SEATTLE — For her 26th birthday in July, human rights activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi gathered her friends around a campfire at one of her favorite spots: a sandy beach in Seattle, where green-and-white ferries ply the dark, flat water and ospreys swim overhead.
On Wednesday night, hundreds of people traveled to the same beach in grief, love and anger to mourn her. Eygi was shot dead by Israeli soldiers Last Friday she was in the occupied West Bank to protest and witness the suffering of the Palestinians.
“I can’t imagine what she felt like in her final moments, lying alone under the olive trees,” one of her friends, Kelsie Nabass, told the crowd at the vigil. “What was she thinking? And did she know that we would all show up here tonight, for her?”
Eygi, who also had Turkish nationality, was killed during a demonstration against settlements in the West BankA witness who was there, Israeli protester Jonathan Pollak, said she posed no threat to Israeli forces and that the shooting occurred during a moment of calm following clashes between rock-throwing protesters and Israeli forces firing tear gas and bullets.
The Israeli military said that Eygi probably shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by his soldierswhich drew criticism from US officials, including President Joe Biden, who said he was “outraged and heartbroken” by her killing.
“There must be full accountability,” Biden said in a statement released Wednesday. “And Israel must do more to ensure incidents like this never happen again.”
The deaths of American citizens in the West Bank have drawn international attention, such as the fatal shooting of a prominent Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Aklehin 2022 in the Jenin refugee camp. The deaths of Palestinians who do not have dual nationality rarely receive the same scrutiny.
Eygi’s family is demanding an independent investigation.
As the sun set and the sky turned a pale orange on the horizon, friends remembered Eygi as open, engaging, funny and dedicated. The crowd streamed past a large rectangle of small black, red, green and white Palestinian flags that had been stuck into the sand to mark the location of the vigil.
Many attendees wore traditional plaid scarves — keffiyehs — in support of the Palestinian cause and carried photos of Eygi in her graduation cap. They laid roses, sunflowers or carnations at a memorial where battery-powered candles spelled her name in the sand.
Several people said they became fast friends with her last spring during the protest in the occupied “Liberated Zone” against the war between Israel and Hamas at the University of Washington. Yoseph Ghazal said she introduced herself as “Baklava,” a name she sometimes used on messaging apps, reflecting her love of the sweet Mediterranean dessert.
Eygi, who attended schools in Seattle and graduated this year from the University of Washington with a degree in psychology, helped negotiate with the government on behalf of the protesters at the camp, which was part of a broader campus movement against the Gaza war.
“She felt so strong and loved humanity so much, loved people so much, loved life so much that she just wanted to help as many people as she could,” Juliette Majid, 26, now a doctoral student at North Carolina State University, said in an interview. “She had such a drive for justice.”
Eygi’s uncle a Turkish television channel told that she had kept her trip a secret from at least some of her family, and that she had blocked relatives from posting to her on social media. Turkish officials have said they are working to have her body repatriated for burial, in accordance with the family’s wishes.
Sue Han, a 26-year-old law student at the University of Washington, had known Eygi for only a few months after meeting her at college camp, but they quickly became close, laughing and playing loud music in Eygi’s beat-up green Subaru. Eygi picked Han up at the airport after her trip. On a recent day, Eygi greeted her with a plastic bag full of sliced apples and perfectly ripe strawberries.
Han saw Eygi before she left. Eygi felt scared and selfish about leaving her loved ones behind to go to the West Bank with the activist group International Solidarity Movement; Han said she couldn’t imagine anyone more selfless.
Eygi loved connecting people, bringing different friends together for coffee to see how they interacted, Han said. The same was true when she brought people together on the beach, and so was the wake.
“I looked around and saw everyone sharing stories about Aysenur, sharing tears and hugging, and this is exactly what she would have wanted,” Han said. “These new relationships all share Aysenur as the beginning — it’s the legacy she would have wanted.”