Ozden Bennett’s first reaction after learning of her younger sister’s killing was disbelief. Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi had traveled to the occupied West Bank just three days earlier to volunteer with Palestinian communities facing violence at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers.
But the shock and grief quickly gave way to dread – “that nothing would come of it, that she would have just died under that olive tree and that was it”, Bennett said this week, before the anniversary of Eygi’s death.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/06/aysenur-ezgi-eygi-west-bank
Eygi, a 26-year-old American Turkish woman, was shot in the head on 6 September 2024 by an Israeli sniper. She had been attending a protest against settlement expansion near Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Eygi’s family feared that securing justice would be an uphill battle. Indeed, one year later, nobody has been held accountable. An Israeli military investigation concluded within days of the incident that it was “highly likely” Eygi had been hit “indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her” but rather at others whom it alleged were throwing rocks. (A Washington Post investigation found that Eygi was shot half an hour after any clashes between protesters and soldiers, and that she was standing 200 yards from the soldiers.)
zden Bennett’s first reaction after learning of her younger sister’s killing was disbelief. Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi had traveled to the occupied West Bank just three days earlier to volunteer with Palestinian communities facing violence at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers.
But the shock and grief quickly gave way to dread – “that nothing would come of it, that she would have just died under that olive tree and that was it”, Bennett said this week, before the anniversary of Eygi’s death.