in the minutes before she was shot. Regardless, from such distance, neither she, nor anyone else could have possibly been perceived as posing any threat. She was killed in cold blood.”

The Biden administration’s response has been predictably poor. The White House says that it is “deeply disturbed” by the news, but that’s all. Secretary of State Blinken said, “We deplore this tragic loss,” as if Ms. Eygi had been struck by lightning or killed in a car crash. The official line is that the administration is “seeking more information,” but they should already have more than enough information to know what happened and who was responsible for the killing. The refusal to say that an Israeli soldier killed her is deliberate obfuscation on their part.

The National Security Council spokesman said that the administration has asked the Israeli government to investigate the shooting, so it seems that they are already preparing to let them off the hook. No one believes that an Israeli investigation will hold anyone accountable or lead to any real punishment. If there is even an admission of error at some point in the future, it will be treated as an unfortunate accident that will have no consequences for the perpetrator.

If the administration’s handling of this case is anything like their whitewashing of Abu Akleh’s murder, they will make no effort to hold anyone accountable for this crime. The administration has made it clear over the last two years that it will not stand up for American citizens when they are killed by the Israeli military in occupied Palestine. If this happened almost anywhere else in the world, the response from our government would be very different. Because it happened in Palestine and the victim was someone protesting on behalf of Palestinians, the murder of a U.S. citizen by a foreign military receives the equivalent of “thoughts and prayers.” The president has said, “If you harm an American, we will respond,” but that guarantee doesn’t apply when the Israeli military is the one doing the harm.

The murder of Aysenur Eygi calls our attention to the violence and crimes that Palestinians are forced to endure on a daily basis as part of Israel’s illegal occupation and seizure of their land. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October. Settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have shot up dramatically over the last eleven months. According to the International Crisis Group, there have been 1,246 attacks by settlers since October. Last week, ICG’s senior Israel analyst Mairav Zonszein said, “Settler violence is at an all-time high, with Israeli settlers harassing, terrorizing and killing Palestinians across the West Bank in greater numbers and with greater frequency and fervor. They are emboldened by a government committed to deepening control over the West Bank and foiling a Palestinian state.” That is the same government that the U.S. continues backing to the hilt.

The worsening conditions in the West Bank are an indictment of decades of failed U.S. policy. Decades of indulging successive Israeli governments and their settlement expansions have allowed the settler movement to gain substantial political power and have sabotaged any chance of securing a viable Palestinian state in the foreseeable future. U.S. support has enabled the unfolding disaster in both Gaza and the West Bank, and in that way our government shares responsibility for this murder.