Politics
American woman killed in West Bank while protesting Israeli settlements
UPDATE (Sept. 7, 2024; 8:50 a.m. ET):This post has been updated to include a statement from Aysenur Egzi Eygi’s family.
A 26-year-old American woman who was reportedly protesting the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank was killed on Friday, prompting an outcry from human rights groups and a White House request for an investigation.
The International Solidarity Movement said the woman, Aysenur Egzi Eygi, was an activist with the group, which supports Palestinian resistance against Israeli oppression.
Eygi, a dual American-Turkish citizen, was in the West Bank town of Beita for a weekly demonstration against the expansion of settlements when the Israeli army “intentionally shot and killed” her, ISM said in a statement. A protester who witnessed the shooting also told The Associated Press that Israeli soldiers killed the woman. Two doctors said she was shot in the head, the AP reported.
The Israel Defense Forces told NBC News that it “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity” who was throwing rocks. It also said that the details and circumstances of a foreign national’s death as a result of shots fired were “under review.”
State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said in a statement that they were “aware” of Eygi’s death and are “urgently gathering more information about the circumstances of her death.”
Eygi’s family said in a statement that she was “killed by a bullet that video shows came from an Israeli military shooter,” and urged the Biden administration to launch an independent investigation into her death.
“We welcome the White House’s statement of condolences, but given the circumstances of Aysenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate,” they said, adding: “We call on President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Secretary of State Blinken to order an independent investigation into the unlawful killing of a U.S. citizen and to ensure full accountability for the guilty parties.”
With much of the attention focused on Gaza since Oct. 7, Israeli forces have “unleashed a brutal wave of violence against Palestinians” in the West Bank, Amnesty International reported in February. In the past week, the IDF has conducted a devastating “security operation” in the West Bank, focusing on the city of Jeninwhich houses a large refugee camp. Israel said it killed 14 militants, including the head of Hamas’ presence in Jenin, in the operation. Reuters reported that a total of 21 people were killed in Jeninincluding a 16-year-old girl whose father reportedly said she was shot dead by an Israeli sniper while she was looking out the window of her home. The Israeli military said earlier this week that it was looking into reports of her death.
Eygi is the 18th protester killed in Beita — located about 40 miles north of Jerusalem — since 2020, according to ISM. American activist Rachel Corrieanother ISM volunteer, was engaging in a peaceful protest against the demolition of homes in Gaza in 2003 when the Israeli Defense Forces crushed her with a military bulldozer. (The IDF saidthe soldier operating the bulldozer hadn’t seen her, and that Corrie was responsible for her death for not moving out of the way. Her parents have disputed the military account of her death.) Last month, another U.S. volunteer with ISM was also reportedly shot in the leg by Israeli forces in the West Bank.
The U.S. State Department has repeatedly condemned extremist settler violence in the West Bank, and the Biden administration has ordered multiple rounds of sanctions on extremist individuals and organizations, and settler outposts. Pro-Palestinian activists and allies, as well as the United Nations’ top courtview Israeli settlements in the West Bank as a violation of international law.
Despite finding Israeli settlements “illegitimate,” pro-Palestinian activists say the Biden administration has not sufficiently pressured the Israeli government against supporting the expansion of settlements on the West Bank. Three extremist settlers who were targeted by U.S. sanctions told the AP in June that those sanctions had little impact on them.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking/trending news blogger for BLN Digital. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
The U.S. delegation in Seattle includes HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, according to a FIFA official, along with White House FIFA World Cup Task Force czar Andrew Giuliani. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy were among those who attended the U.S.’ first match, against Paraguay.
Britain wouldn’t have its latest likely next prime minister if not for soccer.
Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor elected to the U.K. Parliament in a closely-watched by-election on Thursday, is expected to oust Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labour Party leader in a matter of weeks. The sport propelled his political rise.
The pivotal moment of Burnham’s long political career came in 2009, when he was the Cabinet minister for culture, media and sport under then-PM Gordon Brown. Burnham was asked to return to his native Liverpool for a memorial commemorating the Hillsborough Disaster.
The 1989 event remains Britain’s worst-ever sporting catastrophe. Almost 100 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at a cup game in South Yorkshire, following a series of disastrous crowd control errors by police chiefs and stadium staff.
The horror of the day was compounded in the immediate aftermath, when police sought to cover up their mistakes by falsely blaming drunken Liverpool fans for the crush. The lies were amplified by a willing national media and allowed to linger for years; the city grieved and demanded justice. Bereaved families campaigned for years. But no one listened, and no one was held accountable.
Born in Liverpool and steeped in soccer culture, Burnham knew all this as he headed to the memorial at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium 20 years later. He was well aware how a young government envoy would be greeted by the crowd, still raging at the injustice two decades on. But to his credit, he went anyway — and was met with a wall of heckles, chants and protest songs from the part of Anfield, known as the Kop, where the team’s loudest supporters congregate. (The video of his halting, shattered-looking appearance is well worth watching.)
Burnham — until then a typical career politician in Westminster — has described the day as a seminal moment. He returned to Cabinet and demanded a new inquiry into Hillsborough. Three years later its report revealed every claim made by the justice campaigners — of police failures and a scandalous cover-up — had been true. The government was forced to apologize.
Burnham was widely praised for his role in exposing the truth about Hillsborough. But more significant in his ultimate rise to power would be the shift in his own psyche. “I always say that I took my first steps out of Westminster on 15 April 2009 when I walked out to face the Kop,” he wrote in his memoir, “Head North,” penned with close friend (and Hillsborough survivor) Steve Rotheram. “Things were never the same after that day.”
Burnham says his experiences dealing with the Hillsborough justice campaign shaped his view of the Westminster political machine, as an arrogant and failing institution which ignores English regions outside of London. Eight years later he would quit Westminster altogether to become a mayor in his native northwest.
Fast-forward to 2026, and Burnham finds himself in an enviable position — an experienced politician able to cast himself as a political outsider ready to take on the Westminster elites. (While Starmer supports the North London-based champions Arsenal, Burnham is a season ticket holder at his beloved Everton F.C., and is regularly photographed jogging in a vintage Everton jersey.) It’s a familiar narrative which chimes with disgruntled voters everywhere.
Read Jack’s Blue Light News Magazine profile of Andy Burnham here and Blue Light News’s full coverage of the Makerfield by-election and its unfolding fallout here.
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