When Cindy and Craig Corey heard about the death of Aysenur Ezgi Eggi, the Turkish-American woman who was killed during a protest in the occupied West Bank last week, it reopened a 21-year-old wound.
"You feel your family falling apart again when you know it's happening to another family. There's a hole that will never be filled for each of those families," Craig Kori told the Guardian.
In 2003, their daughter Rachel was crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer during a protest in Rafah against the demolition of houses in Gaza. This week, the couple joined a number of human rights advocates in calling for an independent investigation into Aiga's death, expressing fears that her case, like that of their daughter, will go unpunished.
"This is very personal. This case is very close to us, and there is so much similarity," said Craig, whose daughter - like Eygi - was an idealistic, politically engaged young graduate student from Washington state and a member of the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian organization. .
The couple has been lobbying for decades for justice for Rachel, in a case in which the Israeli military absolved itself of responsibility until the US launched its own investigation. In 2015, Israel's Supreme Court ruled against the Kori family in a lawsuit that sought to hold Israel responsible for their daughter's death.
Listing the names of activists and journalists who have died in Gaza and the West Bank since the early 2000s, the pair argued that each unpunished killing increases the likelihood of the next.
"If we're talking about change, I think things are changing for the worse. In our family, our motivation for everything we did was to prevent this from happening to someone else, and we see that we failed," Kori said.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Tuesday that a preliminary investigation into Eigi's death found it "highly likely" that she was "hit indirectly and unintentionally by Israeli fire", indicating that the Israeli government admits that its soldiers killed Eigi. but it is unlikely that anyone will be prosecuted for her death.
The Agee family appealed to Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, demanding an independent investigation "into the unlawful killing of an American citizen and ensuring that those responsible are fully held accountable."
In response to the IDF's preliminary findings, Blinken issued some of his strongest statements to date on Tuesday, calling the killing of Eigi unprovoked and unjustified, adding that no one should be killed for attending a protest.
However, the State Department has also indicated that it does not plan to conduct a separate investigation into Agee's death. Biden did not call for an independent investigation despite the White House saying it was deeply troubled by the killing.
"There must be full accountability. And Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again," Biden said on Tuesday.
Cindy Corey said that Blinken was promised changes in the IDF's rules of engagement back in 2011, in an exchange of letters with former Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren.
"If Blinken says today that the IDF's rules of engagement need to change, obviously they do, but when it comes to the protesters, he was already directly promised changes by the Oren/Netanyahu government back in 2011," she told the Guardian .
Human rights activists claim that the US government has systematically failed to pressure the Israeli government to accept responsibility for the deaths of activists and journalists, and that it has obstructed or ignored investigations launched by international organizations such as the International Criminal Court or the United Nations.
Even in the case of murders that attracted a lot of attention, little was done. Shireen Abu Akle, a prominent Palestinian-American journalist who worked for Al Jazeera, was covering a raid on a refugee camp in Jenin in 2022 when she was shot in the head by Israeli forces. A year after the murder, the Israeli military admitted there was a "high probability" that she was killed by an Israeli soldier, and the IDF's chief spokesman, Admiral Daniel Hagari, appeared on television to say: "We are sorry for Shirin's death."
But no one was prosecuted for her death. A State Department investigation was inconclusive, saying the fire likely came from IDF positions but found "no reason to believe this was intentional." In the case of the two dozen journalists killed by Israeli military fire between 2000 and 2022, the Committee to Protect Journalists said that "despite numerous investigations by the IDF, no one has ever been charged or held accountable for these deaths."
In cases involving the deaths of foreigners or Palestinians, the Israeli military usually investigates itself. In total, only 0,87% of incidents led to prosecution, according to Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din.
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