Within hours after they were told that Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi had been killed by an Israeli sniper while at a protest in the West Bank last year, her family was on a phone call with the parents of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza more than two decades ago.
The families were introduced by a mutual contact in Washington state, where both Corrie and 26-year-old Eygi had lived. There were other parallels in their stories: Corrie was protesting against the demolition of a Palestinian family’s home in Rafah when a soldier drove over her; Eygi was at a protest against settlement expansion near Nablus. Both had traveled to the region with the International Solidarity Movement, a group that for years has brought foreign activists to stand with Palestinians against Israel’s occupation. An Israeli military investigation concluded that it was “highly likely” Eygi was hit “indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her”; the Israeli military said that Corrie’s death was an accident and that she was responsible for it.
Cindy and Craig Corrie pulled over at a highway rest stop when they got the call. “There’s really not much you can tell somebody,” Cindy told the Guardian in an interview recalling her first conversation with Eygi’s parents. “I told them all I was trying to do was hug them through the phone.”
Since Rachel Corrie’s killing in 2003, about a dozen US citizens are known to have died at the hands of Israeli soldiers or settlers, or while in Israeli custody. At least six were killed in the West Bank alone since Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attacks and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza.
More than 40 US citizens were killed by Hamas in Israel on 7 October 2023, or after being taken hostage into Gaza. In those cases, the US justice department launched investigations and brought terrorism charges against the Hamas leaders it determined to be responsible, with attorney general Merrick Garland pledging that the US government would investigate “each and every one of Hamas’ brutal murders of Americans”.
But when it comes to killings by Israeli forces, the US government has consistently deferred to the Israeli military’s own investigations, which Israeli rights groups have for years condemned as a “whitewash” . Rights groups have found that Israeli forces are almost never held accountable by the Israeli legal system when they harm Palestinians.
To date, nobody has been charged or held accountable for any of the deaths of US citizens at Israeli hands. A spokesperson for the state department said in a statement to the Guardian that the department offers consular assistance to the families of citizens killed overseas; it declined to comment on individual cases citing “privacy and other considerations”. The spokesperson referred questions about the investigation of US citizens’ killings to the justice department. A spokesperson for the justice department declined to respond to a detailed list of questions from the Guardian, citing the government shutdown.
Last month, the Corries joined a group united by grief and purpose for a series of meetings in Washington DC, to demand the US government investigate their loved ones’ killings. Eygi’s sister, Özden Bennett, and her husband, Hamid Ali, were there. So were the fathers of Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, a 17-year-old from Louisiana who was shot at least 10 times while driving his car in the West Bank in 2024, and of Sayfollah Musallet, a 20-year-old from Florida who witnesses say was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in July. (Israel claims Jabbar was suspected of stone throwing, an account contradicted by an investigation by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem. After Musallet’s killing, Israeli police arrested three settlers, but later released them. Israeli police did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the IDF said that an investigation of the incident is ongoing.
Kamel Musallet, Sayfollah’s father, told legislators that his son, an ice-cream shop owner from Tampa who had traveled to the West Bank to visit family, often boasted to his friends about his “blue” passport. “He used to say, don’t worry, we are Americans,” said Musallet. “He felt safer.”
But it turns out American citizenship offers little protection. Musallet was killed in al-Mazra’a ash-Sharqiya, a relatively wealthy village north of Ramallah home to a population of Palestinian Americans so large some have taken to call it the “Miami of the West Bank”.
One of the first people to reach his body was Hafeth Jabbar, the father of Tawfic. “This is what we are dealing with every day,” Jabbar told representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts in a meeting. On his phone, he showed her videos of settlers attacking his land, and a photo of one of the men who he believes shot his son. “We’re in a climate that does not see the humanity of people.”
At a private dinner at a Balkan restaurant before three days of meetings with legislators, the families bonded over their shared grief and fears their loved ones’ deaths would go unpunished – and that the impunity would lead to more killings. Ali, Eygi’s husband, recalled with a smile that when he had first spoken to the Corries, Craig had called the families an exclusive “club nobody wanted to be a part of”.
The meetings – with more than a dozen congressmen and senators – along with a press conference on Capitol Hill attended by several legislators, underscored a gradual shift in Congress on Israel over the last two years: a measured reflection of a more tectonic shift on Israel in American society more broadly. In an op-ed published just minutes before he sat down with the families, Bernie Sanders from Vermont became the first US senator to accuse Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. And days after meeting with them, senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, joined by several colleagues, introduced a resolution calling on the US government to recognize a Palestinian state – another first.
While Gaza has been more prominent in headlines, Israeli military and settler violence in the West Bank has also spiked since 7 October – with more Palestinians killed in the last two years than at any point since the second intifada in the early 2000s.
“Since Hamas’ horrific attack on October 7th, there has been a massive increase in settlers harassing Palestinians in the West Bank: blocking access to water, vineyards, and olive orchards, and threatening and assaulting Palestinian villagers as they go about daily tasks,” Merkley said in a statement to the Guardian after a meeting with the families and senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, with whom he recently traveled to the West Bank.
“This rising violence is unacceptable, and so too is the lack of justice for these families from the Netanyahu government,” Merkley added. “As Israel’s close ally, the US government must do more to ensure accountability for those impacted.”
While the changes in Congress have been subtle, and US government support for Israel remains largely unchanged, the shift in public opinion has been more significant. More than half of US adults hold unfavourable opinions of Israel, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, compared with 42% before the war started.
‘Here we are again’
The US justice department can exert jurisdiction over the killings of US citizens abroad but normally does so with the consent and assistance of authorities of the relevant country. It’s rare for US civilians abroad to be killed by a state’s own security forces. Israel has become an exception.
“When Americans are killed abroad, it’s a standard procedure for our US government to open an investigation,” representative Rashida Tlaib said at the families’ press conference. “But when murderers wear Israeli uniforms, there’s complete silence. Not only that, they ask the actual government that committed the crime to do the investigation.”
The Corries spent years after Rachel’s killing trying to get the US government to open an independent investigation, lobbying legislators on countless trips to the capital in a futile crusade I documented a few years ago. After losing a years-long legal battle against the Israeli government, and another in the US against bulldozer manufacturer Caterpillar, the family eventually gave up. They resumed their advocacy after the 2022 killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot in the head while reporting in the West Bank city of Jenin. The IDF has apologized for the killing.
Abu Akleh’s death is the only killing of a US citizen by Israeli forces over which the FBI is understood to have launched a formal investigation. (Although the FBI has interviewed witnesses, sources say, the US justice department never publicly confirmed the existence of the investigation, which appears to have stalled.)
In their meetings with legislators, the families repeatedly pointed to the US government’s response to the killing of Americans in the 7 October attacks, lamenting the double standard and warning that continued impunity all but ensured more killings to come. They also coalesced around a demand that US legislators apply more pressure on Israel to release Mohammed Ibrahim, a 16-year-old American Palestinian boy – and Sayfollah Musallet’s cousin – who has been held in Israeli military prison for more than seven months over allegations of stone throwing.
“If there had been any accountability in Rachel’s case some of these families wouldn’t be here,” Cindy Corrie said in a meeting with senator Peter Welch of Vermont. “And yet, here we are again,” her husband added.
Over tea at a congressional cafeteria, Cindy Corrie said she has tried to be “honest” about the path ahead when speaking to the Eygis. If history is any indication, their calls for justice may lead to nothing.
But she also recognized a perceptible shift, on the hill and off. “The climate in 2003 around this issue was very different,” she said.
In their early meetings in Congress, the Corries recalled, they would often show up to congressional offices with maps showing where Gaza was. Few legislators were willing to publicly criticize Israel at the time, and some were dismissive of the Corries and even hostile.
Now things are different: within days of Eygi’s killing, more than 100 legislators called on the Biden administration to launch an independent investigation. In Washington, Eygi’s husband was stopped at a Mexican restaurant by a woman wearing a keffiyeh who recognized the activist on a pin he was wearing. A security guard at one of the congressional buildings where the family met with legislators also recognized Eygi on a pin her sister was wearing.
“I’m sorry about your loss. I hope that they listen to you,” he told her. She handed him a pin.
