Hi, I'm Sophie Hurwitz, a fellow here at Mother Jones.
In December, I took a train down to Washington, DC, to meet the family of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old American volunteer killed by an Israeli soldier in the West Bank last September.
I had written about Eygi before, talking with other protective peace activists and witnesses of her death. (Israel says a soldier likely shot her in the head by accident; the person I spoke with believes it was “intentional.”)
But, until then, I had not met her family in person. It was 101 days after Eygi’s death when I greeted her husband, her older sister, and her father in DC. I then spent three days with them. I watched as they struggled to navigate the (literally and figuratively) labyrinthine halls of our Capitol to ask for justice. The family moved from office to office telling the story of her brief life and violent death.
Over and over, I witnessed the same thing: The family struggled to find the words to make Eygi real enough—the living human they knew, who loved activism and cooking—so that her death might warrant a government response.
They received many handshakes and condolences but few real commitments. Secretary of State Antony Blinken particularly disappointed them.
“I have been forced to sideline my grief in order to scrape and beg daily for the past three months,” Hamid Ali, Eygi’s husband, told me, “to plead with the Biden administration to seek justice for my wife.”
The week after the Eygis visited DC, Blinken sat for a series of exit interviews with the New York Times and the Financial Times. In those discussions, he defended his legacy as a peacemaker on Israel and Palestine.
The Eygis’ experience tells a different story. I encourage you to read my piece and judge for yourself.
—Sophie Hurwitz
