Category: Press Releases

For Immediate Release: Israel targets internationals to facilitate ongoing crimes against Palestinians

*Photo: Portrait of Michael Jacobsen provided to the ISM.*

October 10, 2024 – Masafer Yatta | Israeli forces arbitrarily arrested 78 year old US citizen.

Veteran Michael Jacobsen was accompanying a Palestinian farmer this morning in the village At-Tuwani in Masafer Yatta (South Hebron Hills), in occupied Palestine, as part of the international delegation Meta Peace Team, which joined the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

When Israeli reservist soldiers came to demand IDs from the activists and Palestinian landowners, Jacobsen complied with the soldiers’ requests. The soldiers called the Israeli police, who arrested him and took him to the Israeli Central Unit for Investigation, which is near the Ma’ale Adumim colonial settlement in the occupied West Bank. This interrogation center is home to the special task force created by the notorious Israeli Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. The task force was created as a response to some states, including the U.S., sanctioning violent settlers. Since international activists were reporting settler violence that they witnessed to their governments, an Israeli governmental committee was created in March 2024 for the purpose of getting rid of the activists.

Jacobsen’s lawyer was told that he was suspected of “endangering the public due to provocation of disturbances” and of “entering the country illegally”; this absurd suspicion was based on the police’s assertion that Jacobsen supported the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanction movement (BDS). The police could not explain to Mr. Jacobsen’s attorney how this was a criminal offense. Mr. Jacobsen was threatened with imprisonment and deportation if he did not leave the country immediately. Michael opted to leave, and the police transferred him directly from the interrogation center to the border with Jordan.

Israeli forces have intensified their crackdown on international activists and journalists: two German activists were arrested in the same garden in At-Tuwani in similar circumstances and de-facto deported last Sunday October 6th, after being imprisoned since October 2nd. This effort aims to isolate Palestinians from international solidarity, and is part of the ongoing barrage of harassment by Israeli settlers and soldiers of Palestinians and of human rights activists in the area. The effort also includes the murder of American and Turkish ISM volunteer Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi in the village of Beita during a peaceful protest against settlement expansion on the village’s land on September 6th.

It is worth mentioning that the Palestinian farmer whom the activists were accompanying faces daily harassment, attacks, and invasions of his private land by Israeli settlers and occupation forces, which all make it difficult for him to access his land, to cultivate it, and even to remain in his home.

This onslaught of harassment against Palestinian residents of the region of Masafer Yatta extends beyond At-Tuwani. Every village in the area is affected. In the village of Zanuta in this same region, residents have been forcibly displaced multiple times despite a court ruling in their favor. Residents of Um Durit have had their livestock and property stolen and destroyed, and their land abused by settlers. Last July, around 200 settlers launched a coordinated attack in which they destroyed vehicles, burned fruit trees and beat up residents in Khalet Al Daba’a and Um Fagarah. In the past year, at least 19 Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank have been forcefully displaced and wiped off the map by Israeli settlers, with the support of the Israeli occupation forces.

The nonsensical allegations aimed at International Human Rights Defenders would be laughable if they were not lethal. For similar vague and unsubstantiated accusations, Palestinians are frequently arrested and tortured in the West Bank, and in Gaza the accused are murdered along with their families.

*Photo: Moments before Michael Jacobsen’s arrest, At-Tuwani, Masafer Yatta, October 10.*

For Immediate Release: The State of Israel vs. Activists

Israeli colonial settlers and Knesset Members celebrated on social media the de facto deportation of two German citizens, who were imprisoned by the Israeli authorities, from the occupied Palestinian territories to Jordan on Sunday October 6th. Itamar Ben Gvir and Tzvi Sukot posted about the expulsion of German activists as an achievement for their special task force and governmental committee, which was created to deal with what they call “dangerous anarchists” in the West Bank. Israel’s criminal right wing government uses the term “anarchists” to refer to all Israeli and international human rights defenders who are supporting Palestinians living under illegal occupation in the West Bank.

According to eyewitnesses, on the morning of October 2, the two activists were arbitrarily arrested by Israeli forces in Masafer Yatta (South Hebron Hills) as they accompanied a Palestinian farmer to his garden in the village of Tuwani. The Palestinian farmer they were accompanying faces daily harassment, attacks, and invasions of his private land by Israeli settlers and occupation forces, which all make it difficult for him to access his land, to cultivate it, and even to remain in his home. Police claimed in court that the activists had entered a settlement, confronted a soldier and disturbed him in fulfilling his duty. These claims contradict video footage of the arrest.

The onslaught of harassment against Palestinian residents of the region of Masafer Yatta extends beyond Tuwani. Every village in the area is affected. In the village of Zanuta in this same region, residents have been forcibly displaced multiple times despite a court ruling in their favor. Residents of Um Durit have had their livestock and property stolen and destroyed, and their land abused by settlers. Last July, around 200 settlers launched a coordinated attack in which they destroyed vehicles, burned fruit trees and beat up residents in Khalet Al Daba’a and Um Fagarah. In the past year, at least 19 Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank have been forcefully displaced by Israel settlers with the support of the Israeli occupation forces.

The activists were transferred to the central unit in the occupied West Bank near the Malleh Adumim colonial settlement. The police illegally broke into the phone of one of the activists and questioned them about photos on their phones of signs and stickers condemning the genocide in Gaza and supporting Palestinian rights. The police alleged that this proved that they supported terror and were terrorists. They were also questioned on whether they knew about the International Solidarity movement (ISM), and were shown a presentation on the organization with pictures of Israelis and internationals and asked if they knew them.

The activists were taken to court and accused of three offenses: disturbing a police officer/soldier performing his responsibilities, membership in an illegal association, and “sympathizing and identifying with a terror organization”. According to the police, the illegal association they are members of is ISM, which they claimed has been designated as forbidden to work in Israel and the West Bank.

It is important to note that while many respectable human rights organizations have been designated as terror organizations by Israel, the ISM has not yet been designated as forbidden, nor has any international ISM activist ever been indicted and charged with a crime in Israeli courts.

The German citizens were imprisoned in harsh conditions from Wednesday to Sunday and then given the option of leaving through the King Hussein bridge, and they are now in Jordan. For similar vague and unsubstantiated accusations, Palestinians are frequently arrested and tortured in the West Bank, and in Gaza the accused are murdered along with their families.

This most recent set of arrests is part of the ongoing barrage of harassment by Israeli settlers and soldiers of Palestinians and of human rights activists in area, and comes in the wake of the murder of ISM volunteer Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi in the village of Beita during a protest against settlement expansion on the village’s land.

Press Release: ISM Response to US State Dept Criticism of Israeli Investigation into Killing of Ayşenur Eygi

Ayşenur’s fellow activists honor her life and add to her memorial in the very spot she was martyred in Beita

September 18, 2024

Media inquiries: palreports [at] gmail.com

Ten days after US citizen Ayşenur Eygi, a human rights activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier while witnessing a protest in the West Bank, the US State Department finally suggested that trusting Israel to investigate itself may not produce accurate results. This conclusion may not have required ten full days of deliberation had the US government heeded what Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups have been proclaiming loudly and clearly for years: the Israeli military cannot be trusted to investigate itself.

This year alone, reports from NPR and the Associated Press have shown that Israeli military investigations are inadequate; NPR detailed how questions of misconduct are met with confidential “operational inquiries” wherein no evidence is collected and soldiers can coordinate their testimony, while the AP detailed case-by-case the lack of transparency, inconclusiveness and rare admissions of guilt in Israel’s investigations of military misconduct. Relating how ISM activist Rachel Corrie’s death at the hands of an Israeli bulldozer still hasn’t been subject to a thorough, credible and transparent investigation, Rachel’s parents Cindy and Craig Corrie summed it up best: “Israel does not do investigations; they do cover-ups.”

Without regard to these serious liabilities, the US State Department continues to allow Israel to manage the investigation, promising other action “if those results aren’t satisfactory.” Meanwhile, Eygi’s family has been calling for an independent investigation since the day Eygi was murdered, along with the ISM and the parents of US citizen Rachel Corrie, who was also killed by the Israeli military. In the two days since the State Department’s criticisms of Israel’s investigation, there has been no change in the status quo and the US continues to send weapons to Israel to be used in Gaza and in the West Bank against Palestinians.

It is crucial to understand Ayşenur’s murder in the context of Israel’s oppressive colonial regime. In the West Bank this year, in a dramatic escalation, the Israeli military has wrought mass destruction and displaced many refugees in the camps, destroyed infrastructure with the goal of displacing all the residents of the camps, killed 17 Palestinians on the same hill where Ayşenur was shot dead, and murdered 13-year-old Bana Laboum in her own home on the same day. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers have perpetrated coordinated assaults on villagers and their property with the allowance and even assistance of the military.

By counting on the Israeli military to continue an investigation that they cannot be trusted to carry out impartially and truthfully, the US remains complicit in Israel’s ongoing crimes against humanity.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: ISM Response to Pres Biden 11 Sept 24 Statement on the Murder of Aysenur Eygi

Israeli Army Push Back Press at Demonstration in Beita, — Israeli soldier harassing the press. July 19, Beita.

Media enquiries: ismtraining [at] riseup.net

On 11 September 2024, President Biden claimed to be “outraged” and “deeply saddened” by Israel’s murder of our comrade Aysenur Eygi, but his actions tell a very different story. While he described the shooting as “unacceptable,” he is refusing the family’s demand for an independent, transparent investigation and continuing to trust the murderers to investigate themselves. Aysenur’s family and the ISM have been clear that we have no confidence in any Israeli investigation, given the Israeli army’s longstanding practice of using investigations as exculpatory coverups. We continue to demand a transparent and independent investigation.

For the United States government to accept the results of Israel’s internal military investigations is a complete dereliction of the US government’s responsibility to its own citizens, but it is nothing new. In 2003, the US did nothing to hold the Israeli killers of Rachel Corrie responsible for that murder. In recent years, the US has done nothing when Palestinian Americans, like Shireen Abu Akleh, have been murdered by Israel. President Biden is pursuing business as usual and allowing Israel to continue to kill both US Citizens and Palestinians with total impunity.

President Biden’s disrespect for Aysenur’s family and community extends even further. Although Aysenur’s family is mourning the death of a US citizen, his administration has yet to pick up the phone and call the family to offer condolences. He asserts that he will remain in contact with Israeli and Palestinian authorities but is unwilling to communicate with the ordinary people who were closest to Aysenur.

In his statement, President Biden asserts that he treats “violent extremist Israeli settlers” and “Palestinian terrorists” equally and implies that the violence in the West Bank is equally the fault of both groups. Both assertions are false. President Biden’s administration arms the violent Israeli extremists, as ISM volunteers can testify to based on our extensive experience doing protective presence work in the West Bank face to face with Israeli settlers armed with US weapons. These are the same weapons that make the US complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As long as the US continues to send weapons to Israel to kill Palestinians, in Gaza as well as in the West Bank, the US is sustaining the violent extremism of the Israeli settlers and the Israeli government. Meanwhile, President Biden’s false equivalence between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank elides the fact that the current violence has its roots in over a hundred years of settler colonial terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and now genocide, all perpetrated by Israel. Contrary to what President Biden asserts, it is Zionist colonization that is the obstacle to peace.

Ultimately, it is hypocritical for President Biden to attempt to change the focus to Israeli settlers alone, given that the Israeli army killed Aysenur with weapons likely provided by the Biden administration, which is fully aware that they are used to attack people protesting or witnessing demonstrations against illegal settlements. As one American ISM volunteer who wishes to remain anonymous says, “When I was detained by the Israeli army for my nonviolent work with ISM, everything I saw in the army van was stamped with ‘made in the USA’ or ‘property of the USA.'” As Amado Sison, another American citizen shot by Israel in August during the weekly demonstrations in Beita noted, “The money I pay in my taxes as a teacher probably funded the bullet they have run through me.” President Biden and his administration are complicit in Aysenur’s death and his statement today attempts to elide what the whole world knows: Israel’s violence is funded, sustained, supported, and endorsed by the US. Honoring Aysenur’s memory requires a complete change of policy, starting with an independent, transparent investigation and extending to an arms embargo.

ISM Response to Israeli Army Statement on the Murder of Aysenur Eygi

View of Israeli army on the road and on the house’s roof on 6th September 2024

September 10, 2024 – For immediate release

Media inquiries: ismtraining [at] riseup.net

On Friday, September 6, Turkish-American human rights activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) Aysenur Eygi was killed by a single shot to the head from an Israeli sniper while witnessing a demonstration against the illegal Israeli settlement of Evyatar on Beita’s lands. After a brief internal investigation conducted by the Israeli army itself, the Israeli army has released a statement asserting that “the inquiry found that it is highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her.” The ISM entirely rejects this specious claim and continues to demand an independent investigation of the Israeli army’s killing of our comrade Aysenur Eygi. ISM is joined in this demand by people worldwide who have watched Israel operate with impunity for decades. The world sees through this transparent attempt to conceal the Israeli army’s responsibility for the death of Aysenur Eygi, who is just one of the hundreds of thousands of martyrs Israel has killed over decades of ethnic cleansing, displacement, and genocide.

The military’s account of the events is blindly based on the accomplices’ version, which completely contradicts the testimonies of multiple eyewitnesses, who the military did not even contact. All eyewitnesses said immediately following the killing that the scene where Aysenur was killed was completely quiet and that there could have been no excuse to open fire, let alone directly hitting a woman peacefully standing in an olive grove.

According to activists who were present when Aysenur was killed, the Israeli army’s brief statement “includes an array of evident falsehoods, clearly indicating how its investigation is concerned with deflecting fault and avoiding any sort of accountability.” These falsehoods include:

The military version claims Aysenur was not the target of the kill-shot, but rather that she was hit “indirectly and unintentionally” when a soldier targeted a key instigator. This statement does not align with the physical reality on the ground for several reasons:
- It is unclear what the claim that Aysenur was hit “indirectly” is based on, as there is no forensic evidence to back this up this claim.
- The closest Israeli forces to where Aysenur was when she was shot, were those positioned on a rooftop some 750 feet (220m) away from her, at an elevated position. Considering the distance and the soldiers’ elevation, stones could not have physically been thrown towards the soldiers from the location Aysenur was at when she was shot.
- There were two separate shots fired, with a few seconds in between them. The first shot hit a metal object and shrapnel hit a Palestinian teenager in the pelvis. Had there been any truth to the military’s false narrative of confrontations taking place where and when Aysenur was shot, reason would have it that he was the main instigator the statement is referring to. However, Aysenur was hit by a second shot, several seconds after the teenager was already down. It was aimed directly at her, as there was no one else around (besides an activist standing next to her) who could have been the target of the shot.
- The teenager was located further away to the side from the soldiers than Aysenur, so a shot aimed at him could not have possibly hit her, directly or indirectly.
The statement very manipulatively conflates two events that are separate in time and place. The first event was the one during which short confrontations took place soon after the midday prayer at the top of the hill. It was then and there that a few burning tires were placed on the road. The second event is the shooting of Aysenur, which took place more than half an hour later – when there were no confrontations at all – more than 900 feet (274m) from where the burning tires were, and about 750 feet (220 m) from the rooftop where the soldier who shot her was positioned in an elevated, tactically controlling position.
Aysenur was not shot at the Beita Junction. The Beita Junction is here, while she was shot here. The two locations are more than a mile away from each other (1.16 miles, 1.87km).

The Israeli army has a long history of using sham investigations as a method of covering up their human rights abuses and crimes against humanity in Palestine. According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, from a report published jointly with the Palestine Centre for Human Rights, Israel has long been “unwilling and unable” to investigate its soldiers for attacking peaceful protesters. This history of fake investigations as cover-ups goes back decades and has been documented by B’Tselem and other human rights groups.

When ISM activist Rachel Corrie was killed by the Israeli army in Gaza in 2003, a similar sham investigation swiftly cleared the Israeli forces of all responsibility. Rachel Corrie’s parents have spoken out, demanding a thorough investigation into this case. Warning about another coverup, they have said clearly that if an independent, truthful investigation had been conducted 21 years ago, many lives that have been taken by Israel in the ensuing decades could have been saved. Even U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has said “The killing of the American activist in the West Bank was unjustified and without provocation on her part, and it is not permissible to shoot someone because he participated in a demonstration.”