Within hours after they were told that Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi had been killed by an Israeli sniper while at a protest in the West Bank last year, her family was on a phone call with the parents of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza more than two decades ago.
The families were introduced by a mutual contact in Washington state, where both Corrie and 26-year-old Eygi had lived. There were other parallels in their stories: Corrie was protesting against the demolition of a Palestinian family’s home in Rafah when a soldier drove over her; Eygi was at a protest against settlement expansion near Nablus. Both had traveled to the region with the International Solidarity Movement, a group that for years has brought foreign activists to stand with Palestinians against Israel’s occupation. An Israeli military investigation concluded that it was “highly likely” Eygi was hit “indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her”; the Israeli military said that Corrie’s death was an accident and that she was responsible for it.
