Loved Ones Of American Activist Killed By Israel Condemn Military Probe: 'Wholly Inadequate'

Sanjana Karanth

The loved ones of an American activist who was killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank last week have condemned the military’s claim on Tuesday that a sniper “unintentionally” shot the 26-year-old woman, saying they are “deeply offended” at such a suggestion and still want an independent probe of the incident.

The statements both from Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi’s volunteer group and her family in the U.S. came in response to the Israeli military’s preliminary investigation into itself, the results of which were released Tuesday. Israel launched the probe after eyewitness testimony, the United Nations and Turkish and Palestinian officials all said that an Israeli soldier shot the woman in the head on Friday following a weekly protest against illegal Israeli settlement expansions in Beita, a Palestinian village near the West Bank city of Nablus.

The Israeli military said that its preliminary inquiry found it is “highly likely” that Eygi was shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by Israeli fire “which was not aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator of the riot.” The military also said it “expresses its deepest regret” for killing Eygi and “sent a request to carry out an autopsy,” adding it has launched a criminal investigation.

Eygi’s family said that the result of Israel’s initial probe is “wholly inadequate” and that the activist’s killing while seeking shelter from Israeli violence “cannot be misconstrued as anything except a deliberate, targeted and precise attack by the military against an unarmed civilian.”

“We are deeply offended by the suggestion that her killing by a trained sniper was in any way unintentional,” the family said in their statement. “The disregard shown for human life in the inquiry is appalling.”

Eygi was from Seattle, where as a graduate student she helped organize the campus protest movement at the University of Washington during the nationwide wave of demonstrations against Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Photos circulating after she was killed show her in a graduation gown while wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh.

She was participating in the West Bank demonstration as a volunteer with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a human rights group that on Tuesday joined Eygi’s family in rejecting the Israeli military’s claim that the killing was unintentional.

“The military’s account of the events is blindly based on the accomplices’ version, which completely contradicts the testimonies of multiple eyewitnesses, whom the military did not even contact,” ISM said in a statement. “All eyewitnesses said immediately following the killing that the scene where Ayşenur was killed was completely quiet and that there could have been no excuse to open fire, let alone directly hitting a woman peacefully standing in an olive grove.”

The Palestinian Authority held a funeral Friday in Beita for Eygi, who also held Turkish citizenship. Turkish officials said they are working to repatriate her body so that she can be buried on the Aegean coast, according to her family’s wishes.

“As we mourn the death of our beloved Ayşenur, we reiterate our demand for the U.S. government leaders … to order an independent investigation into the Israeli military’s deliberate targeting and killing of a U.S. Citizen,” the family said in their statement. “Israeli officials must be transparent and release the evidence they compiled, to be reviewed by the family and independent authorities.”

During a news conference Tuesday in London, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Israeli forces’ killing of Eygi was “unprovoked and unjustified” and that the military should “make some fundamental changes in the way that they operate in the West Bank, including changes to their rules of engagement.”

Despite this being the most forceful statement by Blinken against the Israeli military, he notably did not impose nor threaten to impose any sanctions. He also did not call for an independent investigation into Eygi’s killing, nor did he mention similar cases of excessive force by Israel Defense Forces soldiers against Palestinians in Gaza.

“Apparently it was an accident, ricocheted off the ground and just got hit by accident. I’m working that out now,” President Joe Biden told reporters on Tuesday when asked about Eygi.

“The White House has not spoken with us,” Eygi’s partner, Hamid Ali, said in response to the president’s comment. “For four days, we have waited for President Biden to pick up the phone and do the right thing: to call us, offer his condolences and let us know that he is ordering an independent investigation of the killing of Ayşenur.”

Eygi is the 18th activist killed by Israeli forces in Beita since 2020, the other 17 have been Palestinians. She is also the second American activist with ISM to be killed by Israel while protesting for Palestinian rights.

In 2003, activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli armored bulldozer while defending a Palestinian home in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Blinken at the time was one of several U.S. officials who tried to help Corrie’s parents, Cindy and Craig, in the days following her death.

“Most of the families that I’ve talked to after they’ve had somebody killed like this, what they want to see is that that sort of tragedy does not happen to another family,” Craig Corrie told AJ+ after Eygi’s death. “So I’m not sure that we were ever struggling for anything for Rachel. We were struggling for all the people that came after. And we’ve failed so far.”

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