IDF intentionally killed American peace activist, witnesses say
This is par for the course with Israeli forces when looking at similar stories
A Turkish-American, 26-year-old Aysenur Eygi, was deliberately killed on Friday by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), according to witnesses to the event.
Eygi was protesting illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank when she was killed. Graphic video was shared on Twitter that appears to show Eygi after her death with a bullet to her head.
“An American woman was killed Friday in the occupied West Bank, the State Department said. Two witnesses said the woman was shot in the head by Israeli forces who had opened fire.
The woman, Aysenur Eygi, a 26-year-old volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian activist group, had been attending a protest of Jewish settlement expansion in the town of Beita when she was shot, her colleagues said. Copies of her passport that circulated online said she was born in Turkey, and the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement that she was a citizen.
The Israel Defense Forces said it was ‘looking into reports that a foreign national was killed as a result of shots fired in the area.’ The statement said that Israeli forces in the area of Beita, in the northern West Bank, ‘responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them.’”
Jonathan Pollak, also an ISM volunteer, was one of those witnesses. In a video shot shortly after Eygi’s death, Pollak described the event:
“There were two shots fired from the rooftop. I've been doing this for 20 years. I know the difference in sound between tear gas, rubber coated bullets live ammunition. These were two separate shots of live ammunition shot one after the other. The first one hit the metal object and then a young man from the village in his thigh. And then I heard another shot, and then I heard people call my name in English. I found her lying on the ground beside the tree bleeding from her head. I put my hand under her head to try and stop the bleeding. I took her pulse, she had a very weak pulse. We called the ambulance. From there, we evacuated her to the village’s medical center where the doctor came into the ambulance and continued into the to the hospital where they tried to resuscitate her but failed….
What happened today is no accident. It is the continuation of the killing of 17 of Beita’s residents during demonstrations since 2021. It is an intentional killing that is now receiving the light of day because she is an American citizen. It was an intentional killing.”
In a later video, Pollak described the events leading up to the clash.
The event has led to wildly different reactions from American officials compared to Turkish officials, the two countries Eygi has called home.
In the U.S., Secretary Antony Blinken offered his “deepest condolences” to Eygi’s family as opposed to this Turkish statement: “We condemn this murder committed by the (Benjamin) Netanyahu government.”
Even more alarming than Blinken’s statement was the response from Randy Fine, a Florida Republican state representative who outright supported a foreign government intentionally shooting a peaceful American citizen.
Fine has been a longtime advocate for the destruction of the First Amendment to fight the phantom scourge of increased antisemitism that does not exist.
This is just the latest story that shows that the IDF targeting civilians, including Americans, is par for the course.
