Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network raises its salutes to the martyr, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a US citizen who went to Palestine to join ISM and the Faz3a campaign defending Palestinian land, villages and agriculture from the rapacious settlers seeking to steal them. She was shot by a Zionist sniper in Beita on Friday, September 6th as she confronted the land-thieving settler mobs as part of the weekly demonstrations to defend the land of Palestine.
Aysenur committed her life to the Palestinian cause and for the liberation of Palestine from US imperialism and world Zionism. She was martyred using weaponry provided to the Zionists by the American imperialists, the same weaponry whose sale and transfer she and others vehemently opposed. The US government that has provided endless military, economic, and propaganda aid to the Zionist regime, has the blood of Aysenur on its hands, as well as the tens of thousands of martyrs in Gaza and the West Bank.
During her life, Aysenur was involved in fighting against the same institutions that bought the bullets that killed her. She participated in the student intifada, organizing at the encampment at the University of Washington, demanding the University divest from “Israel” and to cut ties with Boeing. Boeing, the 3rd largest weapons corporation in the world, is responsible for sending billions of dollars of munitions to the occupation forces. These include Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), which were used in multiple horrific massacres in Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinians. Another US weapons company, General Dynamics, produces the MK-8 bombs, used by the Zionist forces on Monday, September 9, in the horrific massacre in the al-Mawasi camp in which the IOF bombed displaced Palestinians residing in tents, creating 27-foot-deep craters in the sand. As we honour Aysenur, we must also commit ourselves to building and developing the student Intifada and confronting the war machine at all US and Western universities.
Aysenur is one of the many martyrs who have given their lives for the Palestinian liberation struggle, and she is one of the many internationals who have made major sacrifices in solidarity with Palestine, including fellow internationalist martyrs for Palestine Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall, and the martyrs of the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla: Furkan Doğan, Cengiz Akyüz, Ali Haydar Bengi, İbrahim Bilgen, Cevdet Kılıçlar, Cengiz Songür, Çetin Topçuoğlu, Fahri Yaldız, Necdet Yıldırım and, Ugur Süleyman Söylemez. As a Palestinian, Arab and international struggle, the cause has always been taken up by internationalists willing to dedicate themselves to ending the ongoing colonial genocide in Palestine; Aysenur and her forerunners engaged in popular organizing and struggle build upon a long line of courage and dedication. For example, in the 1970s, the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon — the heart of the Palestinian revolution — attracted people from around the world to join the struggle, through arts, health work, educational work, organizing, and through the armed resistance.
Many internationalists have also been imprisoned by Zionist, imperialist, or reactionary regimes globally for participating in the Palestinian liberation struggle through various forms, throughout the years.
Fusako Shigenobu, an internationalist prisoner of the Palestinian liberation struggle, was jailed in Japan for over 21 years as a political prisoner for her, and her comrades, collaboration and involvement in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s armed struggle. Inside Palestine, the prisoners of Palestine held by the Zionist regime over the years have included Terre Fleener, Brigit Schultz, Ludvina Jansen, Thomas Reuter, and Kozo Okamoto, who have spent years inside “Israeli” jails and participated as part of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.
This is not to mention the numerous Arab liberation strugglers who have given their lives and freedom for the liberation of Palestine, as we see daily in the Arab support fronts for Gaza stretching from Yemen to Lebanon to Iraq, Syria and beyond. Arab strugglers for Palestine, from Georges Abdallah, a Lebanese internationalist struggler, who fought against French imperialism and has been imprisoned in French prisons for over 40 years, to Mohammed Boudia, Mohamed Zouari and Mohammed Salah, are among countless Arab martyrs for Palestine who have viewed Palestine as the central cause of Arab liberation. Most recently, Arab popular commitment and sacrifice for Palestine, despite official normalization and complicity, has been represented by the martyr Maher Dyab Hussein al-Jazi al-Howeitat, the Jordanian truck driver who on Sunday, September 8 carried out the Karameh operation on the Jordanian border with occupied Palestine, widely honoured as a “hero of Al-Aqsa Flood.”
Through different eras of the Palestinian revolution and various forms of struggle, the ongoing legacy of internationalist commitment to Palestinian liberation comes in confrontation with the full imperialist partnership in Zionist genocide. Aysenur lives on as part of this legacy of struggle, a call to action and an appeal to people of conscience everywhere. We uplift and honor the sacrifices made by international strugglers, alongside Palestinian and Arab strugglers, who have given their lives and faced imprisonment to further the struggle for Palestinian liberation.
Glory to Aysenur! Victory to Palestine, glory to the martyrs, defeat to Zionism and imperialism, liberation for Palestine from the river to the sea!
