‘Taking sides’: The international activists for Palestine Israel targets
Al Jazeera
US Turkish woman’s killing last month puts a spotlight on international activists’ efforts to expose Israeli violence.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi‘s name has spread around the world in the month since an Israeli soldier shot the Turkish American activist in the head during a protest against illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Yet while Eygi’s killing made international headlines and sparked global condemnation, the killing of a 13-year-old Palestinian girl named Bana Laboom – on the same day, also near the city of Nablus – went largely unnoticed.
The disparity in attention paid to Israeli killings of Palestinians and foreigners is not lost on Huwaida Arraf, an American Palestinian activist and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the group with which Eygi travelled to Palestine.
In fact, it is a double standard that groups such as the ISM have sought to use for years.
While increasingly aware that their foreign passports offer only a measure of protection and no guarantee of safety, international activists seek to leverage their status to expose and bring greater scrutiny to Israeli violence and support Palestinians in resisting the occupation.
