news Israeli soldiers fatally shoot 26-year-old American woman in the head at protest

[LIT]

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NABLUS, West Bank (AP) — Israeli soldiers killed an American woman demonstrating against settlements in the West Bank on Friday, two protesters who witnessed the shooting told The Associated Press. Two doctors said she was shot in the head.

The U.S. government confirmed the death of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi of Seattle — a recent graduate of the University of Washington — but did not say whether she had been shot by Israeli troops. The White House said in a statement that it was "deeply disturbed" by the killing of a U.S. citizen and called on Israel to investigate what happened.

Eygi was also a Turkish citizen, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said, adding that the country would exert "all effort to ensure that those who killed our citizen is brought to justice."

The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an "instigator of violent activity" in the area of the protest.

Eygi was attending a weekly demonstration against settlement expansion, protests that have grown violent in the past: A month ago, American citizen Amado Sison was shot in the leg by Israeli forces, he said, as he tried to flee tear gas and live fire.

Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli who was participating in Friday's protest, said the shooting occurred shortly after dozens of Palestinians and international activists held a communal prayer on a hillside outside the northern West Bank town of Beita overlooking the Israeli settlement of Evyatar.

Soldiers surrounded the prayer, and clashes soon broke out, with Palestinians throwing stones and troops firing tear gas and live ammunition, Pollak said.

The protesters and activists, including Pollak and the Eygi, retreated from the hill and the clashes subdued, he said. He then watched as two soldiers standing on the roof of a nearby home trained a gun in the group's direction and shot at them. He saw the flares leave the nozzle of the gun when the shots rang out. He said Eygi was about 10 or 15 meters (yards) behind him when the shots were fired.

He then saw her "lying on the ground, next to an olive tree, bleeding to death," he said.

Mariam Dag, another ISM activist at the protest, also said she saw an Israeli soldier on a rooftop. Dag said she then heard the firing of two live bullets. One ricocheted off something metal and hit a Palestinian protester in the leg; the other hit Eygi, who had moved back into an olive grove, she said. Dag said she ran toward the fallen woman and saw blood coming from her head.

"The shots were coming from the direction of the army. They were not coming from anywhere else," she said.

Eygi had just arrived in the West Bank on Tuesday, Dag said. "This was our first day on the ground together. She was very happy and very excited this morning to start. She was really keen on coming to the demonstration." 

"This has been happening to Palestinians for decades. This happened because of the impunity which the Israelis act with," including help from Western governments, she said. Before Friday's shooting, ISM said 17 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces at the weekly Beita protests since March 2020.

At the University of Washington, where Eygi recently graduated with a degree in psychology, President Ana Mari Cauce released a statement in which she recalled Eygi as a mentor to her peers who "helped welcome new students to the department and provided a positive influence in their lives." Eygi also took courses on the languages and cultures of the Middle East.

Two doctors confirmed Eygi was shot in the head — Dr. Ward Basalat, who administered first aid at the scene, and Dr. Fouad Naffa, director of Rafidia Hospital in the nearby city of Nablus where she was taken. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was "intensely focused" on determining what happened and that "we will draw the necessary conclusions and consequences from that."

In a written statement shared on X, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said it condemned "this murder carried out by" the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At least three activists from the International Solidarity Movement have been killed since 2000. ISM activists often place themselves between Israeli forces and Palestinians to try to stop the Israeli military from carrying out operations. 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.

It's also one of a handful of cases in which apparent Israeli fire killed Americans inside the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Neither American nor Israeli authorities have released findings into investigations into the twin killings of two Palestinian-American teens, Mohammad Khdour and Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, shot in the span of a month while driving down dirt roads close to their villages in the northern West Bank.

Palestinian officials said the killing reflected Israel's intensified repression of Palestinian protests in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Israeli forces rarely use live ammunition to put down protests inside Israel. But in the West Bank, Palestinian demonstrations are frequently met with live fire.

Hussein Al-Sheikh, the secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, wrote on X that the killing marked "another crime added to the series of crimes committed daily by the occupation forces."

Settlements are overwhelmingly viewed by the international community as illegal under international law.

The settlement of Evyatar was initially an outpost unrecognized under Israeli law but was legalized by the Israeli cabinet in July, in a move the far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said was in response to recognition of Palestinian statehood by a number of countries.

Israeli fire has killed over 690 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, Palestinian health officials say. In that time, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis in the territory have also increased. 

Full article: https://apnews.com/article/american-shot-killed-west-bank-israel-palestinians-b2f1c741cea3d56eb1a339240dbf036e?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share

[welham]

You don't understand, this is just part of the Dems' 8D chess game to stop the genocide after the election! Why is killing Palestinians until then all that bad??? Pls die (silently) in peace. Harris is actually supporting Palestinians, the "leaked" reports prove it. Saying no to torn limbs of Palestinians being carried around in plastic bags while Israelis cheer on it online is one-issue voting anyways. 

Edited September 6 by welham

[Cesar]

4 minutes ago, welham said:

You don't understand, this is just part of the Dems' 8D chess game to stop the genocide after the election! Why is killing Palestinians until then all that bad??? Pls die (silently) in peace. Harris is actually supporting Palestinians, the "leaked" reports prove it. Saying no to torn limbs of Palestinians being carried around in plastic bags while Israelis cheer on it online is one-issue voting anyways. 

what leaked reports (genuinely asking)

[Virgos Groove]

If the US actually cared about its citizens, the Israeli ambassador would have to sleep in Toronto with warm ears. Instead, Biden will probably ship them some extra weapons...

 

But don't you dare call out Dems. Don't split the party! Unity in... *checks notes* ...genocide!

Edited September 6 by Virgos Groove

[BrokenMachine]

They're just defending themselves, send them more weapons 

Edited September 6 by BrokenMachine

[réveuse]

May this poor woman rest in peace. This is another Rachel Corrie.

 

Didn't Biden say that when Americans are killed, he will take action? Where is he now?

 

The American and Israeli governments are both foul.

[brazil]

I wonder if Biden and Kamala will say Palestinians in the West Bank have a "right to defend themselves"?

[Communion]

It should terrify and make every American question why both parties support Israelis killing us as Americans. Why is our government sacrificing us as Americans for a foreign vassal state?

[CroNich]

@Joe Biden 

 

where is the action? 

[IBeMe]

Will Doug Emhoff, Kamala, Blinken and Biden speak passionately about an American citizen dying or will they ignore her like the dozens of other American citizens killed by Israel? 

[Communion]

9 hours ago, IBeMe said:

Will Doug Emhoff, Kamala, Blinken and Biden speak passionately about an American citizen dying or will they ignore her like the dozens of other American citizens killed by Israel? 

The unhinged liberal response to the below tweet from a UK Youtuber reacting to the news of *multiple* American citizens nearly killed or killed by Israel in the last 2 weeks is.. insane. 

 

All while Zionists are now doing weird racism against... Turkish Americans, while Israeli settlers are falsely framed and paraded around by American politicians:

 

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Notice how all these Zionist shills are taking extra steps to call Aysenur Ezgi Eygi a "Turkish American." The not-so-subtle implication being she's not a "real" American. 

 

Never mind that she actually lived IN America, went to school IN America, and all her family is IN America, they're going to do everything they can to suggest she was much less American than you or I. 

 

Now juxtapose that with how they all talk about Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Hersh had not lived IN America since he was a small child. He had no connection to our country whatsoever besides his passport and yet Barack Ravid only identifies him as "the American hostage." Not the Israeli-American. Just the American. 

 

Pay attention to the ways these language deviations are used to influence whose death you should care about and whose death you should just let go.

 

[Communion]

Like the sheer silence and endorsement from Democrats and Republicans of the right for Israel to kill American citizens indiscriminately is just.. breath-taking??

 

This is what happens as a direct result of Trump-Biden-Harris continuing to give arms to Israel - the killing of American citizens.

 

Aysenur is dead because of Joe Biden. 

 

 

 

 

[SmittenCake]

I thought biden said he'll protect all Americans 

[LIT]

 

[LIT]

May he (Biden) burn in hell.

[Donquizote]

Yikes. This country is really something else and the world will keep silent on their war crime

[State of Grace.]

1 hour ago, LIT said:

May he (Biden) burn in hell.

Imagine her family reading this. I can't ******* wait for this ghoul to DIE

[Communion]