-OpEd-
CAIRO — When I started writing this article, I’d intended to title it: “The difference between being an Israeli-American and a Turkish-American…” I wanted to explore the U.S. administration’s sluggish response to the killing of Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi by an Israeli sniper in the West Bank, as compared to the reaction to the death of Israeli-American prisoner Hersh Goldberg-Pollin, who was killed by Hamas in a Gaza tunnel late last month after being held hostage since Oct. 7 last year.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris quickly spoke by phone with the Goldberg family to offer their deepest condolences. They also released a statement pledging to hold Hamas leaders accountable for the killing of an American citizen.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
The Goldberg family was also given an opportunity to address the Democratic Party convention last month, to demand that every effort be made to free the Israeli hostages held by Hamas. It’s the same Democratic convention that denied Palestinian-Americans the opportunity to speak about the suffering of their relatives in the Occupied Territories and the ongoing genocidal war in Gaza.
I wanted to use this article to salute the spirit of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, the young Turkish-American activist who supported justice and rejected the occupation and racism the American government supported in Palestine. I wanted to cite her case compared to Goldberg’s to denounce the U.S. official disregard for her tragedy apparently because she is Muslim and of Turkish origins, which makes her a citizen of a class lower than white Americans and Jewish Americans.
However, I quickly remembered the tragedy of the young American Rachel Corrie, a white woman with her blond hair and blue eyes. Corrie was killed when an Israeli solider rammed her with his bulldozer as she was attempting to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah in 2003 when Gaza was still occupied by Israel.
Rachel and Shireen
The family of Corrie, who was 24 when she was killed, has never received an invitation from the White House or even a condolence call from any senior American official since her killing, 21 years ago. In fact, no American administration has supported the family’s tireless efforts to hold the Israeli government accountable for the brutal killing of their daughter after Israeli courts, including the Supreme Court in 2015, acquitted the bulldozer driver.
Her blood is of less value to the U.S. ruling establishment.
Corrie’s father was a Vietnam veteran, who seemed to embody the stereotype of the wholesome white American. Like her father, Corrie was a beautiful and brave woman who spent her nights in Gaza telling stories to Palestinian children to distract them from the sounds of Israeli bombing.
More recently, there was also the Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, a Christian Palestinian-American, who was shot and killed by another Israeli sniper two and a half years ago.
The U.S. administration did little to protect or honor these of its citizens. Shireen is Palestinian first and foremost, and her blood is of less value to the U.S. ruling establishment.
Common interest
Despite the differences in ethnic and religious origins, the three American women shared something in common: their support to the Palestinian cause and rejection to the blind American bias towards the racist occupation state. Such support prompted the U.S. to essentially ignore their tragedies– limiting their response to “deep concern” over their killings by Israeli soldiers.
The accepted and prevailing stance in the United States is to support Israel. Even questioning the impact of such an absolute support on U.S. interests in the Middle East was, until recently, taboo in official institutions, especially Congress, where money plays a fundamental role in electing representatives, as well as in the media.
It is true that the picture has changed somewhat in recent years with the shaking of Israel’s sacred status in the United States as a small state defending itself against surrounding enemies. Such change was prompted by the documented atrocities Israel commits against Palestinians, as well as the widening scope of the racist occupation practices.
But in the end, the support to Israel remains ironclad in official U.S. institutions, viewed as a strategic beachhead to protect the U.S. interests in the region.
In the ongoing tragedy in Gaza, the U.S. media has focused this past week on seven American hostages held by Hamas, who are also Israelis and served in the Israeli army. Throughout the war, which approaches its first anniversary, Biden and other senior US officials have been meeting regularly with the hostages’ families.
Biden’s failure
As negotiations between Hamas and Israel to establish a cease-fire in Gaza and release the hostages has deadlocked, the families of four American-Israeli hostages have reportedly pressured the Biden administration to reach a separate deal with Hamas to release their beloved ones who are believed to be alive.
Netanyahu is eagerly awaiting the return of Donald Trump.
Those negotiations stalled after Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu introduced new demands in July, including a lasting control of the Philadelphi Corridor, a strategic strip of land between Gaza and Egypt. Egypt, which is a mediator along with the U.S. and Qatar, demanded a complete Israeli withdrawal from the corridor as well as the Rafah crossing.
This shows that the Biden administration failed to press Netanyahu, who is eagerly awaiting the return of Donald Trump to the White House. And the outgoing administration has nothing to offer Hamas to accept such a would-be offer.
Collateral damage
The fate of the four American-Israelis will remain in the hands of Netanyahu and his extremist ministers. They and other Israeli hostages will survive if the occupation army continues its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza.
But as for Eygi and Corrie, the Biden administration views them as “collateral damage.” It awaits the results of the “transparent” Israeli investigations into their killings, taking into account the tensions and confrontations in the occupied West Bank, and that forces were “defending themselves” by firing live ammunition against protesters throwing stones.
Here’s what this story is about: Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken will pay attention to you only if you are an American citizen who supports Israel.
If instead you are an American who opposes the injustice and racist occupation of Palestine, and you wind up killed, don’t expect anyone in Washington to seek justice for your killing.
