An American was killed in the West Bank.

Last Friday, an Israeli sniper shot American citizen Aysenur Ezgi Eygi in the head. She was peacefully protesting against illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank. Aysenur was 26 years old.

In the words of Palestinian American Representative Rashida Tlaib: “It doesn’t matter who you are, Israel can kill Americans and get away with it.”

With all eyes on the genocide in Gaza, the Israeli government is taking the opportunity to accelerate its theft of Palestinian homes and land. Israeli settlers — working hand in glove with the Israeli military — carried out over 1,000 attacks against Palestinian towns and villages between October and July, driving hundreds of Palestinians to flee their homes.

What happened to Aysenur?

Aysenur, a recent graduate of the University of Washington, was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper in the Palestinian town of Beita, while participating in a weekly protest against illegal Israeli settlements. According to eyewitnesses, Aysenur was shot around 30 minutes after protesters had already dispersed. “It was completely quiet here…And then, all of a sudden, two shots,” Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak recalled.

Just one month ago, another American citizen was shot in the leg by the Israeli military while participating in the same weekly protest in Beita. Since 2021, the Israeli military has killed at least 17 Palestinians during protests in Beita against illegal Israeli settlements — but because they are Palestinian, their deaths don’t make U.S. headlines.

Even though Aysenur was shot in the head by a sniper stationed 200 meters away, the Israeli government is claiming she was killed “unintentionally” — just as it did when it murdered American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, also an American citizen. 

In Palestine, hundreds marched in Aysenur’s funeral to honor her. The same could not be said of U.S. officials. Like clockwork, the Biden administration halfheartedly offered its condolences and politely requested that Israeli authorities investigate themselves. As of Monday, President Biden had not even called Aysenur’s family. 

In the words of Palestinian American Representative Rashida Tlaib: “It doesn’t matter who you are, Israel can kill Americans and get away with it.”

What’s going on in the West Bank? 

Both of the American citizens shot in Beita since August were protesting illegal Israeli settlements. These settlements are constructed with the explicit aim of displacing Palestinians from their homes and stealing their land.

While the world’s attention is turned toward Gaza, the Israeli government has expanded illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank at a record pace. In July, it approved the appropriation of nearly five square miles of Palestinian land — the largest single land grab since the early 1990s.

Since October, the Israeli military and settlers have killed over 600 Palestinians in the West Bank, more than any year on record since the U.N. began documenting killings in 2005. The same day that Aysenur was killed, the Israeli military withdrew from the Palestinian city of Jenin after a brutal 10-day invasion that killed at least 34 Palestinians and left homes, roads, and critical infrastructure in ruins.

Perhaps most horrifying, at least 141 of the hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers since October 7 were children —  at a horrifying rate of one child killed by the Israeli military every two days in the months between October and July. This is a massive increase in killings: 20 percent of the Palestinian children killed in the West Bank in the last 24 years were killed since October.

This is Jewish Supremacy.

This horrific violence is the inevitable outcome of a belief system that embraces Jewish supremacy in Palestine as the only means of ensuring a Jewish future. There is a word for this belief system: Zionism.

For Palestinians and all of us who care about Palestinian freedom, there is no such thing as Zionism “in theory.” There is only how Zionism has been carried out in practice: the mass slaughter and dispossession of Palestinians and the theft of their historic homeland to make way for a Jewish-majority state.

In order to justify the unjustifiable, proponents of Zionism pit Jewish safety against Palestinian freedom and dignity. But this is a false choice, one that has brought only devastation and death. In reality, one person’s freedom and safety can never come at the expense of another’s. As many Israeli protesters have experienced in recent months, the brutal tactics Israeli military and police use to oppress Palestinians are inevitably turned around on Israelis, too — and exported to militarized police departments around the world. 

None of us can be free until Palestinians are free. Moving in solidarity with one another is the only way we build a more just world.

Arms embargo now.

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