US citizen Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was shot dead last week while protesting against the construction of a settlement on Palestinian land in the West Bank village of Beita. Ayşenur, a 26-year-old who was born in Turkey, was rushed to hospital in the nearby city of Nablus, but could not be resuscitated.
She had travelled to Palestine to volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led internationalist group which supports the struggle against the Israeli occupation, and which provides a protective presence to Palestinian communities facing military and settler violence.
The ISM has said that Ayşenur will be remembered as a martyr. It points out that she is the 18th demonstrator to be killed while protesting against the colonisation of the lands of Beita village. The Israeli state has recently announced plans to ‘legalise’ the Eyvatar outpost, which has been constructed on village lands.
It was Ayşenur’s first day as a volunteer, after coming from the US and receiving training in the West Bank from ISM members. Her fellow volunteers told the press that she was nervous, and wanted to stay at the back of the demonstration. An investigation by the Washington Post revealed that she was in an olive grove at least 230 metres from the elevated Israeli army position when she was shot in the head by a sniper.
Israel’s investigation
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has said that “The killing of [an] American activist in the West Bank was unjustified and without provocation on her part, and it is not permissible to shoot someone because he participated in a demonstration.” The US demanded an Israeli investigation, and has called for “fundamental changes” in the Israeli military’s rules of engagement.
The Israeli military has released a statement claiming “that it is highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her.”
However, this claim has been disproved by multiple eyewitness accounts, and the results of the autopsy done by the Palestinian hospital in Nablus.
Three separate forensic experts who have examined Ayşenur’s autopsy say that all evidence suggests she was directly shot in the head. “The bullet left a large damage inside the skull and it appears like it spent all its kinetic energy in the impacted area in parallel with gun fire that directly hits to head,” said forensic medicine expert Polat Erdi.
The Israeli military also claimed that Ayşenur was hit by a misfire, aimed at the “instigator” of a “riot”. However, the Washington Post investigation found that she was shot half an hour “after the height of the confrontation”. Eyewitnesses from the ISM say that two shots were fired. One hit a Palestinian teenager in the pelvis, while the second shot hit Ayşenur in the head. Furthermore, Ayşenur was standing far away from the injured teenager and to the side, so a shot aimed at him couldn’t have hit Ayşenur.
The Washington Post spoke to 13 eyewitnesses, and searched over 50 videos and photos of the demonstration provided by ISM and Faz’aa, another Palestine solidarity group who were present at the demonstration. They found no evidence to back up the Israeli military’s claims.
Saad Dhiab, a Palestinian eyewitness, told Electronic Intifada that he saw the Israeli soldiers dancing and celebrating after they shot Ayşenur.
Biden’s response
President Joe Biden made a statement on 11 September, condemning the killing of Ayşenur. ISM released a scathing critique of Biden’s words, which they see as hollow:
“On 11 September 2024, President Biden claimed to be “outraged” and “deeply saddened” by Israel’s murder of our comrade Aysenur Eygi, but his actions tell a very different story. While he described the shooting as “unacceptable,” he is refusing [Ayşenur’s] family’s demand for an independent, transparent investigation and continuing to trust the murderers to investigate themselves. Aysenur’s family and the ISM have been clear that we have no confidence in any Israeli investigation, given the Israeli army’s longstanding practice of using investigations as exculpatory coverups. We continue to demand a transparent and independent investigation.”
ISM pointed out that Biden’s ‘outrage’ does not ring true, in the context of his administration providing the Israeli military with the weapons and ammunition to carry out their campaign of colonisation and genocide. They wrote:
“In his statement, President Biden asserts that he treats “violent extremist Israeli settlers” and “Palestinian terrorists” equally and implies that the violence in the West Bank is equally the fault of both groups. Both assertions are false. President Biden’s administration arms the violent Israeli extremists, as ISM volunteers can testify to based on our extensive experience doing protective presence work in the West Bank face to face with Israeli settlers armed with US weapons.
These are the same weapons that make the US complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As long as the US continues to send weapons to Israel to kill Palestinians, in Gaza as well as in the West Bank, the US is sustaining the violent extremism of the Israeli settlers and the Israeli government. Meanwhile, President Biden’s false equivalence between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank elides the fact that the current violence has its roots in over a hundred years of settler colonial terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and now genocide, all perpetrated by Israel. Contrary to what President Biden asserts, it is Zionist colonization that is the obstacle to peace.”
The group argues that honouring Aysenur’s memory requires no less than an arms embargo.
“This is not an isolated incident,” Israeli eyewitness Jonatan Pollak, who was demonstrating alongside Aysenur, told 972mag. “The bullet that killed Ayşenur is the same bullet that killed a 13-year-old Palestinian girl the same day, just a few kilometers south of here. These are the same American-funded bullets that Israel uses to perpetrate genocide in Gaza with complete impunity. And this happens because the world does not demand accountability.”
Erdoğan’s hypocrisy
Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has also been making populist statements in response to Aysenur’s death. However, Ayşenur Eygi was aligned with a movement that opposes all forms of oppression, including that of states like Turkey. Turkish forces have recently killed protesters in northern Syria, and historically at Istanbul’s Gezi Park and Taksim square, and during the uprisings in Turkey’s southeast in 2014, where protests broke out against Erdoğan’s support for the ISIS siege of Kobane.
