“Israel Has No Right”: Al Jazeera Managing Editor Slams Israel’s Raid & Closing of West Bank Bureau

DEMOCRACY NOW!

September 23, 2024

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GuestsMohamed Moawad
managing editor of Al Jazeera.

Links Al Jazeera


Israel stepped up its censorship of Al Jazeera on Sunday as soldiers raided the Qatar-based news network’s Ramallah offices in the occupied West Bank and ordered a 45-day closure of the bureau. This comes after the Netanyahu government banned the network inside of Israel in May under a new media law giving authorities broad power to censor foreign outlets deemed to be security threats. “It was a show of force, a show of intimidation to show journalists around the globe that what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank isn’t allowed to be reported,” Al Jazeera managing editor Mohamed Moawad tells Democracy Now! Israeli forces have killed as many as 160 journalists in Gaza over the last year, including several who work for Al Jazeera. In 2022, an Israeli sniper killed the network’s acclaimed Palestinian American correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.


AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

Press freedom groups are condemning the Israeli military for raiding and shutting down Al Jazeera’s Ramallah office in the occupied West Bank. The raid was broadcast live on TV Sunday morning. Heavily armed Israeli troops were seen entering the office and confiscating equipment while ordering the office closed for at least 45 days. This is an Israeli soldier confronting Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau chief Walid al-Omari.


ISRAEL SOLDIER: [translated] Good evening. There’s an order from the court to shut down Al Jazeera for 45 days. I ask you to take all the cameras and leave the office now.


WALID AL-OMARI: [translated] Should we all leave?


ISRAEL SOLDIER: [translated] This is an order.


WALID AL-OMARI: [translated] Can I see it, please? This is the order which was brought to us by this office and in his military forces. The order says that it is an order to shut down the office of Al Jazeera channel for 45 days. And this is a military decision from the commander of the central area and the Israeli military. It asks us to leave this office immediately and to take our personal belongings and our cameras.

AMY GOODMAN: During the raid, Israeli troops also tore down a poster of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Al Jazeera journalist, the Palestinian American, who was fatally shot by Israeli troops May 11th, 2022, when she was outside the Jenin refugee camp.

Reporters Without Borders responded to this weekend’s raid with a statement denouncing, quote, “Israel’s relentless assault,” unquote, and repeating its call for the repeal of the Israeli law that allows the government to shut down foreign media. U.N. secretary-general spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Sunday the U.N. is deeply concerned about Israel’s closure of Al Jazeera’s offices in the occupied West Bank.


STÉPHANE DUJARRIC: We’re very concerned any time, anywhere in the world, media offices get closed, especially in conflict areas, where journalists are the eyes and ears of the world, and they need to be able to do their job free from harassment or any other type of impediment.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Doha, where we’re joined by Mohamed Moawad, managing editor of Al Jazeera.

Welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you lay out exactly what happened on Sunday morning, Mohamed?

MOHAMED MOAWAD: Thanks, Amy, for having me. Glad to be back with you.

When we spoke, when we last spoke in May, when the Israeli government took the decision of shutting down our offices in Jerusalem and the Palestinian — and Tel Aviv, I told you that the situation is ambiguous and that the law itself upon which the Israeli government took the decision is ambiguous, as well. It could be weaponized against us anytime. When the Israeli government feel that the intimidation — as type of intimidation isn’t enough, they can go farther, escalate the intimidation process. So, that’s exactly what happened.

Our bureau chief, Walid al-Omari, was live, was live on air, reporting on the exchange of strikes in Lebanon between Hezbollah and the Israeli forces. Suddenly, the Israeli soldiers — these were not ordinary officers, but, rather, you know, fully equipped and ready-for-combat-zone officers and soldiers, and they invade — I say “invade,” not “stormed.” They invaded the office, and they spoke to Walid al-Omari, who stood very strong against them, defending his right for freedom of the press. And he told them, “Why you are here? This is not a combat zone. This is a space for journalism.” They said that there is an order to shut down the office. And that’s when that the whole situation was chilling for us, because, you know, this is a dedicated space for journalism. This is an office for reporters, for journalists. This is not a combat zone.

They then went on to move from corner to corner in the office as if it’s a combat zone. And then they tore down our late colleague Shireen Abu Akleh’s picture from the wall. They stole all equipments from inside the office, despite the fact that the order itself that was handed to Walid al-Omari did not mention anything about equipments. And then they went farther, to follow our colleagues downstairs, where they continued reporting about the incident, and they took the mic from Walid al-Omari and said, “You’re not allowed to work here. Go home.”

But, you know, the whole situation here is not shutting down an office, it’s not a decision by the Israeli government that was executed by the army, a fully equipped army, but, rather, an invasion to the very principle of the press freedom around the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain how the Israeli military has jurisdiction here? Your Ramallah bureau, which is in charge of the whole West Bank coverage of Al Jazeera, is in Area A, an area marked as being under Palestinian control in the Oslo Accords. So what legal jurisdiction did Israel have to come in with their heavily armed soldiers?

MOHAMED MOAWAD: That’s why, Amy, it’s very difficult for us to find a way to challenge this legally, because, really, the whole situation is ambiguous. They say this is emergency law. This is according to the defense minister of Israel, an order by him to the army to enter the West Bank and shut down an office which does not — you know, does not include the power of the Israeli army in this area because it’s an area that is under the jurisdiction A, which is mainly for the Palestinian Authority to decide about.

But, you know, the whole — Israel has no right to kill over 160 journalists in Gaza, I mean, and they’ve done it, and they continue to do it. They’ve killed three colleagues at Al Jazeera. They continue to commit atrocities against journalists. So, it wasn’t surprising. By the way, it was the least decision, the least action they have taken against us, because we’ve lost colleagues.

But at the same time, it was a show of force, a show of intimidation to show journalists around the globe that what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank isn’t allowed to be reported about and that the coverage of Al Jazeera is an enemy for the Israeli government, despite the fact that we haven’t and we’re not weaponizing at all, and we’re not going to do that. We’re not weaponizing our platform, despite the fact that we are being intimidated, we have lost colleagues.

Just before I came on air, we’ve been airing the Israeli forces press conference. And we continue to do that, despite the fact that the Israeli government shut down our offices in Israel and the Palestinian territories to try to delegitimize our coverage and say that Al Jazeera is a one-sided coverage, don’t operate there. But we continue to cover. We continue to make sure that we give voice to the voiceless and at the same time make sure that both narratives are kind of covered.

AMY GOODMAN: One of the things you do on Al Jazeera when reporters are reporting on Israel, since you’re banned from Israel, is repeatedly say that. That’s unlike U.S. networks that don’t say, when they’re reporting on Gaza, that the Israeli military prevents them from going into Gaza. Talk about that editorial decision that you’ve made, as you have reporters in Amman and other places saying, “We are not allowed to be in Israel as we report this right now,” and what these images mean that you’re broadcasting that others don’t.

MOHAMED MOAWAD: This is exactly what we should be talking about, Amy. Shutting down Al Jazeera’s office is the headline, but the name of the game is preventing journalists from doing their job, either in Gaza, in the West Bank. They want us to report remotely. They don’t want us to be in the frontlines. And that’s crystal clear.

I mean, the whole international journalistic community should be talking about one topic when they see a journalist killed in Gaza. They should be talking about one topic when they see an office shut down in Gaza or in West Bank or in Israel. The one topic is: No international journalist was allowed to enter Gaza to cover the war there, to give voice to the voiceless, which is at the core of this and the principle, the main principle, of this profession. No international journalists.

Even the international journalistic community is not placing pressure on Israel to allow their colleagues to get into Gaza to cover. Remember the Arab Spring, when so many American and Western journalists challenged the bureaucracy of the authoritarian regimes to go cover from Tahrir Square or from Tunisia or from Syria or from Libya. Right now no one is placing that pressure. And it’s really, really annoying, because we should be defending the freedom of the press. We should be defending the right to know what’s happening there. We should not be — we should not shy from what’s happening in Gaza and be part of this concealing that the Israeli government is trying to do to conceal what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank and the atrocities being committed. They just want us to report remotely.

And we will continue to remind the world and the journalistic community that this is happening and that you should unite to place pressure on the Israeli government to give the right for journalists to enter Gaza. Even after a possible ceasefire, this should be the case to uncover what’s really happened there. I remind you that we still have six correspondents reporting from Gaza. And that’s something that we are committed to. We are committed to give voice to the voiceless. An office is nothing for us. We will continue the coverage. We asked our colleagues to stay safe in the West Bank right now until we figure out the legal procedure, because, as I told you, Amy, the situation is ambiguous. We can’t really know on what basis that decision was taken, but we expected it.

AMY GOODMAN: Mohamed Moawad, I want to thank you for being with us, managing editor of Al Jazeera, speaking to us from Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar.

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Israel forces raid Al Jazeera TV in West Bank, order 45-day closure

Issued on: 22/09/2024 - 

Global news channel Al Jazeera said armed and masked Israeli forces raided its office in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Sunday and issued a 45-day closure order.

Israeli troops 'tear down Shireen Abu Akleh banner' at Al Jazeera West Bank bureau

Israeli forces raided Al Jazeera's bureau in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, later tearing down a banner featuring slain journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

The New Arab Staff & Agencies
22 September, 2024

Israeli forces have raided and ordered shut Al Jazeera's bureau in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank [Issam Rimawi/Anadolu/Getty]


Israeli troops tore down a banner of slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh at Al Jazeera's bureau in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, according to the pan-Arab broadcaster.

The bureau was raided by Israeli forces and Al Jazeera aired footage of troops live on its Arabic-language channel ordering the office to be shut for 45 days.

The network later aired what appeared to be Israeli troops tearing down a banner on a balcony used by the Al Jazeera office.

Al Jazeera said it bore an image of Abu Akleh, a celebrated journalist for the news outlet who was killed by Israeli forces in May 2022 as she reported on a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.

Al Jazeera's local bureau chief, Walid Al-Omari, later told the AP news agency that the Israeli military cited laws dating back to the British Mandate of Palestine to support its closure order.

In a conversation during the raid broadcast live on Al Jazeera, an Israeli soldier told Al-Omari there was a court ruling to close down the office for 45 days.

"I ask you to take all the cameras and leave the office at this moment," the soldier is seen as saying in the footage.

"Targeting journalists this way always aims to erase the truth and prevent people from hearing the truth," Al-Omari said.

Al Jazeera called the raid a "criminal act".

It followed an order issued in May that saw Israeli police raid Al Jazeera's broadcast position in occupied East Jerusalem, seizing equipment there, preventing its broadcasts in Israel, and blocking its websites.

The move marked the first time Israel has ever shuttered a foreign news outlet operating in the country.

However, Al Jazeera has continued operating in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military acknowledged conducting the raid 12 hours later, claiming without providing evidence that the newsroom was "being used to incite terror, to support terrorist activities and that the channel's broadcasts endanger… security and public order".

Al Jazeera denounced Israel's "unfounded accusations" as it continued broadcasting live from Amman, Jordan, even as Israeli troops welded shut its office doors in Ramallah and confiscated its equipment.

"Al Jazeera will not be intimidated or deterred by efforts to silence its coverage," it said.

Press groups condemn Israel closing Al Jazeera office in Ramallah

The Committee to Protect Journalists says it is ‘deeply alarmed’ by the raid and calls for protection of freedom of the press.


Video Duration 06 minutes 45 seconds06:45
Published On 22 Sep 202422 Sep 2024

Press freedom groups and rights activists have condemned the Israeli military forcibly shutting down Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, calling the act an assault on journalism.

Early on Sunday morning, Israeli soldiers raided the bureau of the Qatar-based network and ordered its closure for 45 days.

The raid, captured on live TV, showed heavily armed Israeli troops handing an Israeli military court order to Al Jazeera’s bureau chief Walid al-Omari, informing him of the closure.

Al-Omari later said the court order accused Al Jazeera of “incitement to and support of terrorism” and that the Israeli soldiers confiscated the bureau’s cameras before leaving.

“Targeting journalists this way aims to erase the truth and prevent people from hearing the truth,” he said.

During the raid, Israeli soldiers also tore down posters of slain Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, which were displayed on the walls of the bureau, al-Omari said.
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The Ramallah office raid came five months after Israel shut the news channel’s operations in occupied East Jerusalem and took it off cable providers.
‘Relentless assault’

In a statement, the Committee to Protect Journalists said it was “deeply alarmed” by the Israeli raid, just months after Israel shuttered Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel after deeming it a threat to national security.

“Israel’s efforts to censor Al Jazeera severely undermine the public’s right to information on a war that has upended so many lives in the region,” it said.

“Al Jazeera’s journalists must be allowed to report at this critical time, and always.”

In a brief statement on X, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it “denounces Israel’s relentless assault” on Al Jazeera. RSF had previously called for the repeal of an Israeli law that allows the government to shut down foreign media in Israel, “targeting Al Jazeera channel”.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate denounced Israel’s “arbitrary military decision”, calling it “a new aggression against journalistic work and media outlets”.

“We call on the entities and institutions concerned with journalists’ rights to condemn this decision and stop its implementation,” the group said.

The Palestinian Authority said the Israeli operation against Al Jazeera in Ramallah was “a flagrant violation” of press freedom.
‘Affront to press freedom’

Al Jazeera has been providing extensive coverage of Israel’s nearly-year-long military offensive in Gaza and of a parallel surge in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Four Al Jazeera journalists have been killed since the war in Gaza began, and the network’s office in the besieged territory was bombed. A total of 173 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October last year. Israel claims it does not target journalists.

The Al Jazeera network, which is funded by the Qatari government, has also rejected accusations that it harmed Israel’s security as a “dangerous and ridiculous lie” that puts its journalists at risk.

Israeli Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi justified Sunday’s closure of Al Jazeera’s bureau, calling the network “the mouthpiece” of Gaza’s Hamas and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah.

“We will continue to fight the enemy channels and ensure the safety of our heroic fighters,” he said.

In a statement, however, the Al Jazeera Media Network said it “vehemently condemns and denounces this criminal act by the Israeli occupation forces”.

“Al Jazeera rejects the draconian actions, and the unfounded allegations presented by Israeli authorities to justify these illegal raids,” it said.

“The raid on the office and seizure of our equipment is not only an attack on Al Jazeera but an affront to press freedom and the very principles of journalism.

‘A bigger West Bank onslaught’

Rami Khouri, a Middle East expert at the American University in Beirut, said the closure of Al Jazeera’s Ramallah office is in line with the policy of Israel since 1948, “which is to prevent real news about the Palestinians”.

“It probably means that there’s going to be a bigger onslaught… of Israeli violence all over the West Bank. And the primary instrument for informing the world about what Israel is doing is not going to be available to do it,” he said.

Mouin Rabbani, a non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, said the decision to shut down Al Jazeera’s bureau in Ramallah shows that Israel “clearly has something very serious to hide”.

“In this particular case, if you don’t like the exposure of genocide in the context of an illegal occupation, you shoot the messenger.”
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Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies

Reporters Without Borders condemns Israeli shut-down of Al Jazeera's West Bank bureau

RSF says it once again 'denounces Israel's relentless assault' on Qatar-based media group

Seda Sevencan |22.09.2024 - 

Israeli soldiers close the Al Jazeera office in West Bank after raiding it

ISTANBUL

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Sunday condemned an Israeli raid of Al Jazeera's office in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah and the subsequent closure of the bureau.

In a post on its X account, the press freedom organization said Israeli soldiers stormed the Qatar-based media group's office in Ramallah early on Sunday, forcing staff to evacuate.

It said they also imposed a 45-day closure and tore down a poster of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed by Israeli gunfire in Jenin on May 11, 2022.

RSF condemned the raid, saying, "Once again, RSF denounces Israel's relentless assault on @alJazeera."

On May 5, the Israeli government decided to ban Al Jazeera, close its offices in Israel and restrict access to its website under a law passed by the Knesset (parliament) that allows the communications minister to shut down foreign networks operating in Israel and confiscate their equipment if the country's defense minister identifies that their broadcasts pose "actual harm to the state’s security."

Despite the ban, the office staff continued to operate from Ramallah, prompting the Israeli Press Office, affiliated with the prime minister's office, to revoke the accreditation of its reporters on Sept. 12.

Israeli officials have frequently criticized the Qatar-based channel, particularly for its extensive coverage of the brutal Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip.

Israel has continued its deadly onslaught on Gaza following a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7 last year, despite a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire.

Nearly 41,400 people, mostly women and children, have since been killed and more than 95,700 injured, according to local health authorities.

The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the entire population of the territory amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel faces accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.

The Live-Streamed Genocide in Gaza Exposes US Complicity for All to See

The spiritual death of the United States has been a long time coming. It’s not just the murder and destruction—it’s the arrogance and hypocrisy of it all.

By Omar Suleiman

September 11, 2024Z ArticleNo Comments5 Mins Read
Source: Middle East Eye
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Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants' surprise attack. 

Photo by Naaman Omar\ apaimages

With a military budget greater than the next 10 countries combined, the U.S. naturally remains an international hegemon.

But it’s not the benevolent empire it once sold itself as to the globe. Now, as it transitions from post-9/11 forever wars, yet continues to engage in, finance and manufacture the weapons of a genocide, America’s decades-long spiritual decline has hit rock bottom.

Recently, a man approached me after a lecture, asking: “What makes Gaza different?” He was referring to the simultaneous international attention and inaction on the occupation’s barbarity in Gaza.

Of course, there are religious implications—Muslims naturally revere Palestine as a holy land, as do Jews and Christians.

There are historical implications, too, including an extensive history of over seven decades of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, the continuous building of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, as well as an ever-growing list of Israeli human rights abuses.

But the biggest difference that came to mind was that every detail of this genocide is being broadcast. It’s a “live-streamed genocide”, as Blinne Ni Ghralaigh, an adviser to the South Africa team at the International Court of Justice, put it.


It’s televised on your phone, your computer screen, your social media. A healthy conscience can’t simply ignore the mutilated bodies of tens of thousands of dead Palestinian children.

“It’s the first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time,” she said.

It’s televised on your phone, your computer screen, your social media. A healthy conscience can’t simply ignore the mutilated bodies of tens of thousands of dead Palestinian children.
Arrogance and hypocrisy

But this isn’t the first time the U.S. has been complicit in the murder of thousands of innocent civilians.

What if the victims of the American military machine in Afghanistan and, later, Iraq were able to livestream their own death and destruction?

How many massacres has the U.S. been proxy to or carried out itself? How many victims will never be mentioned?

In 2020, under the Freedom of Information Act, the The New Yorkersued the Navy, the Marine Corps and the U.S. Central Command in an effort to obtain images from the Haditha massacre of 2005, a civilian slaughter in which US Marines killed 24 Iraqi men, women and children.


The Haditha massacre is a microcosm of not just the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but the West’s brutal attempt to engineer artificial change, secure national security interests at the expense of local populations and impose its will in the Muslim world.

The youngest victims included a three-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy named Abdullah, shot in the head from six feet away.

After a long fight lasting four years, in March, the US military apparatus released the images of the bloodbath. The perpetrators remain unpunished.

The Haditha massacre is a microcosm of not just the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but the West’s brutal attempt to engineer artificial change, secure national security interests at the expense of local populations and impose its will in the Muslim world.

In an interview with Al Jazeera’s Centre Stage last week, Middle East Eye’s editor-in-chief, David Hearst, blasted the western world order amidst its complicity in Gaza.

“Nothing that the western [liberal] alliance has done in the last three decades has worked, and yet it’s still going on,” he said.


The Gaza genocide is an American one, and it is high time Americans came to terms with their government’s complicity.

From forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to Barack Obama’s “no boots on the ground” that fuelled a drone-strike heavy policy in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, the US’s spiritual death has been a long time coming.

And it’s not just the murder and destruction—it’s the arrogance and hypocrisy of it all.
Sinister defence

“They’re using extremely illiberal means to protect their liberalism, and they’re using it against Muslims,” Hearst added in his interview with Al Jazeera. “They wouldn’t dare to use that against Jews or synagogues.”

It is largely American bombs that have been dropped on the hospitals, mosques, churches and over 500 schools of Gaza.

It is an American backing of Israeli war crimes and human rights abuses that allows the occupation to continue its ongoing genocide, and it is this sinister defense of Israeli terror—often at the expense of its own citizens—that is putting the final nail in the coffin of America’s spiritual death.

For decades, Washington has remained silent and dismissive of Israel’s murder of American citizens, going to bat at State Department and White House briefings for the occupation against their own citizens.

It is an American backing of Israeli war crimes and human rights abuses that allows the occupation to continue its ongoing genocide…

In 2003, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American activist, was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza. The bulldozer was an American one, sold to Israel through a Defense Department program.

In 2022, Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist, was killed by Israeli snipers in the West Bank in 2022.

Just this week, Israeli forces shot dead 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish-American taking part in protests against illegal Israeli settlements south of Nablus. Israeli officials stated they “would look into it,” a dismal response echoed for decades.

And the U.S. response will remain the same: a shoulder shrug, a disapproval devoid of consequence.

The U.S. is not a negotiator, arbitrator or by any means an objective voice vis-a-vis the Israeli occupation of Palestine. It is the raison d’etre.

The Gaza genocide is an American one, and it is high time Americans came to terms with their government’s complicity in the type of war crimes they so often associate with historical hegemonic rivals.

Murder in Beita: the IDF’s Killing of Ayşenur Eygi

by Jeffrey St. Clair

 September 13, 2024
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Aysenur Eygi after her graduation from the University of Washington in May. Photo courtesy of Aysenur Eygi Family.

Beita is a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank a few miles from Nablus. Beita is an ancient town with houses dating back to the Roman occupation of Palestine. For the past few years, the residents of Beita, many of them farmers, have been under siege from militant Israeli settlers, who have seized their land, diverted their water and torched their fields and olive groves.

In 2013, a caravan of militant Israeli settlers who were part of the Nachala Movement, whose explicit goal is the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, seized a swath of Palestinian land on Mount Sabih that had been a communal olive grove for the Palestinian villagers in Beita for decades.

Without any authorization from the Israeli government, the settlers built an “outpost” on Mount Sabah with the aid of Israeli soldiers. The settlers proclaimed that one of the goals of the outpost was to “disrupt the contiguity” between Palestinian lands in the northern West Bank. The outpost was demolished several times by the Israeli government and quickly rebuilt after the bulldozers left, again with the assistance of IDF forces in the area.

In 2023, thousands of Israeli militants marched on Beita, demanding that the Evyatar Outpost be “legalized” by the Netanyahu government. The march was led by Itamar Ben-Gvir and Belazel Smotrich, with security provided by Israeli police and the IDF. On June 27, the Netanyahu regime officially declared the land beneath Evyatar as state property land authorized the outpost as a settlement, along with four other outposts. Smotrich smugly said the decision to “legalize” the five outpost was in retaliation for the five nations that had recognized Palestinian as a state a few weeks before.

Since 2021, the villagers of Beita have conducted weekly protests against the illegal outpost, protests which have routinely been violently suppressed by the IDF and the settlers. On July 9, 2021, the IDF fired on hundreds of Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists, wounding at least 379 people. Since 1967, at least 77 Beita villagers have been killed by Israeli forces, most of them during protests. In the summer of 2021 alone, seven Palestinians were shot and killed during the weekly protest, and nearly 1000 were injured.

+++

IDF forces deploying near the children’s park in Beita, before firing on demonstrators after a Friday prayer service. Image obtained by Washington Post.

It was into this fraught and dangerous situation that a young American peace activist named Ayşenur Aygi came to lend her support for the Palestinian farmers of Beita. On the morning of September 6, Ayşenur and other activists took a taxi from Ramallah 30 miles north to Beita, where she told friends she wanted to “bear witness” to the relentless theft of Palestinian land and the violent repression of Palestinian farmers who were trying to protect their farms, animals, water supply and orchards.

Ayşenur Eygi was not naive. She knew the score. The 26-year-old recent graduate of the University of Washington was a veteran campaigner who helped lead the Palestinian solidarity movement on campus and had gone to Standing Rock to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline, where the demonstrators encountered brutal crackdowns by local cops and private security forces.

Referred to in most of the media as a “Turkish-American,” as if to diminish the meaning of her death, Ayşenur was born in Turkey, but moved with her parents to Washington state when she was a young child. She was raised here, went to school here, and grew up as an environmental and human rights activist here. She had a model for her activism in another young Washingtonian, the Evergreen College student Rachel Corrie, who’d also been an environmental organizer and pro-Palestinian activist. Like Rachel, Ayşenur went to the Occupied Territories as a peace activist with the International Solidarity Movement. Like Rachel, Ayşenur would be killed by the IDF. Like Rachel, Ayşenur’s death would be met with callous indifference by her own government.

Ayşenur went to Seattle Central College and the University of Washington, where she graduated this May, majoring in psychology with a minor in Middle East Languages and Culture. She mentored younger students and helped set up the anti-genocide camp on campus last fall, where she served as a media liaison, a mentor to younger student protesters and an organizer of teach-ins. Her friend Julia Majid described Ayşenur as an “amazing organizer” who was “energetic and passionate about justice…She was the heart of so much of what we did.”

Ayşenur was nervous. Who wouldn’t be?  This was her first demonstration under Israeli occupation. She’d arrived in the West Bank on September 3 and had already experienced the petty cruelties of daily life there. She told friends back in Seattle that she’d been refused permission by Ben Gvir’s police to visit the Al Aqsa Mosque. She described the indignities of Israeli checkpoints and the ominous, looming presence of the Apartheid Wall. And she was well aware of the fact that two weeks before she arrived in Beita, Daniel Santiago, a 32-year-old teacher from New Jersey, also volunteering with the ISM, had been shot in the thigh by an Israeli sniper at a Friday protest. (Young Palestinian men are routinely shot in the leg by the IDF at protests, often with the intent of disabling them from joining future demonstrations.)

So Ayşenur hung back with a couple of other ISM demonstrators as the local Palestinians began their weekly prayer vigil in a children’s park, directly across from a contingent of IDF soldiers. She told a friend: “I’m nervous because the Army is right there.” She was right to be worried.

As the prayer session ended, the IDF forces, which had by then encircled the group, closed in, forcing young Palestinian men and children back down the road toward the village, first by dousing them with tear gas, then almost immediately with live fire. As the Palestinian demonstrators retreated, the Israelis claimed some threw rocks at the heavily armed IDF soldiers, always a pretext for an even more violent response. The ISM later said none of its member had thrown stones and at no point were any of the Israeli soldiers threatened.

But Ayşenur wasn’t with this group anyway, she’d already retreated down the road toward the olive grove some 200 yards in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, several Israeli soldiers took up positions on the top of a hill and four or five others climbed on to the roof of Ali Maali’s house, parking their armored vehicle nearby. Maali told the Washington Post that the IDF frequently usurps his roof during the Friday prayers, because it gives them unobstructed views of the park, the road and the olive grove. On this day, Maali and his family huddled on the veranda of his house, trying to stay out of the view of the Israeli snipers.

As Ayşenur and her friend Helen scrambled down the road to the olive grove, Helen tripped on a rock, spraining her ankle. Ayşenur helped her up and Helen leaned on the young American activist the rest of the way to the shelter of the grove, where they sat down behind a tree until the shooting stopped around 1:30 in the afternoon.

The confrontation had died down. For about twenty minutes, Ayşenur stayed in the olive grove, talking about what she’d just witnessed when an Israeli sniper on the roof of a building fired a shot, striking a Palestinian youth who was standing about 20 yards from Ayşenur in the leg. Israeli snipers in the West Bank often shoot Palestinian protesters, especially young men, in the leg, often to cripple them and keep them from leading future protests.

Then a sniper fired again. Ali Maali heard the shots fired from his roof, telling the Washington Post, the sound “shook the house.” This time it was a kill shot, hitting Ayşenur in the head. She collapsed immediately. Her friend Helen yelled frantically for help, as she bled out from a head wound.

“We were standing in the street, and it was calm; nothing was happening. Soldiers climbed onto the roof of a house, and I saw a soldier aiming, and then I heard gunfire,” said Jonathan Pollack, a veteran Israeli peace campaigner and correspondent for Haaretz, who witnessed the demonstration and the Israeli response. “The first shot hit something metallic and then the thigh of a young man from the village, and then there was another shot. Then someone called my name in English and said they needed help. I ran about 15 meters and saw her [Eygi] lying on the ground under olive trees, bleeding to death. She had a gunshot wound to the head. I looked up and saw there was a direct line of sight between us and the soldiers…It was quiet. There was nothing to justify the shot. The shot was taken to kill.”

Ayşenur was lifted into a stretcher by paramedics and taken to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, where after attempts to resuscitate her failed, she was pronounced dead at around 2:35 p.m.–the third American citizen to be shot and killed by the IDF in the occupied West Bank this year.

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Biden falsely claiming that Aysenur was killed accidentally when an IDF sniper’s bullet “ricocheted off the ground and hit her.”

Ayşenur Eygi died in the same olive grove where Daniel Santiago had been shot, also by accident, according to Israel’s account, when IDF forces “fired live rounds into the air” aimed at driving off non-violent protesters.

“If Israeli soldiers are willing to shoot a non-violent unarmed American citizen from behind, imagine the level of violence they direct at Palestinians when no one is there to document the settler and IDF’s violence,” Santiago said. “The money I pay in my taxes as a teacher probably funded the bullet they have run through me.”

Earlier this year, Biden warned that “If you harm an American, we will respond.” But five days would pass before Biden said anything about the latest killing of an American citizen by the IDF and then his response was tepid, devoid of any trace of empathy for Ayşenur or her family. He merely regurgitated the absurd line coming out of Tel Aviv: “Apparently it was an accident, ricocheted off the ground and just got hit by accident. I’m working that out now.”

In a series of statements on her death, Ayşenur’s family condemned the Biden administration for accepting the Israeli and demanded an independent investigation.

In the midst of this terrible tragedy, our family has been crossing continents to gather and put our beloved Ayşenur to rest. We will always remember Ayşenur as a kindhearted, silly, and passionate soul whose face expressed all those qualities. We cannot speak of what happened to those expressions when her temple met a bullet fired by a trained Israeli soldier.

Ayşenur was an international observer who stood in witness of “violent extremist Israeli settlers [who] are uprooting Palestinians from their homes”–words President Biden himself used today. Despite this, President Biden is still calling her killing an accident based only on the Israeli military’s story. This is not only insensitive and false; it is complicity in the Israeli military’s agenda to take Palestinian land and whitewash the killing of an American.

Let us be clear, an American citizen was killed by a foreign military in a targeted attack. The appropriate action is for President Biden and Vice President Harris to speak with the family directly, and order an independent, transparent investigation into the killing of Ayşenur, a volunteer for peace.

The Israeli version of the shooting, which the Biden administration swiftly adopted, was quickly shown by witnesses, cellphone videos and a detailed investigation by the Washington Post to be not only implausible but absolute bunk. The murder of Ayşenur Eygi took place at least 20 minutes after the last confrontation between Palestinian villagers and IDF troops. Ayşenur never threw any stones and was never within 200 yards of anyone who did. The rooftop sniper had a clear view of where Ayşenur was standing, talking to her friend Helen, and she couldn’t be confused for a Palestinian “instigator.” For whatever reason, Ayşenur was targeted; the sights of the rifle focused on her head and shot. The bullet that killed her didn’t ricochet off of a tree or a rock or a dumpster. The sniper had a clear shot and took it. As Rachel Corrie’s father, Craig, said this week: “Israel does not do investigations; they do cover-ups.”

Biden’s desultory reaction to Ayşenur’s murder contrasts vividly with his response earlier that week to the killing of another American, Hersh Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who had been taken hostage by Hamas on October 7 and held captive for nearly 11 months, until he was shot in the head, apparently by his captors, during an armed raid by the IDF on the tunnel where he was being held:

I am devastated and outraged. Hersh was among the innocents brutally attacked while attending a music festival for peace in Israel on October 7. Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes. And we will keep working around the clock for a ceasefire and to secure the release of the remaining hostages.

Biden couldn’t even muster up enough compassion to call Ayşenur’s family, console them for the senseless killing of a bright young American and promise them that his administration would investigate the circumstance of her shooting. His demeanor spoke just as loudly as Melania’s infamous jacket: he just didn’t care. Of course, Biden is hardly alone his indifference to the deaths of American citizens at the hands of Israelis. Since Rachel Corrie’s murder by an IDF bulldozer operator, there have been at least 9 other Americans killed by the IDF. None of their families have received any justice (or even much sympathy) from either Israel or their own government…

Ayşenur Eygi
Jacob Flickinger
Mohammad Khdour
Tawfiq Abdel Jabbar Ajaq
Orwa Hammad
Mahmoud Shaalan
Omar Asaad
Furkan Dogan
Shireen Abu Akleh

The FBI has jurisdiction to investigate the murders of Americans overseas. Why not send them to Beita to enforce the rule of law, instead of Tweeting performative outrage while allowing the murderers to exonerate themselves? The question answers itself. The US/Israeli relationship is forged by bonds of impunity for both the killers and their weapons dealer.

Aria Fani, one of Eygi’s professors at the University of Washington, said Ayşenur went to the West Bank to “protect Palestinian farmers from settler violence. I know exactly what she would say right now if she were alive. She’d say, ‘The only reason I’m in the headlines is because I have American citizenship.’ Which I think is sadly true. We’ve become numb to Palestinian loss.”

Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book is An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents (with Alexander Cockburn). He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net or on Twitter @JeffreyStClair3.