Category: Press Releases

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.”

Press Release: Israeli army kills American International Solidarity Movement volunteer during demonstration in Beita, Nablus

Media enquiries: ismtraining [at] riseup.net

During the weekly demonstration in Beita, Palestine, on the morning of September 6th, 2024, the Israeli army intentionally shot and killed an International Solidarity Movement (ISM) human rights activist named Ayşenur Eygi.

The demonstration, which primarily involved men and children praying, was met with force from the Israeli army stationed on a hill. Initially, the army fired a large amount of tear gas and then began using live ammunition. Ayşenur, who we consider a martyr in the struggle, was the 18th demonstrator to be killed in Beita since 2020. She was an American citizen of Turkish descent.

The Israeli forces fired two rounds. One hit a Palestinian man in the leg, injuring him. The other round was fired at international human rights activists who were observing the demonstration, striking a human rights activist in the head. Eygi died shortly after being transported to a local hospital in Nablus.

Fellow ISM volunteer Mariam Dag (a pseudonymn) was on the scene, and witnessed the fatal injury of her comrade. She said:

“We were peacefully demonstrating alongside Palestinians against the colonisation of their land, and the illegal settlement of Evyatar. The situation escalated when the Israeli army began to fire tear gas and live ammunition, forcing us to retreat. We were standing on the road, about 200 meters from the soldiers, with a sniper clearly visible on the roof. Our fellow volunteer was standing a bit further back, near an olive tree with some other activists. Despite this, the army intentionally shot her in the head.

This is just another example of the decades of impunity granted to the Israeli government and army, bolstered by the support of the US and European governments, who are complicit in enabling genocide in Gaza. Palestinians have suffered far too long under the weight of colonization. We will continue to stand in solidarity and honor the martyrs until Palestine is free.”

A friend of the slain human rights activist and fellow volunteer with the ISM who does not wish their name released said:

“I don’t know how to say this. There’s no easy way. I wish I could [say] something eloquent, but I can’t through my sobbing tears…. my friend, comrade and travel partner to Palestine, was just shot in the head and murdered by the Israeli Occupation Forces. May she rest in power. She is now one of many martyrs in this struggle.”

Beita is a village in the West Bank where just weeks ago Amado Sison, another American volunteer, was struck by live ammunition in the back of the leg. Beita has a long history of resistance against Israeli occupation and has been a focal point of violence directed towards Palestinian residents by Israeli forces. Located near several illegal Israeli settlements, the village holds regular demonstrations. Due to escalating aggression by the Israeli forces, residents are currently refraining from marching or chanting, instead gathering together on the land and praying.

In recent years, Beita has seen ongoing demonstrations, particularly against the construction of new illegal Israeli outposts on the lands of the village. For example Evyatar outpost, on Sabih Mountain, has been established on Palestinian land. In June, the Israeli security cabinet approved the ‘legalization’ of Evyatar, causing the people of Beita to strengthen their popular resistance.

Residents of Beita recently restarted weekly Friday demonstrations to resist the further theft of their land. While protests had nearly ceased since October 7th 2023, due to escalating violence from Israeli occupation forces, there was a renewed push on July 5th 2024, when dozens of Palestinians, accompanied by international and Israeli activists, marched from the adjacent mountain, through the valley, and towards the outpost.

In recent months, international activists have experienced a sharp increase in violence from Israeli forces and the occupation must be held accountable for this. The woman martyred today was an activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led organization that provides protective presence and solidarity in the West Bank. The ISM was founded in 2002, and has maintained a steady presence in Palestine ever since, supporting the Palestinian popular struggle against the occupation.

Our comrade is added to the 17 Palestinian protesters already slain in Beita:

**Palestinian demonstrators martyred in Beita**
– Mohammed Hamayyel, 15 (March 11, 2020)
– Islam Dwikat, 22 (April 9, 2020)
– Karam Amin Dwikat, 17 (October 15, 2023)
– Issa Sliman Barham, 40 (May 14, 2021)
– Tareq Ommar Snobar, 27 (May 16, 2021)
– Zakaria Maher Hamayyel, 25 (May 28, 2021)
– Mohammed Said Hamayyel, 15 (June 11, 2021)
– Ahmad Zahi Bani Shamsa, 15 (June 16, 2021)
– Shadi Ommar Sharafa, 41 (July 27, 2021)
– Imad Ali Dwikat, 38 (August 6, 2021)
– Mohammed Ali Khbeissa, 27 (September 24, 2021)
– Jamil Jamal Abu Ayyash, 32 (December 1, 2021)
– Fawaz Ahmad Hamayyel, 47 (April 13, 2022)
– Immad Jareh Bani Shamsa, 16 (October 9, 2023)
– Mohammed Ibrahim Adili, 13 (November 23, 2023)
– Maath Ashraf Bani Shamsa, 17 (February 9, 2024)
– Ameed Ghaleb Said al-Jaroub, 34 (March 22, 2024, died of a bullet wound injury to the head sustained on August 21, 2023)

At this time, the family will not be granting any interviews. Please contact ISM for media requests at ismtraining [at] riseup.net

Notes for journalists:

  • Some media reports have repeated false claims that ISM activists threw rocks during the peaceful demonstration in Beita. All eye witness accounts refute this claim. Aysenur was more than 200 meters away from where the Israeli soldiers were, and there were no confrontations there at all in the minutes before she was shot. Regardless, from such distance, neither she, nor anyone else could have possibly been perceived as posing any threat. She was killed in cold blood.
  • Statement issued by Beita municipality regarding the martyrdom of the foreign solidarity activist on Mount Sabih
  • Statement from Aysenur’s family

Israeli Settlers in the West Bank Brutally Attack and Injure Palestinians and International Volunteers Only One Day After ICJ Rules Israeli Occupation Illegal

The German volunteer after being attacked by settlers.

On the heels of the ICJ decision pronouncing Israeli occupation illegal as a whole and pointing out to systematic lack of accountability for settler violence, three international volunteers were evacuated to a hospital in Nablus after being attacked by settlers in the West Bank village of Qusra, south of Nablus. Israeli authorities on location failed to arrest the assailants.

Settlers who descended from the extremist Esh Kodesh south of Nablus, attacked Palestinian farmers tending to their lands, as well as international volunteers accompanying them for protection against such attacks. The Israeli settlers carried out the attack using metal pipes, batons and threw stones at the people from close range. Three of the international volunteers sustained wounds requiring hospitalization with suspected fractures. A German national was hit in the face and arm with a metal pipe, and two American volunteers were clobbered using wooden batons. A fourth American volunteer suffered more minor injuries after being hit by stones thrown at her by the settlers, who also stole her phone.

Soldiers who arrived at the scene failed to carry out any arrests. Additionally, the Israeli Police emergency hotline refused to dispatch forces, telling the volunteer who called them for help that “the army notified them there is no need to send forces.”

For more details: Jonathan Pollak +972-50-3010160; jonathan@defendpalestine.org
A Video of the assault is available here (You might need to to save the file to your device in order to view it)

The volunteers who were attacked were part of the recently-launched Defend Palestine campaign, organized by Palestinian grassroots organizers. The campaign calls on international volunteers to come to the West Bank en mass and be part of an organized international protective presence.

Mohammed Khatib, an organizer with the campaign said, “The attack today, not even 24 hours after the ICJ ruled that Israeli occupation is illegal and that settlers enjoy impunity when exercising violence, serves as further proof for the dire need for international civil protection in Palestine. 18 communities in the West Bank have been completely wiped out by such violence since October, and the Palestinian people have no more time to wait.”

The village of Qusra, surrounded by the settlement of Migdalim and settler outposts of Esh Kodesh, Bar Farm, Ahiya and Kida, has been the target of nearly daily attacks by Israeli settlers who attack villagers, vandalize farms and have even burnt several houses in the village with complete impunity. On October 11, four villagers were killed following such an attack and two more were killed in a subsequent attack the following day, on October 12.

The attack today took place as farmers were accompanied to their olive groves adjacent to the Israeli Esh Kodesh settlement by international volunteers. Unchecked settler violence has prevented farmers from accessing these groves and much more of their land since October. Despite these being privately owned lands in Area B, Israeli authorities have not made any attempt to reign in the settlers or act in any way to allow Palestinians to their lands.