Widower of Seattle activist killed by Israeli sniper shares his story for the first time

When Hamid Ali came down the stairs of his Seattle home in early September, on his living room coffee table was a bright yellow book. The title, "Martyr!" yelled out from the cover.

Nearby, a bookshelf held other titles spanning from gourmet mushroom foraging, to religion, science fiction, and politics. Nearly all of them belonged to Aysenur Eygi, his wife.

“She… was an avid learner,” Ali said. Eygi was also a community builder effortlessly making connections and a venerable home cook, he added.

“She was one of those people that didn't need a recipe," he said. "She would be able to figure out what tastes good, just by intuition.”

Martyr was not the word he wanted to see that morning when Ali learned Eygi had been killed in the West Bank by an Israeli sniper. She was volunteering for a Palestinian group raising awareness about Israel-sanctioned settlements in the West Bank. Those settlements are a violation of international law, according to the United Nations.

“What has happened is the exact reason why we need to keep advocating for Palestinians and in general, advocating for justice for all oppressed people,” Ali said.

Ali will be speaking Friday alongside friends of Eygi, and the family of Rachel Corrie, another Washington state resident who was killed by Israeli forces while volunteering for pro-Palestinian organizations. This will be the first time they’ve all spoken at a public forum, where they’ll be reflecting on the life and activism of Eygi.

For Ali it’s a night to walk in grief with others, but to also apply public pressure in holding Israel, and his own country, accountable.

While President Biden expressed an intention to continue monitoring Israel’s internal investigation into Eygi's death, Ali doesn’t think that’s enough. A month after the escalation of violence by Hamas on Oct. 7, the Department of Justice announced it was investigating the group on terrorism charges as well as the deaths of 40 Israeli-Americans.

Ali said that was an important development.

“So another question would be, why are we deferring to Israel in these cases, of these… Americans that were killed by Israel?” he asked.

Since Eygi's death, Ali has joined more than 100 members of Congress and lawyers for the Department of Justice pressing federal officials to launch an independent investigations into her death and six other U.S. citizens killed by the Israeli armed forces over the last year.

After finding out Eygi had been killed in the West Bank by IDF forces, Ali and the rest of the family navigated phone calls with friends oceans away explaining what happened. He coordinated the delivery of Eygi’s body to Turkey, but before that, the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government would need autopsies. Those delays added to the anxiety that she needed to have a funeral, and soon.

“Muslim burials have to happen as soon as possible,” Ali said.

It took eight days before Eygi's body arrived in Turkey where Ali was waiting anxiously alongside Eygi's sister and father, he said. During this whole time his focus was on burying Eygi. He tuned out any news coverage.

“I wasn't really looking for answers, or anyone to tell me what happened, because I felt like I had, I had heard it from the people that were closest and that were there,” he said.

But he had also set something else aside. It wasn’t until he was back at his home in Seattle that he began processing his grief. Thoughts would come to him that he’d journal, parts of which he’ll use when he finally speaks publicly in Seattle.

Ali said there’s a lot he wants to tell people about Eygi — the parts of her that people didn’t know, the parts about her that he thinks are misunderstood, and her desire to witness, and support Palestinians, a cause they both held together. But as much as he sees her death raising awareness for Palestinians beyond their circle of friends and colleagues, he wishes it didn’t have to be this way.

“I wish she wasn't a martyr,” he said. “Whatever positive things one might associate with being a martyr, like being remembered and having, like, a legacy, I'd trade all of that just to have her back.”

The panel will take place at 7 p.m. Friday at the University of Washington’s Kane Hall.