Enforcing The Leahy Laws Can Help Find Justice for Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi

Abdelhalim Abdelrahman is a Palestinian-American political analyst and Marcellus Policy Fellow at the John Quincy Adams Society advocating for a restrained U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East centered around American laws and respect for Palestinian human rights.

Nine months have passed without any justice and accountability for the killing of 26-year-old Turkish-American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Before the Trump administration took office, U.S. Senator Peter Welch (D) along with seven other Democratic lawmakers pressed the Biden-led State Department and then-Secretary of State Anthony Blinken for answers regarding which IDF unit was responsible for Eygi’s murder and why the IDF deemed her to be a threat. While an investigation into Egyi’s murder may prove even more elusive under a Trump presidency, the quest for answers is a small step in what thus far has been an elusive process for justice, even without the current administration. 

As a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), Eygi was shot and killed by the IDF in the occupied Palestinian village of Beita, located just south of the city of Nablus. Eygi was protesting with ISM against recent settler violence and ongoing expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian village of Beita. Since 2021, Israeli forces have killed at least 17 people in Beita by using disproportionate and lethal force against civilians who dare speak out against Israel’s occupation of Palestinians. Since her killing, the United States government has failed both to hold Eygi’s killer accountable and to impose consequences onto the military force responsible for the cold-blooded murder of an American citizen. The IDF claimed that Eygi was “hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator of the riot,” which is false given that Eygi was standing 200 meters away from the original protest site that had already subsided by the time IDF forced open fired.

Eygi preceded in death the recently slain Amir Rabee, who like Eygi joined Rachel Corrie, Shireen Abu Akleh, Omar Assad, Mohammad Khdour, and Tawfic Abdel Jabbar on a long list of Americans whose murder Israel labels “an accident.” Eyewitness reports have contradicted the IDF claim that Eygi’s killing was inadvertent, saying it appears that she was targeted by the IDF. 

Based on eyewitness testimonies, along with the history and genesis of IDF forces killing of American citizens, the U.S. State Department should investigate the murder of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi as an extrajudicial killing, which constitutes a gross violation of human rights (GVHR)under the Leahy Law. Under this legal process, the United States government would withhold foreign assistance to the IDF unit responsible and conduct an investigation into the unit’s history to ensure they have a clean human rights record. If not, then the United States would be legally able to withhold all military assistance to that said unit until they are back into compliance with U.S law.

On September 6, 2024, Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier in Beita while protesting the illegal Evaytar outpost in Nablus that had been taken over by hilltop settlers in 2021. Since the creation of the outpost in Beita, 17 Palestinians have been killed by IDF forces while protesting settlement expansion in this village. According to independent analyses by the Washington Post and CNN, Eygi’s killing occurred within the vicinity that these Palestinian civilians were killed. Furthermore, the IDF soldier who shot and killed Ms. Eygi was located behind a concrete wall roughly 230 meters from her location. The eyewitness testimonies reported by the Washington Post verified that during the time of Eygi’s killing, the protest was over and that Eygi posed no threat to Israeli forces, and corroborated the accounts as told to The Intercept. With all of this put together, it is reasonable to suspect that the IDF soldiers committed an unlawful, deliberate killing of an American civilian.

Policy Prescriptions: An Independent Investigation and Enforcement of The Leahy Laws

Firstly, the U.S. Department of State should heed the September 2024 call of Democratic lawmaker Adam Smith and 102 of his colleagues to launch an independent investigation to obtain pertinent information into Aysenur Eygi’s murder. That investigation should include which IDF unit was responsible for her killing, if that unit received U.S. security assistance in the form of training or equipping, the identity of the Israeli soldier and what accountability measures they may have faced. Secondly, the U.S. State Department should investigate whether or not Ms. Eygi’s death was an extrajudicial killing which would constitute gross violation of human rights (GVHR) under the 1997 Leahy Law.

While the State Department and Department of Defense’s respective Leahy Laws do not explicitly spell out what constitutes a “gross violation of human rights” the State Department utilizes the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act for guidance on the meaning and application of GVHR’s when applying the Leahy vetting process, defining an extrajudicial killing as a “deliberate killing of an individual, carried out under color of law,… and not authorized by a previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court after a trial affording all requisite fair trial and appeal guarantees.” The color of law clause is important because it explicitly states in order to operate under the color of law, a soldier or member of an armed force must be “acting or appear to be acting, in their capacity as a security unit.” 

The IDF soldier responsible for Eygi’s death was acting as a member of a security unit of the IDF when he or she deemed Ms. Eygi as a threat.. Given that Ms. Eygi sustained a gunshot wound to her head, the precision with which she was killed means her death is plausibly a targeted killing. 

Should an independent inquiry identify the unit involved in Ms. Eygi’s murder, the U.S. State Department should enforce the Leahy Law and ban all foreign assistance to that unit, as well as naming that unit explicitly as ineligible for assistance under the Duty to Inform provision. Similar rulings could also be issued in the cases of Omar Assad and journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, both of whom were American citizens killed by the IDF. 

The notorious Netzah Yehuda unit handcuffed, blindfolded, and beat to death OmarAssad in an empty parking lot in January 2022.. Despite widespread evidence that the group had committed grave human violations against Palestinians in the past, without adequate remediation, former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken refused to enforce the Leahy Laws against the Netzah Yehuda.

On May 11, 2022, an unidentified Israeli soldier with the IDF’s Duvdevan Unit shot and killed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. They later claimed her death as result of Palestinian gunfire, but an independent U.N. inquiry found this to be untrue. To this very day, the soldier that is responsible for Shireen’s death remains unburdened by consequences and Congress has resisted pleas from both lawmakers and Shireen’s family for an independent investigation into her killing. 

The failure in accountability around Israel’s devastating harm to civilians, whether within the borders of 1947 Israel, or in Palestine, Lebanon, or Syria, must end. The consistent funding and political support for Israel by the world’s largest military power, notwithstanding international and domestic legal requirements to the contrary, is among the most key enablers of impunity for Israel. 

Demanding the Trump administration to act in accordance with the Leahy Law should be the baseline policy position for any Member of Congress or political figure attempting to position themselves as a defender of U.S. and international law. Applying existing U.S. law to Israel, rather than continuing a long upheld unjust double standard, would be a valuable first step in the search for Eygi and the many other American citizens murdered by the Israeli armed forces. On May 8, 2025, Zeteo’s documentary “Who Killed Shireen?” named the alleged killer of Abu Akleh.

Secondly, once the investigation is completed, the U.S. government must publicly affirm that Eygi’s death was an act of extrajudicial killing, making public the evidence. This would provide Congress and other key actors with valuable information required to hold the suspects in Eygi’s murder accountable.

Lastly, if the Leahy Law was indeed violated in the case of Ms. Eygi, then the U.S. Department of State should use investigate other units recently credibly accused gross violations of human rights, including the Givati Brigade, Metzada Unit, and Force 100; all of whom, have been alleged to have participated in grave human rights violations against the Palestinian-Americans and other members of the diaspora visiting their homeland and Palestinians living under Israel’s military occupation.