‘Gentle, brave, silly’: American killed in West Bank remembered by loved ones

The American woman who was killed in the West Bank last week graduated from college in June and once said she wanted to make a “positive impact.”

Aysenur Eygi, a 26-year-old volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian activist group, was attending a protest against Jewish settlement expansion in the town of Beita on Friday when she was fatally shot, her colleagues said.

Eygi graduated from the University of Washington, where she studied psychology and minored in Middle Eastern languages and cultures. She was pictured at her graduation ceremony in June holding a flag with the words “Free Palestine.”

Aria Fani, a professor at the university who got to know Eygi over the past year, said she “fought injustice truly wherever it was.” He told the Guardian newspaper that he had cautioned Eygi against traveling to the Middle East because of the violence in the region, but she was undeterred. Fani took part in similar protests in the West Bank in 2013.

“She had this deep conviction that she wanted to participate in the tradition of bearing witness to the oppression of people and their dignified resilience,” Fani said.

Eygi, who was born in Turkey, was a dual citizen of the United States and Turkey. A memorial procession for her took place in the West Bank city of Nablus on Monday before her body was handed over for repatriation. Her family has requested that the burial be in Aydin province, on Turkey’s western coast, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said in a statement Monday, adding that the government’s efforts to bring Eygi’s body to Turkey were continuing.

Juliette Majid and Eygi became friends while they were both protesting the Gaza war in the spring. They met at the University of Washington encampment set up by students demanding that the university sever ties with Israel and Boeing.

Both women had long supported the Palestinian cause, but it wasn’t until the encampment that they met each other. Juliette said she and Eygi clicked instantly: “She had been an activist for years, but at that encampment, it increased her visibility.”

Majid, a spokesperson for a pro-Palestinian student group, said Eygi was always offering to help go over talking points or generally provide support. “She was always there for you, to counsel you, pray with you,” Majid said.

It was sometime later in the summer that Eygi first told Juliette she was going to the West Bank with the International Solidarity Movement.

“She felt very honored to be going to the West Bank, knowing that many Palestinians who leave are not allowed to go back,” Majid said. They last communicated early last week: Eygi had told Majid she was headed into the West Bank, and they planned to talk again the next day.

Majid said they never spoke directly about the dangers she would face as an ISM volunteer, but she thinks Eygi knew the risks. “Aysenur wasn’t the type of person who could just stand by watching injustice to others,” she said.

On her LinkedIn profile, Eygi, a peer mentor at the university who also worked to support children with autism, wrote, “I’m driven by a passion for making a positive impact and continuously seek opportunities to learn, grow, and contribute to meaningful projects.”

In high school, Eygi helped organize student walkouts in Seattle after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, amid similar marches in D.C. and elsewhere as students who were too young to vote gathered to voice their concerns.

“This election has sparked a flame,” she wrote at the time in an article in the publication Socialist Alternative, “and we are the fire, we are burning for a future to believe in.”

Speaking at a 2017 rally after Seattle became the first city to sever ties with Wells Fargo in protest of the bank’s role in helping fund the Dakota Access oil pipeline, Eygi declared, “This is how we win things … by getting out in the streets, getting loud and demanding what we need.”

“The power to shape society lies with us, the people, when we come together to choose to fight for a better future for all,” Eygi told the crowd.

In 2020, a federal judge ruled that the pipeline - which Trump approved within a month of taking office - must be shut down, saying federal officials failed to carry out a complete analysis of its environmental impacts. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe had said the pipeline threatened its water supply and sacred sites.

Eygi helped organize campus protests against Israel’s Gaza invasion in the spring, as part of a string of pro-Palestinian demonstrations around the country. According to Fani, she was frustrated about how the University of Washington clamped down on protesters.

The ISM said in a statement that Friday’s demonstration was peaceful and “primarily involved men and children praying.” Israel’s military said it “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them.”

Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli activist, said the shooting took place about 30 minutes after protesters had dispersed, when there were no active clashes and as foreign volunteers, including Eygi, stood observing about 200 yards from the Israeli military.

Eygi was standing farther back, near an olive grove, when the Israeli forces opened fire, according to Pollak and another ISM volunteer who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Two witnesses said Eygi was shot in the head. She died shortly after being transported to a hospital in Nablus.

Eygi was the third ISM volunteer killed since 2003. Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old from Olympia, Wash., was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in March 2003 as she and others tried to prevent the razing of Palestinian homes by Israeli forces along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Tom Hurndall, a British volunteer, was shot in the head by a sniper for Israeli forces about a month after Corrie’s death. He died nine months later.

“Like the olive tree she lay beneath where she took her last breaths, Aysenur was strong, beautiful, and nourishing,” her family said in a statement. “She was gentle, brave, silly, supportive, and a ray of sunshine … and lived a life of caring for those in need with action.”