A grief-laden year has passed. Still, my journal entries from the days following Aysenur’s murder hit me like a freight train whenever I reread them.
September 6, 2024: What is there to say? Aysenur is dead. She left us this morning full of life, energy, and joy. Now she's dead.
The words transport me back to that Ramallah apartment where I stayed in sick while she attended the protest, to those minutes I helplessly watched her die through a barrage of shaky, graphic videos sent by International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activists present.
Though I struggle to revisit it, the pain reminds me it was real, that a brilliant young woman is gone, and her murderer and all those culpable evade accountability.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was 26 years old, a recent graduate, an American and Turkish citizen, and a lifelong seeker of justice.
In 2016, at only 18 years old, she travelled to Standing Rock to stand in solidarity with Indigenous water protectors against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
In adulthood, she organised fundraisers for people in need, supported immigrant rights as a legal assistant, and participated in the 2024 UW Liberated Zone, fighting to end the University of Washington’s complicity in the occupation and genocide of Palestine.
She had an uncanny ability to make friends with her welcoming and genuine demeanor, and she was profoundly brave even when afraid. Amongst loved ones, she was adored for her generosity, principles, kindness, creativity, curiosity, intelligence, and good humour.
I first met her in Jerusalem on September 1 of last year, just before our training with the ISM—a Palestinian-led collective founded in 2001 during the Second Intifada. The ISM brings together international activists who use their presence, legal privileges, and nonviolent direct action to help deter Israeli attempts to steal from, sabotage, harass, attack, or kill Palestinians.
We spent the week together as comrades, learning from people, eating well, staying out until only strays wandered the streets, and smoking Aysenur’s sloppily hand-rolled cigarettes.
Targeted killing
On September 6, Aysenur left at 10:20 am to attend a weekly peaceful demonstration, protesting the illegal Israeli settlement of Evyatar in Beita, Nablus.
Following Jummah prayers, Israeli soldiers closed in on the small group, firing teargas and live rounds to disperse attendees.
Aysenur and the others backed downhill, taking refuge in an olive grove. Later, amidst a calm, two shots were fired by an Israeli sniper stationed on the roof of a home on the hilltop. One ricocheted and hit an 18-year-old Palestinian boy, non-fatally.
The second pierced Aysenur directly through the head. Palestinian paramedics rushed her to the nearest hospital in Nablus, where doctors attempted to resuscitate her. They failed. By 2:30 pm, Aysenur was dead.
Tragically, her murder was not a freak accident of poor military procedure or hateful individuals. The violence she experienced is the standard of Israeli operations.
Palestinians face this senseless brutality daily. In another Nablusi village, in the same hours, Aysenur protested and died; an Israeli soldier gunned down 13-year-old Palestinian Bana Amjad Bakr through the window of her own home during a settler raid on the town. Bana was rushed to the same hospital and kept in the same morgue.
The Israeli government, as always, pushed a narrative unsupported by even a single eyewitness account or video.
Despite desperate appeals from Aysenur’s family for an independent investigation, the US allowed Israel to investigate itself—unsurprisingly, the killers absolved themselves of all wrongdoing
Not the first
Aysenur was not the first ISM volunteer murdered by Israeli military forces. In the spring of 2003, both Rachel Corrie, another Washingtonian, and British activist Thomas Hurndall were killed by Israeli soldiers in Rafah—Corrie while trying to prevent the demolition of Palestinian pharmacist Samir Nasrallah’s home, and Hurndall while protecting two children under fire from soldiers.
Following Aysenur’s death, ISM volunteers continue to be brutalised in settler and military assaults, arrested, and deported. Yet their persecution pales when compared with Israel's endless attempts to repress and eradicate the Palestinian people.
In the year since her death, Israel still eludes justice for any of their crimes, and I fear that, like Rachel Corrie’s, Aysenur’s family may never receive tangible federal support.
The US government still allows Israel limitless impunity to kill, imprison, and torture Americans, even children.
Right now, 16-year-old Palestinian-American Mohammed Ibrahim from Florida has suffered in detention without trial since March, in Israeli prisons known for abusing Palestinian children, for allegedly throwing a stone.
Despite crimes against Americans and the Leahy Law prohibiting the funding of foreign security forces committing gross human rights violations, the US government rolls over for Israel and offers it billions of dollars to purchase weapons from American manufacturers.
Failed justice
Washington State elected officials, who are responsible for fighting for justice, life, and liberty for their constituents, have failed to obtain accountability for Aysenur, and their purported support is waning.
Senator Maria Cantwell, specifically, would rather attend photo ops with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a war criminal wanted by the ICJ.
All Washington federal officials, besides Representative Pramila Jayapal, continue to take funds and directions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other lobbies for Israel, who would prefer to sweep the slaughtering of Americans by Israelis under the rug.
So I must ask, how heartless are our officials, to send condolences to a family but allow the murderer immunity?
This summer marked the anniversary of her college graduation. As I dressed for my own graduation ceremony in June, I found myself struck by profound sadness.
A year prior, her family had similarly gathered to celebrate her efforts, hopeful about her future. I doubt they ever imagined they were taking her martyr’s portrait, the image plastered around Ramallah and Beita, and heading every global news article about her murder.
In it, she wears her school’s regalia, wrapped in a keffiyeh and bearing a gorgeous smile. I grieve the transformation of a moment commemorating her life into something so mournful.
How many other families, especially in Palestine, have experienced the same poisoning of their joy?
