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Rachel Corrie's Parents Urge Probe Into Israel's Killing of American Activist Ayşenur Eygi
"There needs to be consequences," said Craig Corrie. "These are American weapons that are being used. That's against U.S. law, and it should be stopped."
Sep 11, 2024
The parents of Rachel Corrie—the American activist crushed to death by a U.S.-supplied Israeli military bulldozer in 2003 in the illegally occupied West Bank—this week called for an independent investigation into the Israel Defense Force's killing last week of a Turkish American Palestine defender who was volunteering in the territory.
Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old who recently graduated from the University of Washington, was volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM)—of which Corrie was a member—when she was shot in the head, allegedly by an IDF sniper, during a demonstration in Beita against Israel's illegal apartheid settlements.
Eyewitnesses said Israeli forces killed Eygi with "a deliberate shot to the head" for no reason.
While admitting that it is "highly likely" that Israeli troops killed the young woman, IDF officials called the killing "unintentional," claiming the fatal shot "was not aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator of... a violent riot in which dozens of Palestinian suspects burned tires and hurled rocks" at occupation forces.
Cindy and Craig Corrie, Rachel's parents, toldThe Guardian Wednesday that Eygi's killing reopened old wounds.
"You feel the ripping apart again of your own family when you know that's happening to another family. There's a hole there that's never going to be filled for each of these families," Craig Corrie told the British newspaper.
"It's very personal," he added. "This one, you know, is very close, and there's so many similarities."
During a Monday interview with Democracy Now! co-host Amy Goodman, Cindy Corrie said news of Eygi's killing was "very disturbing and emotional for us."
"It's a parent's nightmare," she added. "And so, Friday morning, knowing that there was another family... who was getting that same kind of news was just very, very disturbing. And we continue to just feel deeply about what that family is experiencing right now."
U.S. President Joe Biden was widely denounced Tuesday after repeating an IDF claim that Eygi was accidentally killed when a bullet "ricocheted off the ground."
While calling Eygi's killing "totally unacceptable" and "unprovoked and unjustified," Secretary of State Antony Blinken has signaled that there will be no U.S. investigation of the incident, prompting Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—the only Palestinian American member of Congress—to lament that the Israeli military "can kill Americans and get away with it."
Human rights defenders argue that the U.S. government repeatedly fails to hold Israel accountable or demand justice when it kills Americans. In addition to Corrie and Eygi, Israeli occupation forces have killed U.S. citizens including Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, whose killing was deemed intentional by multiple investigations.
An elderly Palestinian American man, Omar Assad, died in January 2022 after Israeli occupation forces dragged him from his vehicle and then blindfolded, gagged, and handcuffed him during a traffic stop in Jiljilya.
No one has been punished for either of these killings.
This year, Israeli forces have killed at least three Americans in the West Bank alone.
As Truthout's Sharon Zhang reported Tuesday:
In January, an Israeli settler and Israeli soldiers killed 17-year-old Tawfiq Ajaq, shooting him in the head while he was on his way to a barbecue in a local grove. Israeli military vehicles prevented an ambulance from reaching him for 15 minutes, and he was pronounced dead on arrival at a medical facility. Ajaq was born in Louisiana, and had only moved to the West Bank nine months prior.
Then, just weeks later, Israeli forces killed Mohammad Khdour, shooting him in the head while he was driving to a hillside where people often held barbecues. Khdour was 17 years old and a senior in high school who hoped to return to the U.S. to study law when he graduated.
"If you're the U.S., you know that there's going to be no accountability from the Israeli side," Bill Van Esveld, the acting Israel/Palestine associate director for Human Rights Watch, told The Guardian. "So the reason [the U.S.] is not pursuing it in cases where there's clear, credible evidence from credible sources of unlawful use of force, lethal force... the only explanation for that is political."
Craig Corrie told Goodman that "it's upsetting to our family to hear our State Department again, and I would expect them to say, that they are trying to find out the facts and looking to Israel for that."
"Israel does not do investigations, they do cover-ups," he stressed.
"Our family worked for an investigation into Rachel's killing, and we wanted some consequences out of that," Corrie added. "And we hoped—even though we didn't know the names of the people that would be killed in the future, we hoped that that would stop and it would not happen."
IDF officials denied intentionally killing Corrie, despite court testimony from army officers that Corrie and other activists were legitimate military targets who were "doomed to death" for resisting Israeli occupation forces during the Second Intifada, or general Palestinian uprising.
The IDF called Corrie's death a "regrettable accident" while blaming the ISM activists for their own harm because they had placed themselves "in a combat zone."
Another ISM campaigner, Tom Hurndall, was shot in the head by an IDF sniper in the West Bank as he attempted to rescue Palestinian children from an Israeli tank that was firing in their direction. The shooting—which occurred a month after Corrie's killing—left Hurndall in a coma; he died nine months later in a hospital in his native Britain. Hurndall's killer was convicted in an Israeli court of manslaughter and served six years of an eight year prison sentence.
While Rachel Corrie once wrote that she felt protected by "the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed U.S. citizen," there were no such difficulties, just as there were no repercussions after Israeli warplanes killed 34 American sailors and wounded 173 others during a 1967 attack on the USS Liberty—an attack numerous top U.S. officials believed was deliberate.
Cindy and Craig Corrie sued Israel over their daughter's killing. Their case was dismissed in 2012, with the presiding judge ruling that the activist's death was the "result of an accident she brought upon herself."
Cindy Corrie told Goodman that Blinken—then a national security adviser to then-Vice President Biden—told them in 2010 that there had "not been a thorough, credible, and transparent investigation" into Rachel's case.
Craig Corrie called for more than just an investigation into Eygi's killing.
"There needs to be consequences," he told Goodman. "These are American weapons that are being used. That's against U.S. law, and it should be stopped."
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Biden Rebuked for 'Outrageous' Comments on Israeli Killing of US Citizen
U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal said that "we cannot simply accept" the Israeli military's claim that its killing of Aysenur Eygi was "an accident."
Sep 11, 2024
U.S. President Joe Biden faced furious backlash on Tuesday after regurgitating the Israeli military's claim that its killing of an American citizen in the occupied West Bank last week was accidental, a narrative that eyewitnesses have denied.
Speaking to reporters, Biden said the killing of 26-year-old human rights activist Aysenur Eygi—a recent graduate of the University of Washington—was "apparently an accident," adding that the bullet that struck her in the head "ricocheted off the ground."
U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) denounced Biden's statement as "unacceptable" and "outrageous."
"We cannot simply accept the IDF's version that this was an 'accident,'" said Jayapal. "We do not know that, it's why we need an independent investigation. What accountability will there be when we keep supplying the weapons against our own laws?"
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said in response to Biden's remarks that "if you are an American, your president not only provides Israel with the bullets that Israel uses to kill you."
"Not only does he not object after Israel has killed you," he continued. "Much worse, he even comes up with insulting excuses to exonerate Israel for murdering you."
The U.S. president's comments mirrored a statement issued earlier Tuesday by the IDF, which said its internal inquiry "found that it is highly likely" that Eygi "was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her" but at another demonstrator whom the Israeli military described as "the key instigator" of a "riot."
"This was no accident and her killers must be held accountable."
Eyewitnesses have disputed the Israeli military's characterization of the moments before the IDF fatally shot Eygi.
Haaretzreported Sunday that it spoke to three eyewitnesses who said that Israeli soldiers shot Eygi "for no reason" and that "there had been no clashes at the time."
"First we heard a shot and it hit a dumpster that two volunteers were sitting behind and then there was a shot that hit Aysenur in the head," one eyewitness, identified as an American told the Israeli newspaper. "I was immediately just so shocked when I saw her laying on the ground, not moving. It was a direct shot to the head, it was not an accident. She was being extra safe out of all of the volunteers, she and her friends were standing the furthest back, in the safest spot that we thought."
Hours after echoing the Israeli military's findings, Biden issued a statement Wednesday saying he was "outraged and deeply saddened by the death of Aysenur Eygi," adding that "the shooting that led to her death is totally unacceptable."
The president went on to once again cite the results of Israel's internal investigation, noting that it indicated Eygi's killing "was the result of a tragic error resulting from an unnecessary escalation."
While pledging to "continue to stay in close contact with Israeli and Palestinian authorities regarding the circumstances that led to Aysenur's death" and calling for "full accountability," Biden did not pledge to launch a U.S. investigation.
Kamala Harris, the vice president and Democratic nominee, released a separate statement Wednesday calling Eygi's killing "a horrific tragedy that never should have happened."
"Israel's preliminary investigation indicated it was the result of a tragic error for which the IDF is responsible," Harris added. "We will continue to press the government of Israel for answers and for continued access to the findings of the investigation so we can have confidence in the results. There must be full accountability."
Eygi's family, which has pushed Biden to order an independent probe of their loved one's killing, said Tuesday that the U.S. president has yet to call to offer his condolences directly.
Hamid Ali, Eygi's partner, said Tuesday that "for four days, we have waited for President Biden to pick up the phone and do the right thing: To call us, offer his condolences, and let us know that he is ordering an independent investigation of the killing of Aysenur."
"This was no accident," Ali added, "and her killers must be held accountable."
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Top EU Diplomat Warns Israeli Impunity Will Lead to West Bank Becoming 'a New Gaza'
"Against this backdrop, it is clear that the prospect of a two-state solution—which we have been ritually repeating—is receding ever further while the international community deplores, feels, and condemns, but finds it hard to act."
Sep 10, 2024
European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell on Tuesday urged the international community to stop "radical members of the Israeli government" from thwarting Palestinian statehood and prevent Israel from turning the illegally occupied West Bank into "a new Gaza."
Speaking to attendees of an Arab League conference in Cairo, Borrell lamented that a Gaza cease-fire agreement "has still not been signed and does not seem likely to be signed in the near future."
"Why? Quite simply, because those who are waging the war have no interest in putting an end to it," he continued. "So, they are just pretending... Because, as it turns out, their intransigence is accompanied by total impunity."
"If acts have no consequences, if blatant violation of international law remains disregarded, if institutions such as the International Criminal Court are threatened, if the International Court of Justice rulings are totally ignored by those who promote a rules-based order, who can be trusted?" Borrell asked.
"Not only is there no pause in the war in Gaza," he noted. "But what looms on the horizon is the extension of the conflict to the West Bank, where radical members of the Israeli government—Netanyahu's government—try to make it impossible to create a future Palestinian state."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his far-right government have openly
boasted about their efforts to derail the so-called "two-state solution," and Israeli lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in July to oppose the creation of a Palestinian state.
Borrell asserted that "a new front is being opened with a clear objective: to turn the West Bank into a new Gaza—in rising violence, delegitimizing the Palestinian Authority, stimulating provocations to react forcefully, and not shying away from saying to the face of the world that the only way to reach a peaceful settlement is to annex the West Bank and Gaza."
Since last October, Israeli soldiers and settler-colonists have killed more than 600 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, including more than 140 children. Settlers have carried out more than 1,000 attacks including multiple deadly pogroms, during which Israel Defense Forces soldiers stood by, protected, and even joined the attackers.
"Without action, the West Bank will become a new Gaza," Borrell stressed. "And Gaza will become a new West Bank, as settlers' movements are preparing new settlements."
"Against this backdrop, it is clear that the prospect of a two-state solution—which we have been ritually repeating—is receding ever further while the international community deplores, feels, and condemns, but finds it hard to act," Borrell added.
"What can we do?" he asked, continuing:
We need to raise our voice at the next [United Nations General Assembly] and prevent a sort of "Gaza fatigue," which will embolden the extremists and postpone once again the idea of a political settlement. We have to launch a process where all parties who want to work on an agenda—a concrete and practical agenda to implement the two-state solution—can work together.
Second, we need to revitalize the Palestinian Authority to support their reform process, but also to support [them] financially.
Third, [we have] to facilitate all attempts at dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis.
Fourth, [we must] not give up on engaging with Israeli civil society, even in this context—and especially in this context. Everyone, not just the Europeans—Palestinians, and Arab civil society, must do it. I know how difficult it is to reconcile both narratives, but it is the only way to move forward...
Fifth, the Palestinians have to reach a common vision, to overcome their divisions, because the more these divisions exist, the more they undermine the legitimacy and representativeness of the Palestinians.
Sixth, the Europeans need to adopt a common approach. That is what I am working tirelessly on, even if the success is limited, because I have never seen such a dividing issue among the Europeans as the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Seventh, the Arab States need also to adopt a truly common approach [to] coordinating and showing solidarity.
"All in all, it means building a balance of power on realistic foundations for the two-state solution—before it becomes, definitely, too late," Borrell concluded. "I know, it is extremely difficult. However, we must never give up."
Last month, Borrell called for sanctioning Israeli leaders for hate speech and inciting war crimes in Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank. He has also called for an arms embargo on Israel.
Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice. Meanwhile, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking to arrest Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—at least one of whom has been assassinated—for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Since October 7, when the Hamas-led attack on Israel left more than 1,100 people dead—some of them killed by so-called "
friendly fire"—and over 240 others kidnapped, Israeli forces have killed at least 40,988 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children. At least 94,825 other Palestinians have been wounded. Almost all of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, while Israel's "complete siege" has starved and sickened people across the enclave, with dozens dying of malnutrition.
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