U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed Tuesday that a Turkish American pro-Palestinian activist who died Friday in the West Bank was “killed at the hands of the IDF,” despite an Israeli report that her death was inadvertent.
The Israel Defense Forces [IDF] released a brief report on Tuesday saying that Aysenur Ezgi Eygi had been killed by accident when soldiers responded with live fire to violent rioters who had burned tires and thrown rocks at them in the West Bank (known in Israel as Judea and Samaria).
“The inquiry found that it is highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator of the riot,” the IDF said. “The incident took place during a violent riot in which dozens of Palestinian suspects burned tires and hurled rocks toward security forces at the Beita Junction.”
The IDF added that the investigation was ongoing.
Blinken, appearing at a joint press briefing in London alongside UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, said that the Israeli investigation “seems to show what eyewitnesses have said and made clear, that her killing was both unprovoked and unjustified.
“No one should be shot and killed for attending a protest. No one should have to put their life at risk just for freely expressing their views,” Blinken said, ignoring the violence reported by the IDF inquiry.
He claimed that Israel needed to change its “rules of engagement” in the West Bank, mentioning violence by “extremist” Israeli settlers against Palestinians (while ignoring Palestinian terror against Israeli civilians).
Blinken went on to say that Ezgi Eygi had been “killed at the hands of Israeli security forces. It’s not acceptable. It has to change. And we’ll be making that clear to the senior-most members of the Israeli government.
Even accepting the report at “face value,” he concluded, “there are serious issues that need to be dealt with.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.