Will US Seek Accountability for Israeli Murder of Another American in Palestine?

A funeral is being held today in the occupied West Bank for Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, who was shot dead Friday by Israeli forces while taking part in a weekly protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the town of Beita. The 26-year-old recent graduate of the University of Washington was a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement. Witnesses say she was fatally shot in the head by an Israeli sniper after the demonstration had already dispersed. The Turkish government has said it holds Israel responsible for Ayşenur’s death, while the U.S. government has offered condolences and called for Israel to investigate the incident. At least 17 Palestinian protesters have been killed in Beita in protests against illegal Israeli settlements since 2020.

Juliette Majid, a friend of Eygi at the University of Washington, remembers the slain activist as being “passionate about justice” and involved in various causes. “She’s no longer with us, but her spirit and her love and who she was and who she impacted in our community are still with us every day,” says Majid. Filipino American activist Amado Sison, who also volunteered in the occupied West Bank and was himself shot in the leg by Israeli forces on August 9 during a weekly protest in Beita, says the U.S. government must demand an independent investigation and end Israeli impunity. “If they took it seriously that a U.S. citizen was shot a month ago, maybe Ayşenur would be here right now,” he says.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

In Nablus in the occupied West Bank, a funeral procession is underway at the time of this broadcast for the Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi. She was killed by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank on Friday. Ayşenur was a 26-year-old recent graduate of UDub, the University of Washington, in Seattle. She was shot dead by Israeli forces during a weekly Friday protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the town of Beita.

According to eyewitnesses, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and live ammunition, forcing the protesters to disperse down a hill on the edge of the town. Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak, who was on the scene, said the shooting took place about half an hour after the protesters had dispersed and the situation was calm. He said Ayşenur and other foreign volunteers were standing about 200 yards from the Israeli military. He described what happened.

JONATHAN POLLAK: So, after retreating from the hilltop, I was right there where the garbage can is. And that’s — it was completely quiet already back then. The clashes had dissipated. And then, after 10 or 15 minutes it was completely quiet, I heard two distinct shots of live ammunition. One hit a metal object, and then I retreated a little bit backward into the olive grove, and then, a few seconds after, maybe two or three seconds, a second shot. And I heard someone calling my name and saying in English, “Help! Help us! We need help! Come over.” So I chased — I raced through the olive grove down there.

Her head was gushing with blood. She was lying here. I put my hand behind her back to try and stop the bleeding, which didn’t stop. I looked up and saw a direct line of sight from where the soldiers were on that rooftop, some 200 meters away. I quickly took her pulse. It was very, very weak. Her eyes were rolled back. Her skin started becoming yellow. And we panically called for the ambulance to come.

By the time this had happened, it was completely quiet here. We were standing for 10, 15 minutes without anything happening. The reason why no one was filming is because it was completely quiet. And then, all of a sudden, two shots. And the sniper or the soldier that was there took a kill shot. And this happens in context. This isn’t an isolated incident. It happens in the context of the 17 people who were killed in demonstrations in Beita since 2021. We have heard nothing about them because they’re not Americans.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak.

Ayşenur was taken to a hospital in Nablus, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. The governor of Nablus told reporters Saturday an autopsy confirmed that Ayşenur was, quote, “killed by an Israeli occupation sniper’s bullet to the head,” unquote.

The Israeli military said in a statement it was, quote, “looking into reports that a foreign national was killed” and that, quote, “details of the incident and the circumstances in which she was hit are under review,” unquote. The statement added Israeli forces had, quote, “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them,” unquote.

The Turkish government has said it holds Israel responsible for Ayşenur’s death. On Saturday, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan blasted Israel for the killing.

PRESIDENT RECEP TAYYIP ERDOĞAN: [translated] Yesterday, they heinously murdered our young child Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi. To date, they have killed over 40,000 innocent civilians, including 17,000 children. They attack barbarically and shed blood indiscriminately, whether it be children, women, youth or the elderly.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, the White House has called on Israel to investigate the attack. This is Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaking on Friday.

SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: First, I just want to extend my deepest condolences, the deepest condolences of the United States government to the family of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi. We deplore this tragic loss. Now, the most important thing to do is to gather the facts. And that’s exactly what we’re in the process of doing, and we are intensely focused on getting those facts. And any actions that we take are driven by the facts. So, first things first, let’s find out exactly what happened, and we will draw the necessary conclusions and consequences from that.

AMY GOODMAN: Ayşenur’s family has called for an independent investigation, saying, quote, “We welcome the White House’s statement of condolences, but given the circumstances of Ayşenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate. We call on President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Secretary of State Blinken to order an independent investigation into the unlawful killing of a U.S. citizen and to ensure full accountability for the guilty parties,” end-quote.

At least 17 Palestinian protesters have been killed in Beita in protests against illegal Israeli settlements since 2020.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. Amado Sison, which is a pseudonym, is a Filipino American citizen who was shot in the leg by the Israeli forces one month ago today, on August 9th, during the weekly protest in Beita in the occupied West Bank. Sison was volunteering with the international nonviolent protective presence group Faz3a, the same group Ayşenur was with along with being a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement. Amado Sison a high school English teacher from Jersey City in New Jersey. We’re also joined by Juliette Majid. She was friends with Ayşenur at the University of Washington. Juliette Majid is now a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University. She’s joining us from Raleigh, North Carolina.

Juliette, let’s begin with you. Tell us who Ayşenur is. She, like you, just graduated from UDub, from the University of Washington, in Seattle, where she grew up since, well, her family came there from Turkey, since before she was 1 year old.

JULIETTE MAJID: Yeah. First of all, thank you for saying who she is. She’s no longer with us, but her spirit and her love and her — who she was and who she impacted in our community are still with us every single day. The family, I think, in their statement had beautiful, beautiful words that I want to uplift on who she was. She was amazing, a staunch advocate and organizer. She was passionate about justice. She was compassionate and kind, and she wore her heart on her sleeves. She always made you feel like you were listened to. You never had to think when talking to her; you just had to be. That’s how she was. She just was herself, nobody else. She inspired everybody she ever met. She inspired me. And I know that, going forward, I will keep holding her in my heart, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Juliette, I know this is incredibly difficult for you. She was killed on Friday. This is just Monday. And our deepest condolences to you and to Ayşenur’s family, which I know extends beyond her own family, but to the whole community at UDub, those who were involved, like you and her, in the encampment there, like there were encampments all over the United States, protesting the Israeli war on Gaza. Can you talk about her activism — you talked about how she inspired you — and also about learning of her death on Friday? She had just gotten to the occupied West Bank — right? — did a training on Wednesday and was killed on Friday. And you’re now a student in North Carolina.

JULIETTE MAJID: Yeah, so I met Ayşenur at the University of Washington. We both graduated in June. More than just the student encampment, she was a community organizer in Seattle. She was always volunteering to help, always volunteering in the community, in the campus, before the encampment and after. So many people met her during the encampment. She was just always around, always willing to help. She moved in a wonderful grassroots way that was just always willing to assist wherever it was needed. She never asked much of herself. She always asked what others wanted from her, what they needed from her, how she could help, what she could do. She was very passionate about the student movement at UDub. She was very involved on campus. And the community is absolutely reeling, heartbroken, trying to come to terms with what happened. It was, as you said, so recent, on Friday. So many, I think, community members learned through the media on Friday morning, an absolutely heartbreaking way to find out for those who loved her. And there are so many. Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: This is the second loss in the UDub community, because on October 7th, Hayim Katsman was killed when Hamas raided, came over from Gaza. We spoke to his sibling Noy, who also immediately called for peace and said that their brother Hayim was a peace activist, as well.

JULIETTE MAJID: I can only speak to who I knew, and that was Ayşenur, who was upholding a long tradition of international observers in the West Bank, who was deliberately killed while she was peacefully observing. I want to uplift what the family has asked for, which is a independent U.S. investigation. We don’t — I don’t want to just rely on the Israeli military to investigate themselves. An American citizen, a member of our community, an American human rights activist who was passionate about the liberation of all peoples, here in the States and abroad, was taken from us. We want an investigation. We want our government to — I want our government to investigate this and to hold the guilty parties accountable. Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Juliette, we’re joined here in New York by another activist who joined those protests in Beita, just as Ayşenur did last week. Amado Sison, not his real name, a pseudonym, is a Filipino American, a Jersey City teacher, who was shot in the leg by Israeli soldiers a month ago today, August 9th, during that protest in Beita, volunteering with the international nonviolent group Faz3a. If you could explain with that is, Amado?

AMADO SISON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And also working with the International Solidarity Movement. In a moment, we’re going to talk with Rachel Corrie’s parents, who was killed 20 years ago, also with the ISM, protesting the Israeli occupation. If you can talk about what happened a month ago, the fact that you, too, were shot, and what the U.S. government has done about this?

AMADO SISON: Yeah. So, to clarify, so, ISM and Faz3a, we both work together in training. We’re two separate organizations. And Ayşenur was part of ISM, and I was part of Faz3a. But we see each other during those protests. So —

AMY GOODMAN: You’re walking with a cane now.

AMADO SISON: Yeah, I’m walking with a cane. They shot me in the leg.

AMY GOODMAN: Why were you protesting in Beita? Explain what it is.

AMADO SISON: Yeah. So, every week, our organizations come to Beita to protest the illegal settlement that was built upon Beita’s land, the Evyatar settlement, I believe. And there’s a Jum’ah prayer that happens. And after the prayer, that’s when the chanting starts. We never got to get to the settlement, for them to return to the land, because tear gas happened. So, they shoot tear gas at us. They shot live rounds at us. We’ve had to hide behind concrete walls. You could see the dust coming off of the concrete wall when the live rounds hit. When they come down, we run.

And then, on that day, we regrouped, and then we were at the foot of the street that goes up to where the watchtower was, where the Israeli army was. We saw them coming down, and we saw Palestinians running from our left, so we ran through the olive groves. So, when I was running, I got shot in the back of my leg. And I thought it was a tear gas canister, because it was a — it felt like a blunt object hit me. But when we got —

AMY GOODMAN: We’re actually showing, for our TV audience —

AMADO SISON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — your leg when you were shot.

AMADO SISON: Yeah, yeah. I only saw that twice. So, yeah, so, when I got to the clearing, the Palestinians raised me up, put me in a pickup truck, got me to the clinic, transferred me to an ambulance. And getting to the hospital, we had two trucks blocking us and then two checkpoints where they demanded to see who was inside, so it delayed my care further. But the Palestinians showed me so much care and love, and I am indebted to them for saving me that day.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Jonathan Pollak, the Israeli activist who held Ayşenur as she died, has taken part in the weekly protests against the settlement in Beita for months. Jonathan couldn’t join us today because he’s taking part in this funeral procession for Ayşenur in Nablus. We spoke to him yesterday, and this is some of what he had to say.

JONATHAN POLLAK: I would just like to say that her death is not an isolated incident. The bullet that was shot at Ayşenur is the exact same bullet that was shot at Amado Sison a few weeks ago, like, hitting him in the leg, another American citizen hurt in exactly the same place. It is the same bullet used by Israeli forces to kill — to kill the people in Nur Shams and in Jenin. And these are the same bullets that killed a 13-year-old girl on the same day that Ayşenur was killed, just a few kilometers to the south. These are the same bullets that Israel uses to perpetrate the genocide in Gaza with complete impunity. And all these bullets are provided to Israel by the American taxpayers’ money. And the one thing that sets this incident apart is that on Friday, American bullets killed an American citizen. And this is why we hear of it now.

But it is really time for this to stop. It is time that Israel is held accountable and is forced to end its colonial regime over Palestinians and ensure Palestinian liberation. Now, that kill shot — and this soldier took a kill shot — was meant to convey a message. And that message is that any sort of Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonialism will not be tolerated, whether it be Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation or solidarity activists standing with Palestinians as they fight for liberation. And however violent the Israeli message is going to be, our message to the Israelis is that, no matter what, we will continue to stand with Palestinians in the struggle for liberation.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak, who held Ayşenur as she died. She was there then. He went in the ambulance with her to the hospital in Nablus. He described to us also how this was after the weekly protest that they hold, this weekly protest every Friday. And they were done. It was very calm, when Ayşenur was shot in the head. Amado Sison, just staying with you for a moment, you were shot a month ago. What did the — you’re a U.S. citizen. You’re a teacher in Jersey City. What did the U.S. government do? Did you speak to the U.S. Embassy?

AMADO SISON: Yeah, so, it was just the U.S. Embassy. They reached out when I got shot.

AMY GOODMAN: In Israel?

AMADO SISON: Yeah. And we filed a report, don’t have any updates about what that turned into. I did give them a report, as well, consent. But no State Department, no politicians, nobody has reached out to me. And what I think is, if they took it seriously that a U.S. citizen was shot a month ago, maybe Ayşenur would be here right now.

AMY GOODMAN: So, did the ambassador or staff come to you in the hospital? Did the State Department here speak to you when you returned, shot in the leg?

AMADO SISON: No, nothing. I heard nothing from them.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve demanded an investigation?

AMADO SISON: I demand an investigation now for when I was shot, for, you know, Ayşenur’s murder, an independent U.S. investigation, because what the Israel report was was it was a mistake shooting me. Mistakes usually come from above and down. They shot me through my right thigh all the way through.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, they said they shot in the air.

AMADO SISON: They said it was a mistake. So, I don’t know what a mistake would be when you’re pointing and shooting straight through someone’s thigh. So, I don’t know what they’re going to conclude about Ayşenur, but I know that if they investigate themselves, they will find a way to cover it up. So, I want to uplift her family’s demands, as well.