Large Turkish flags hang from the trees around the open grave where Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish-American activist killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank, was being laid to rest near Turkey’s Aegean coast on Saturday.
Her friends and relatives gathered to mourn at her family’s home nearby, where her father said he felt that the US, where he lived for 25 years and obtained citizenship, had not done enough to respond to the killing.
“I have been living in the US for 25 years, and I know how seriously the US looks out for the safety of its citizens abroad,” her father, Mehmet Suat Eygi, said in an interview. “I know that when something happens, the US will attack like the eagle on its seal. But when Israel is in question, it transforms into a dove.”
Eygi, 26, was shot in the head and died on September 6 during a protest by Palestinian and international activists against an Israeli settler outpost near the West Bank village of Beita. The Israeli military has said it is “highly likely” that she was hit “indirectly and unintentionally” and that the matter was still being investigated.
Other activists who were with her at the time said that she had been standing more than 200 yards away and downhill from the soldiers. They added that the protest had calmed down by the time she was shot.
Her death came as international criticism of Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza has been rising. More that 41,000 people have been killed, according to the Gazan health ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.
Airstrikes continued into Saturday, with the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, reporting that 10 people, including women and children, had been killed in a strike that hit a home in Gaza City, among other deaths in the enclave.
New York Times News Service