WASHINGTON
Families of Americans killed by Israeli forces and illegal settlers gathered outside the US Capitol on Tuesday alongside lawmakers to demand the US launch independent investigations and hold Israel accountable for what they described as years of impunity.
A news conference hosted by Rep. Pramila Jayapal brought together relatives of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, Sayfollah “Saif” Musallet, Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, Rachel Corrie and Mohammed Ibrahim, a 16-year-old Palestinian American who is detained in Israel. Lawmakers, including Rashida Tlaib, Summer Lee, Lateefah Simon, Mark Pocan, Delia Ramirez and Chuy Garcia also joined the families.
Since 2022, at least nine Americans have been killed by the Israeli military and settler violence in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Among them was Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old Turkish-American activist from Washington state, who was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper last September while attending a protest against illegal Israeli settlers in Beita in the occupied West Bank.
Jayapal said Eygi was killed while observing a nonviolent protest against illegal Israeli settlements.
“My colleagues and I pushed over and over again for that accountability with absolutely no forward movement, no transparency, no insistence that the United States protect, at a minimum, our own US citizens against Israeli government forces,” she said.
She added that she has spoken with officials, including US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who had promised answers but failed to deliver. “Right now, the Trump administration is continuing to allow US citizens to be killed with impunity, even as the Israeli government commits genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,” she said.
Eygi’s sister, Ozden Bennett, accused Washington of shielding Israel from consequences. “Why are some American lives worth fighting for while others are not?” she asked, pointing out that the Justice Department brought charges for Americans killed in the Oct. 7 attacks but has refused to pursue cases when Israel is responsible for killing US citizens.
“Alongside us today are families just like ours, who have had their loved ones, US citizens, ripped from them at the hands of the Israeli military and settlers ... What you see here is the impact of the impunity our government grants to Israel,” she said.
“This is one of the human costs of continued impunity for Israeli crimes,” said Bennet. “Sometimes, I think: Why do they keep killing US citizens? And maybe it's because that they simply can.”
Lawmakers slam 'complete silence' by US government
Rep. Rashida Tlaib said the silence from Democratic and Republican administrations was “despicable.”
“When Americans are killed abroad, it's a standard procedure for our US government to open an investigation, but when murderers wear Israeli uniforms, there's complete silence,” she said.
Garcia rejected continued US arms transfers to Israel.
“We cannot send weapons to a regime that bombs schools and hospitals but cannot investigate the deaths of 10 US citizens,” he said.
Pocan described illegal settler violence in the West Bank as “another form of the genocide we’re seeing in Gaza.”
He highlighted the case of Mohammed Ibrahim, a 16-year-old American held in Israel’s Ofer prison, where relatives have said he has been denied food and medical care. No family should have to “beg their government” for justice, he said.
Years of struggle for accountability
Cindy Corrie, whose daughter, Rachel, was killed in 2003 while trying to stop an Israeli bulldozer from razing Palestinian homes in Gaza, said appeals for justice had been ignored for decades.
“If there had been real consequences in Israel for Rachel's killing and for any of the killings that followed, perhaps the other families here today would not have had to make this trip to tell the stories of their loved ones killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers,” she said, stressing that US military aid continues to flow despite Israel’s failure to conduct credible investigations.
Speaking to Anadolu in an interview later at the event, Corrie said it was worth the decades-long struggle for justice for her daughter.
“To me, it's helpful to know that somehow, I think Rachel has a role in having raised awareness about what was happening, what she was seeing,” she said.
“Our hearts, every day we wake up to the news, are with the people in Gaza, those that we've met and those we haven't, knowing how much we and Rachel love them," she said. "I just need them to know that they're in our hearts every single day, and this all has to stop."
Other families also shared stories. Musallet, 20, from the state of Florida, was beaten to death by illegal settlers in July while defending his family’s land in the occupied West Bank.
Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, a 17-year-old from Louisiana, was shot dead last January while driving in the West Bank. “It doesn't matter where you're from, whatever citizenship you hold, if you are Palestinian, you are target to the Israeli government, and they know that it's okay to do so because they're not being punished,” said his father.
