Execution of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi exposes U.S. hypocrisy, again

Workers World condemns the Israeli murder of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old Turkish-American activist, who was executed by an Israeli sniper on Sept. 6, during a weekly protest against a Zionist settlement expansion in the town of Beita near Nablus on the West Bank. She had recently graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle where she was a respected organizer with the student encampment struggle against the Israeli genocide in Gaza. 

Eygi was a member of the International Solidarity Movement, the same organization that 23-year-old Rachel Corrie belonged to when she was fatally crushed by an Israeli soldier driving an armored military bulldozer in 2003, as she attempted to stop the destruction of a Palestinian family’s home in Gaza. 

The response to this latest execution from the White House, besides calling it a “tragic loss,” was to rely on the Israelis to “investigate” the shooting. That’s like asking the fox to guard the chicken coop. The Eygi family, not trusting the Israelis, is asking that the U.S. government conduct an independent investigation, although the U.S. has never been impartial when it comes to their client state. 

Some Palestinian resistance factions, characterizing Eygi as a martyr for their liberation struggle, are asking the United Nations to conduct its own investigation into the shooting as a war crime. They made a similar request to the U.N. to investigate the murder — also by an Israeli sniper — of the well-known Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May 2022.

Compare the Joe Biden administration’s response to the Eygi killing to that of the recent deaths of six Israeli hostages, including Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, announced on Sept. 1. Biden stated that he was “devastated and outraged.” Then Biden went on to say, “Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes.” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said that the killing of the Israeli hostages was an act of “terrorism.” (Washington Post, Sept. 3) 

No U.S. officials expressed similar sentiments to describe the killing of Eygi or Corrie, both U.S citizens. 

The U.S. response to Eygi’s assassination is like night and day compared to the death of the Israeli hostage. The reason is very simple: Eygi was a pro-Palestine activist and Goldberg-Polin was not. Goldberg-Polin’s parents were allowed to speak before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago while not one Palestinian speaker was invited to take the floor. 

Israel’s biggest ally is U.S. imperialism, which has armed the apartheid state with tens of thousands of tons of bombs and every type of sophisticated weaponry imaginable. These weapons have been used to massacre and wound tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, mainly children and women, in almost a year of ethnic cleansing. Defending his position to defend Israel, Biden has stated that he is a Zionist.

The sniping murder of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, like that of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, is no isolated or accidental incident. These killings are strategic acts by fascist occupiers in an attempt to terrorize anybody who dares to side with the oppressed Palestinian people, who are determined to liberate their homeland from the scourge of white settler colonialism.

But these murders continue to have the opposite effect of building and spreading more resistance and fightback in all forms, advancing the struggle to both free Palestine and to build anti-imperialist solidarity. 

Dedicated activists like Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi will continue to inspire the resistance movement on a global scale to fight on.