Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator
Another American has been killed in cold blood by the Israeli government. On September 6, Aysenur Eygi of Seattle, Washington was killed by an American bullet fired by an Israeli sniper who stood on a roof above a crowd of peaceful protesters. The young college graduate and peace activist was targeted and assassinated by the colonial-settler government of Benjamin Netanyahu. She died brutally, from a rifle shot to her head, underneath an olive tree, the international symbol of peace.
Olive trees and blood conjure up images of the Jewish settlers of the Occupied West Bank as they have continued to uproot Palestinian olive trees, which are more than just a source of food and income, but represent the soul of the Palestinian people which seeks peace and justice.
Eygi had just arrived in the Occupied West Bank to protest settlement expansion in the Palestinian village of Beita, near Nablus. Jewish settlements in the Occupied West Bank are illegal under international law and are viewed as such by the US.
When Netanyahu took office in 2022, he said he had two goals: to expand the illegal settlements in the West Bank and to sign a normalization agreement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The agreement with the Saudis is off the table because of the current Gaza war, but settlement expansion is booming.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israeli Security Minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli Finance Minister, are both from illegal settlements and hold sway over Netanyahu. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are Jewish extremists and they are the force that keeps the Netanyahu government coalition together. If Netanyahu were to sign a ceasefire in Gaza or stop illegal settlements in the West Bank, they would break the Netanyahu government, which would send Netanyahu to jail for his past conviction of corruption and fraud.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement, that its troops “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them.”
However, eyewitnesses and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which Eygi was participating with, reject this claim of rocks or provocation.
Haaretz journalist, Jonathan Pollak, was an eyewitness to the killing and held Eygi as she lay dying. Pollack is an activist with the group, Defend Palestine. He gave an interview to the BBC, saying he had seen “soldiers on the rooftop aiming”.
He described holding Eygi to attempt to stop the bleeding, and then “I looked up, there was a clear line of sight between the soldiers and where we were.”
The killing of Eygi reminds us of another American killed by Israel, also from Washington, and volunteering with the same group, ISM. Rachel Corrie left Washington in her senior year of college to be a peace activist in Rafah, Gaza. On March 16, 2003, she was run over and killed deliberately by an Israeli bulldozer driver demolishing the homes of Palestinians. The Israeli military investigation found her death an accident. Her parents filed a civil lawsuit seeking accountability, but in 2015 the Israeli Supreme Court rejected their case.
The United Nations is demanding a “full investigation” into the killing of Eygi, but the US stands passively by, impotent in the face of Israel, regardless of how many US citizens are murdered.
Eygi had been born in 1998 in Antalya, Turkey but had lived in Seattle since the age of one. For an American, having grown up in freedom and enjoying human rights, it was a shock when she saw the Israeli checkpoints set up that Palestinians have to move through daily. Palestinians are subjected to constant humiliation and degradation at the hands of the IDF, and Eygi had a hard time accepting that injustice which was so far removed from the American core values of freedom and independence.
Every American is taught the country’s foundation began in 1776 in which Americans shed their blood to drive out the colonizers and achieve the freedom and independence of America.
But, Americans are also taught that Israel is a democracy and that the US government must always send billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money to Israel for weapons to kill Palestinians who ask for freedom, and an end to the colonial occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
While the UN and hundreds of its member countries were labeling Israel an apartheid state, and the International Court of Justice decreed that the occupation of Palestine was against international law, the Biden-Harris administration was packing up millions of dollars worth of weaponry and ammunition to keep the genocide going in Gaza.
Ghassan Daghlas, the Governor of Nablus, told the media that Al Najah University confirmed their autopsy findings “that Eygi was killed by an Israeli occupation sniper’s bullet to her head.”
Turkey has stood in solidarity with the Palestinians, and a Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, was attacked at sea on May 31, 2010, when Israeli commandos boarded the ship before it could deliver humanitarian supplies to the blockaded Gaza. 8 Turkish citizens and 1 American citizen were killed, and 30 wounded.
The Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that Israel had “heinously murdered our young child,” while referring to Eygi.
According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, Eygi was murdered by the Benjamin Netanyahu government.
Turkey has stepped in officially to receive the body of Eygi and take her coffin back home to Washington to her family for burial. Will her coffin be flown to the USA by a Turkish government plane? Will her flag-draped coffin be met at the airport by the Turkish Ambassador to the US and his staff? Will the Foreign Minister of Turkey accompany the coffin?
Americans will be asking: where is the US government? No demands, no outcry, and not even the decency to collect the body of Eygi and bring her home.
There will be no accountability demanded of Israel. Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, Mohammad Khdour, Rachel Corrie, Shireen Abu Akleh, and Aysenur Eygi are all Americans killed by Israel with impunity. No justice will ever be served, and this is a message to every American: your life has no value, only Israelis have a value in the eyes of the US government.
Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist
