US lawmakers call for accountability in killing of American activist
Senator Patty Murray of Washington state condemned the killing of American citizen Aysenur Ezgi Eygi.
“The government of Israel must deliver answers immediately and hold the perpetrators of this killing accountable,” Murray said in a statement.
Representative Pramila Jayapal called Ezgi Eygi’s death a terrible tragedy and said her office is actively working to gather more information on the events that led to her death.
“I am very troubled by the reports that she was killed by Israeli … soldiers. The Netanyahu government has done nothing to stop settlement expansion and settler violence in the West Bank, often encouraged by right-wing ministers of the Netanyahu government,” Jayapal wrote in a statement.
“The killing of an American citizen is a terrible proof point in this senseless war of rising tensions in the region.”
Not the first foreign activist killed by Israeli forces
Condemnation has come fast after the killing of Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, of Seattle – a recent graduate of the University of Washington. She was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which protests illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.
At least three activists from the ISM have now been killed since 2000. ISM members often place themselves between Israeli forces and Palestinians to try to stop the Israeli military from carrying out violence.
Two ISM activists – American Rachel Corrie and British photography student Tom Hurndall – were killed in Gaza in 2003.
Corrie was crushed to death in March 2003 as she tried to block an Israeli military bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian home in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, near the Egyptian border. Hurndall was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier about a month later.
The parents of Rachel Corrie at a rally in the occupied West Bank in 2008
Colleague praises American killed by Israeli sniper – ‘the ultimate sacrifice’
Rob Sadler, a British human rights activist, who was at the scene when Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was shot and killed, says her sacrifice will not be in vain and efforts to halt Israeli aggression against Palestinians will continue.
“I want to start by immediately refuting the Israeli army statement that they were firing towards someone who was presenting harm to them. They fired at a crowd 200 metres away from them down the road. A sniper fired from a building – one or two shots – and they targeted and murdered Aysenur,” Sadler told Al Jazeera.
He said at least 17 Palestinians have been killed in the village of Beita over the past few years in Israeli attacks. “This goes hand-in-hand with their obscene disregard for human life and the genocide they’re carrying out in Gaza.”
Sadler said Ezgi Eygi, also known as Aysha, came to Palestine to document “the crimes” by the Israeli military.
“Aysha, in doing this work, has made the ultimate sacrifice. But we will continue to work in her name and make sure her sacrifice was not for nothing. We’ll continue to bring pressure to bear on Israel until Palestine is free.”
Aysenur “came to Palestine for the same reason as many of us: to observe and to expose Israeli war crimes and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians,” Sadler told Al Jazeera from Ramallah.
“Israel has murdered her for shining a light on their crimes against humanity, but we will continue to work in her name. We will make sure that her sacrifice was not for nothing,” he added.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi had recently graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle, in the United States
