Remembering Ezgi

… we are the fire, we are burning for a future to believe in.

–Aysenur Ezgi Eygi

Even I had forgotten. As recently as October 7th, 2023, it’s challenging to keep a record of everyone who has been murdered by the State of Israel. If you have to go back to 1948, when the killings really started, it’s impossible.

Just over a year ago, on September 6th, activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi or Ezgi as she was known to those around her, became yet another victim of the Israeli murder machine known as the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). She was shot in the head by an IDF sniper. Ezgi was protesting against illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). At the time, violent settler activity had started to intensify in the occupied West Bank, even as an outright genocide raged in Gaza.

Ezgi, a Turkish-American, was only 26 years old. She started protesting in high school and helped in the formation of the early anti-Trump movement by leading student walkouts in Seattle in 2016 after his first election victory. At the time, she wrote in an International Socialist Alternative (ISA) publication article, “This election has sparked a flame, and we are the fire, we are burning for a future to believe in.” Later that year, she participated in protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in Standing Rock.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi’s activism continued while studying at the University of Washington. She became involved with the BDS movement and participated in the Gaza solidarity encampments. Participation in these protests naturally led to her volunteering in the West Bank. A recent documentary by TRT World chronicles her life, activism, and the ultimate sacrifice she made for the ideals in which she believed.

Ezgi was not the first activist to be murdered by the IDF. Over the past 20 years, there have been several other murders of activists, starting in 2003 with Rachel Corrie. She was crushed to death by an IDF military bulldozer in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, while trying to prevent a Palestinian civilian’s house from being demolished. Also in 2003, Welsh journalist and activist James Henry Miller was murdered by the Israeli military in Gaza while filming a documentary for the BBC.

In 2004, British peace activist Tom Hurndall was shot in the head in Rafah by an Israeli sniper while shielding a Palestinian child from gunfire. In 2010, the Israeli navy assaulted a Turkish ship carrying 750 human rights activists from 37 countries, resulting in ten deaths. They were carrying humanitarian aid and medicines for the Gaza population, who were under blockade by Israel.

In 2022, Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist on assignment by Al Jazeera, was shot and killed by the IDF while covering an Israeli military raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli government at first denied involvement but were later exposed as liars… as they invariably are after investigation.

In many of these cases, as with Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, the Israeli government claims that the incident was a “tragic mistake.” They promise to investigate themselves and unsurprisingly find themselves not responsible. It’s been like that for every murder of journalists, aid workers, and medical and ambulance staff since October 7th.

It’s shocking that a country that makes so many “tragic mistakes” continues to be unaccountable and apparently beyond reproach. However, it’s hardly surprising when you realise that the support, both military and diplomatic, from the West is rock solid.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu often quotes Amalek from the bible to justify his war crimes. I wonder if he also paraphrases from Romans 8:31 as he blesses his immense good luck, “If the West is for us, who can be against us?”