By Annika Hauer

WA State Journal

Dozens of legislators are calling on President Donald Trump and other federal officials to investigate the killing of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, who was shot while protesting in the West Bank in September 2024.

The call is the latest of many for an investigation into her death, and follows decades of requests made by families of American citizens who were killed by Israeli military soldiers.

The Joint Memorials, SJM 8014 and companion HJM 4010, are sponsored by Sen. Rebecca Saldaña, D-Seattle, and Rep. Chipalo Street, D-Seattle, the district representatives for Eygi’s husband Hamid Ali.

“Your Memorialists respectfully request that the United States open a transparent, thorough, and independent investigation into the killing of Eygi by Israeli military forces, to ensure justice and accountability for Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi and all United States citizens wrongfully killed at the hands of a foreign government,” the Memorials read.

“I never had the opportunity to meet Ayşenur in person, but she seems like she was just full of light,” Saldaña said.

Eygi, raised in Seattle since the age of 1 and a graduate of the University of Washington with plans to pursue a Ph.D. there, was known for her selflessness, bravery and “profound sense of peace and justice,” as the Memorials say.

Saldaña has met with Eygi’s family on multiple occasions.

“I think this is one of the ways that they are trying to keep her memory alive, by raising awareness of not only the unjust and really terrible, tragic way that she died, but really, to celebrate how she lived her life … encouraging people to seek truth, accountability, peace and reconciliation.”

The Senate Joint Memorial is scheduled for public hearing on Jan. 22.

Ali and other family members have been pushing for a U.S.-led investigation.

“[SJM 8014] is a repetition of this call that we’ve had since day one,” Ali said. “Not even talking about accountability, or the specific actions that should be taken as a result—we’re talking about just gathering facts about who killed Ayşenur.

“This has been done in the past, where the FBI investigates in collaboration with the DOJ (Department of Justice) the deaths of Americans abroad. So we’re not asking for anything special. Can we just do the same thing here? And if not, why not?”

According to eyewitnesses, an Israeli soldier fired at Eygi from hundreds of yards away, in broad daylight, after any commotion had ended.

The Israel Defense Forces conducted an investigation and claimed the killing was “unintentional.” The United States, led by the Biden administration at the time, said there must be “full accountability.” The United States has yet to conduct any investigation of its own.

“What we should demand in every case is that our U.S. government does an independent investigation,” Saldaña said, “that we don’t rely upon those that committed the atrocity to investigate themselves.”

The Memorials cite the history of similar deaths, including Rachel Corrie’s in 2003. Corrie grew up in Olympia, and at 23 years old, was crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer while standing in peaceful protest of the demolition of a Palestinian family’s home in Rafah, Gaza Strip.

Cindy and Craig Corrie, parents of Rachel, founded the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice after her death. The foundation supports education, art and grassroots organizing for human rights and resistance to oppression.

Craig Corrie insists that it is not antisemitic to investigate the actions of a foreign country.

“Both Rachel and Ayşenur were killed by Israeli soldiers,” he said, and both of them worked alongside Jewish activists and friends. “To conflate those two I think is incredibly dangerous.”

There was an Israeli investigation into Rachel’s killing, but it could only be viewed in person in Israel, the Corries said, and did not amount to any accountability. The Corries were connected to Eygi’s family within a day of her death.

“They become very close friends to us,” Cindy Corrie said.

She said that “to the extent that we’re able,” they support the Eygi effort to seek accountability for the killing of an American citizen by a foreign military.

Last September the Eygi family, the Corrie family and others — the family of 17-year-old Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, who was shot by off-duty Israeli policemen while driving in the West Bank; the family of 20-year-old Sayfollah Musallet, who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers there; and that same family’s 16-year-old Mohammed Ibrahim, who was in Israeli military detention at the time (he was released in November) — gathered in Washington, D.C. to speak to lawmakers.

“We had 20 plus years of this history walking into these offices,” Ali said. “And the sad part was that if at any one of those points the U.S. had done anything differently, then maybe it would have stopped there and we wouldn’t have these other young people being killed.”

The Washington State Journal is a nonprofit news website operated by the WNPA Foundation. To learn more, go to wastatejournal.org.