Category World News

Washington, DC – Aysenur Ezgi Eygi’s husband, Hamid Ali, claims confusion and sorrow still grip him. One year ago, Israeli forces killed American citizen.

“Seeing the impact it has had on her father and her family, it’s been very difficult to adjust to life without Aysenur, an empty house.” Ali told Al Jazeera, “The word I’d use to sum up is confusing.

On September 6, 2024, Israeli forces fatally shot Ezgi Eygi, whose first name is Aysha-nour, while protesting an illegal settlement outpost in the occupied West Bank.

Violence in the West Bank has increased as Israel continues to attack Gaza. Since 2022, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 10 US citizens.

While Washington has continued to give Israel billions of dollars in military aid, the presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump have ignored requests from Ezgi Eygi’s family for a US-led investigation into her death.

Ezgi Eygi’s sister Ozden Bennett said she is aware that justice may not be in sight, but that this does not undermine the family’s resolve to preserve the activist’s body.

Even if it doesn’t happen right away or perhaps ever, we’re committed to the long-haul journey of finding meaning in the process. Bennett told Al Jazeera, “I’m optimistic it will.”

Because it’s the right thing to do and my sister deserves it, “I see us fighting on.” Israel should be commended for every life it has taken without meaning.

Aysenur Memorial

When Ezgi Eygi died, she was 26 years old and had Turkish ancestry. Those who knew her described her as empathetic and joyful.

She was deeply moved by injustices in the US and abroad because she had been active since she was a young child. She is almost “childlike” in her compassion and playfulness, according to Ali and Bennett.

According to Bennett, “She always had that kind of childlike essence to her, that curiosity, that silliness.” I just miss her so much because she was such a special, sweet, and occasionally obnoxious sister.

Ali thinks that her activism was motivated by that authenticity.

He told Al Jazeera, “She had to live by her values and beliefs, and she had to express her feelings.”

“So she was the kind of person she was, and that’s exactly why she believed that doing the activism she did in the [United] States wasn’t enough. She thought that going to the West Bank would be her best course of action.

Since Ezgi Eygi was shot, at least two more US citizens have died in the West Bank.

Sayfollah Musallet, 20, was shot to death by settlers in Florida in July. Khamis Ayyad, a father of five and former resident of Chicago, was killed in a second settler attack less than three weeks later.

The families in both cases are calling for a US-Israel Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty and other applicable laws that would allow for such an investigation.

Israel has been asked to look into its own abuses by the Trump administration, but that is all it has done. Israel’s forces’ actions toward Palestinians and their supporters are rarely deemed to be wrong.

Similar to the incident’s death last year, the administration of then-President Biden requested an investigation into it, but it opted to ignore it.

The hypocrisy is “stunning.”

A consistent pattern is that there is no accountability. No criminal charges have been brought against the alleged killers in all ten cases of Americans who have been killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers since 2022.

Shireen Abu Akleh, a veteran Al Jazeera reporter, was shot in the head while dong a bright blue jacket with the tagline “press.”

The inaction, according to rights advocates, constitutes impunity for Americans who kill Americans abroad. They trace the pattern back a number of decades, dating back to the 2003 incident where an Israeli bulldozer struck activist Rachel Corrie in Gaza.

At the time of her death, she had been attempting to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home.

Corrie, who was also a native of Washington state, is a prominent figure in the West’s support for the Palestinian cause. No one is still held accountable for her murder.

Ali’s wife’s passing and Corrie’s passing are analogous, Ali said.

He said, “This isn’t anything new, because it was the same as Rachel Corrie, and that was 20+ years ago.”

“We recognize the pattern, but it’s also frustrating and incredibly hypocritical.”

In an effort to keep the case alive, Ezgi Eygi’s family members have been bringing their demands to US lawmakers and officials despite their frustration.

The top US diplomat, according to Ali and Bennett, showed an inability to seek justice when they met with the then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken last year.

Following the killing of US-Israeli captive Hersh Goldberg-Polin in Gaza, the US Department of Justice filed charges of “terrorism, murder conspiracy, and sanctions-evasion” against Hamas leaders days before Ezgi Eygi’s death.

The US approach’s contrast is obvious to Bennett. She told Al Jazeera, “It sends a message that not all American lives are equal.”

The US-based rights organization DAWN’s Raed Jarrar, who is in charge of advocacy, claimed that Washington “values Israeli impunity more than American lives” because of the US’s failure to hold accountable Ezgi Eygi and other US citizens who were killed by Israel.

“The hypocrisy is awe-inspiring.” The US government uses every diplomatic, economic, and military tool at its disposal to demand accountability and justice when Americans are killed by anyone else, according to Jarrar.

However, when Israel murders Americans, the US accepts Israeli “investigations” and justifications, provides additional weapons, shields Israel from international scrutiny, and accepts them.

Israeli investigation is “Irrelevant.”

According to an initial Israeli military report following Ezgi Eygi’s death, she was most likely killed by “indirect and unintended” fire. However, witnesses claim that a sniper struck her in the head.

No public announcements about the results of the investigation’s findings, despite reports that a wider Israeli investigation into the incident has been launched.

Al Jazeera’s request for comment was not received by the Israeli government’s Foreign Press Department.

Bennett claimed that the family is not anticipating an Israeli investigation’s release of any kind of accountability.

According to us, the Israeli investigation is irrelevant because it is inappropriate or acceptable for Israel, the murderer, to conduct an internal investigation.

If Ezgi Eygi’s memory can contribute to the Palestinian people’s liberation, Ali said, it would ease his sense of loss. Justice for Ezgi Eygi may seem elusive to him.

My childhood dream was to pursue a medical degree. To assist people, I aspired to become a doctor. Never did I ever imagine studying medicine in a hospital instead of a university, or from textbooks, but from real-world experience.

I made the decision to enroll in al-Azhar University’s medical school after finishing my BA in English last year. I left school at the end of June. We, medical students, are forced to watch lectures on our mobile phones and read medical books while using the flashlights on our mobile phones because all of Gaza’s universities have been destroyed.

The lectures from older medical students, who the genocidal war has prematurely forced into practice, are a part of our training.

At Deir el-Balah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, a fifth-year medical student named Dr. Khaled gave my first lecture of this kind.

Al-Aqsa doesn’t appear to be a typical hospital. The patients don’t have privacy or room for privacy. Patients groan throughout the entire building while lying on beds or the floor in the corridor.

We are unable to deliver our lectures in the hospital yard due to the overcrowding.

Dr. Khaled began, “but from days when medicine was something you had to invent,” “I’ll teach you what I learned not from lectures.”

He began by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), opening the airway, and checking breathing. The lesson, however, quickly changed to how to save a life from nothing, which is not a typical course of instruction.

A young man pulled from beneath the rubble, legs shattered, and head bleeding, was a recent case, according to Dr. Khaled. Before moving the patient, the standard protocol calls for stabilizing the neck with a stabiliser.

However, there was no stabiliser. No splint . Nothing, no.

Dr. Khaled then sat on the ground, cradled the man’s head between his knees, and held it motionless until the equipment arrived, which was what no medical textbook would do.

He continued, “I wasn’t a student that day.” The brace was me. I served as the tool.

Dr. Khaled continued to walk as the supervising doctor prepared the operating room because it was all he could do to stop further injury.

Dr. Khaled’s about improvised medical solutions was one of the stories that came to mind.

One of the conversations was particularly upsetting.

A woman with a severe pelvic injury entered the hospital in her early 30s. Her flesh was torn. She required immediate surgery. However, sterilization of the wound was required first.

Betadine was absent. alcohol is not consumed. No up-to-date tools. only chlorine .

Chlorine, yes. the same substance that causes eye sting and burns the skin.

She had no consciousness. There was no other choice. The chlorine was poured in by them.

Dr. Khaled yelled at us with a resounding remorse as he told us this tale.

He said, “We used chlorine,” but he didn’t look at us. Not because we were unsure of our situation. but because there was nothing else.

What we heard shocked us, but perhaps not so much. Many of us were aware of the desperate actions doctors in Gaza had to take. Many of us had seen the heartbreaking video of Dr. Hani Bseiso attempting to save his niece from a table.

Dr. Hani, an orthopaedic surgeon from al-Shifa Medical Complex, was in an impossible situation last year when his niece, Ahed, was seriously hurt in an Israeli airstrike. Because the Israeli army had besieged the area, they were stranded in their apartment complex in Gaza City and unable to move.

Ahed was bleeding and her leg had become so severe that it needed to be repaired. Dr. Hani had few options.

No anesthesia was present. no tools for surgery. A plastic bag, a pot of water, and a kitchen knife are all you need.

Ahed sat down at the table with her face pale and half-closed, while her uncle, who was filled with tears, prepared to amputate her leg. Video was used to capture the situation.

He pleaded, “Look,” and his voice sounded hollow, “I am amputating her leg without anesthesia!” The mercy is absent. “Humanity is where? “

His surgical training collided with the moment’s raw horror as he worked quickly, hands trembling but precise.

Even young children who have been amputated without anesthesia have been subjected to this scene numerous times throughout Gaza. And as medical students, we are becoming aware that this might be true, that we may have to operate on a relative or a child as a result of their unbearable suffering.

The hardest lesson we are learning, however, is when we don’t treat wounds because those who still have a chance of survival need to be helped. This discussion is theoretically ethical in other countries. We need to learn how to make this choice because we might soon have to do it ourselves.

Dr. Khaled once said, “In medical school, you are taught to save everyone. You are taught that you can’t live with that in Gaza.

To carry the inhumane weight of knowing you can’t save everyone and to continue, to develop a superhuman level of emotional endurance to deal with loss after loss without breaking and losing one’s own humanity is what it means to be a doctor in Gaza today.

Even when they are exhausted and starving, these people still teach and treat them.

Our instructor, Dr. Ahmad, stopped midway through a trauma lecture, leant onto the table, and sat down. He yelled, “I just need a minute.” My blood sugar is low.

He hadn’t eaten since the previous day, we all knew. The war is consuming the very bodies and minds of those who attempt to treat others, not just the plight of medicine. And we, the students, are actually gaining real knowledge that medicine in this place is more than just a matter of knowledge and skills. It’s about surviving long enough to use them.

Being a doctor in Gaza means constantly reviving traditional medicine, using only natural resources, using only modern technology, and bandaging with your own body.

Not just a resource crisis, either. It’s a moral test.

And in that test, the wounds penetrate deeply: through hope, dignity, and flesh.