A year after a Seattleite was killed by Israeli forces, her family still wants answers

A year after an Israeli soldier shot and killed Aysenur Ezgi Eygi in the West Bank, her family is still looking for answers to basic questions about what happened that day.

A longtime Seattle resident, she was in the West Bank village of Beita as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement.

Earlier this month, her family visited Washington, D.C. — alongside others with loved ones killed by the Israeli military, or settler violence — to try and get some additional answers.

Eygi’s life in Seattle

Eygi was born in Turkey and moved to Seattle when she was less than a year old. Her sister, Ozden Bennett, remembers her playing pickleball on Alki Beach with her dad. Bennett enjoyed grabbing coffee and going for a walk with her sister.

Bennett says it feels surreal that Eygi has been dead for a year. Eygi married her husband, Hamid Ali, in 2021, after the pair met at a community event in South Seattle.

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One of Eygi's greatest passions, though, was activism.

“She just had an innate desire to do good and to contribute in whatever ways that she could,” Bennett said.

Eygi focused her advocacy work on many causes, including human rights, religious freedom, and climate justice. In high school, she transferred to the Ida B. Wells School at the University of Washington, a school focused on social justice.

She helped organize a mass student walkout against xenophobia in 2016, according to a Washington House of Representatives resolution celebrating her life.

As an undergraduate, she also helped lead the pro-Palestinian encampments on the University of Washington campus in the spring of 2024.

Her professor, Aria Fani, remembered Eygi as virtually tireless. That spring, she advocated for divestment, made baklava for a Palestinian student’s birthday — while also juggling a full course load.

“I didn't know how one could have such a capacious capacity to care for people around her in her life,” he said.

Eygi studied psychology and Middle Eastern languages and culture.

But by the time she graduated, Bennett said Eygi felt she had done all the activism she could for the Palestinian people from Seattle. Eygi decided she needed to document illegal Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank, in person.

“A lot of people have principles, but when it comes to doing something difficult to ensure that you are living by them, a lot of us, and myself included, will falter,” said Hamid Ali, Eygi’s husband. “But she didn't have that problem — I mean, most of the time. She was still human.”

Shifting explanations

Ali and Bennett both remember getting multiple explanations from Israel about what caused Eygi’s death.

Israel's first statement on Eygi’s killing said the military had “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them.”

Less than a week later, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released an initial inquiry that said it was “highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally” by Israeli fire. In that statement, Israel also said the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division had started an investigation.

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When KUOW reached out to Israel’s army for an update, they said the investigation had been completed and referred to the Military Prosecutors' office. They didn’t answer questions about when that investigation would be made public.

The family has consistently called for an independent investigation into Eygi's killing. Until KUOW contacted Bennett again, she said the family hadn’t heard that Israel had completed any investigation.

“It's unacceptable,” Bennett said. “The United States must do more to protect its citizens and hold Israel accountable for its crime.”

Washington lawmaker and federal response

Both of Seattle’s House members, Pramila Jayapal and Adam Smith, have called for an independent investigation into Eygi’s killing.

Washington’s senators, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, have also added to the family’s request for an independent investigation.

Murray’s office said she had raised Eygi’s case with the new ambassador to Israel in May.

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Earlier this month, KUOW also reached out to the U.S. State Department and the Department of Justice about Eygi's case.

A State Department spokesperson said they have “no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens.” But they didn’t respond to a follow-up question about whether they planned to push for an independent investigation.

KUOW never heard back from the Department of Justice.

Eygi’s story may be painfully familiar to some Washington residents. In 2003, an Israeli soldier driving a bulldozer crushed and killed Olympia native Rachel Corrie in the Gaza Strip city of Rafah. Corrie was 23.

Her parents, Cindy and Craig, have spent years pursuing accountability for their daughter. An independent investigation into her death has never been completed.

They reached out to Eygi’s family immediately.

"They were actually one of the first people we talked to that Friday, September 6, when she was killed,” Bennett said. “They shared a lot of wisdom and things that they've learned over the years and things that have kept them going that I didn't really understand that day, that I understand better now."

And both Bennett and Ali say they’re still committed to fighting for justice in Eygi’s honor.

“Even if it takes a long time,” Ali said. “We're just going to keep chipping away at it.”

But Eygi’s family knows it’s not just for their loved one.

“I think that my sister would have liked us to use any platform we have with interviews and journalists to always bring up the general freedom, liberation, justice for Palestinians,” Bennett said. “There's no justice for my sister without justice for Palestinians.”

Ali said Eygi wasn’t naive to the scale of the problems she cared about — but she refused to give up. He said she made him less cynical.

“Things seem hopeless and things seem insurmountable and overwhelmingly bad," he said. “It doesn't mean that the little things that you do and can do won’t matter.”

This story originally aired on KUOW's "Soundside" on Sept. 4.