Caitlin Johnstone
@caitoz
A man set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington today. He said he did it in protest of the genocide in Gaza. [25 Feb 2024]
Independent journalist Talia Jane reports that she was able to obtain footage of the incident, which the unnamed man apparently recorded himself. Jane reports that the man said he is “an active duty member of the U.S. Air Force” and that he “will no longer be complicit in genocide.” After igniting he repeatedly yelled “Free Palestine.”
According to Jane, a police officer showed up pointing a gun at the man’s burning body; I guess that’s just what American cops do when they aren’t sure what to do. Someone who was actually trying to save the man reportedly yelled “I don’t need guns, I need fire extinguishers!”
This just might be the most American thing I have ever heard of. It’s more American than the fake bald eagle cries they put in Hollywood movies. It’s more American than monster trucks and mass shootings. You simply cannot fit more America into a single incident than a man dying a horrifying death in protest of war crimes while a first responder screams at cops to stop pointing their guns at him and go get fire extinguishers. If you were to pick a single moment in history to sum up the essence and expression of the US empire, that would be it.
The New York Times reports that the man “was taken to a nearby hospital with life-threatening injuries and remains in critical condition.” A spokesman for the US Air Force has reportedly confirmed that the man is an active duty member. “I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest,” the man reportedly recorded himself saying before the incident. “But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
The nameless protestor is correct. People in Gaza are being burned alive, are suffocating to death under collapsed buildings, are having operations and amputations without anesthesia, are starving to death, are watching their loved ones die in front of them, are experiencing suffering of a degree that very few of us here in the west can even imagine. And our ruling class is absolutely attempting to normalize this for us.
This isn’t even the first self-immolation we’ve seen in protest of Israel’s US-backed atrocities after October 7; back in December an unnamed protester with a Palestinian flag self-immolated outside the Israeli consulate building in Atlanta. And as I reflect on this I can’t help thinking, how many Israel supporters have self-immolated in protest of October 7? How many Israel supporters have self-immolated in protest of the super serious antisemitism crisis they claim is making Jews feel unsafe in their communities? Surely their claims are just as serious and sincere as those of Palestine supporters, no? Of course not. This has not happened and the very idea is laughable.
Israel apologists insist that it is they and their favorite ethnostate who are the real victims in all this, rather than the population of Gaza who has seen tens of thousands of Palestinians annihilated while Israeli soldiers openly celebrate their mass displacement and death. But you don’t see them self-immolating; you see them cheerleading for ethnic cleansing and genocide. They wouldn’t do anything to cause themselves pain or inconvenience to promote their pet agenda. They wouldn’t even miss brunch for it.
It’s a horrific thing, burning alive. I suspect that pretty much everyone who’s ever self-immolated has had serious regrets about it within the first few seconds. There’s simply nothing one can do to prepare oneself for the experience of that kind of pain, or for how long it can take them to lose consciousness after it’s started. At that point the only comfort they could possibly offer themselves is that it can’t go on forever. But the fact that anyone would ever take such a measure at all shows how profoundly urgent they recognize this issue to be, and how much more sincere they are about it than those on the other side.
US army in Israel
US Airman Aaron Bushnell did not kill himself to protest some other country’s war The US Department of Defense has compelled the participation of Air Force members like Bushnell in Israel’s Gaza genocide Their orders to deploy to Israel read “mandatory”.
Alon Mizrahi: Sense of Shame
A man feeling such overpowering shame that it becomes too much, and he needs to fight it back with whatever means necessary, to not let it eat him alive; a man suffocated and crushed under the unbearable weight of a broken conscience and broken dreams saw a horrible death as the less painful experience; a man who could not go on living when his government and his people murder thousands of children with absolute indifference.
Such a man made the ultimate sacrifice yesterday, to give his country, that he must have loved dearly, one last warning, as it, too, was setting fire to its very existence. “I will no longer be complicit in genocide”, his final message, was, and forever will be, his legacy.
– In honor and eternal memory of Aaron Bushnell, US Air Force serviceman who took his own life, by fire, outside the Israeli embassy in DC yesterday, in protest of the Gaza genocide.
You see, some people will burn themselves alive not to be even indirectly complicit in harming innocent children, while others will directly contribute to burning children alive not to lose a donation they don’t need, as they are already filthy rich, in the name of a political or academic career that does absolutely no good for any member of humanity. There are people like this, and people like that.
But if there is a god and an afterlife, I will want Aaron Bushnell as my next-door neighbor. And while we are all here, we will keep talking, keep protesting, keep speaking truth to power, no matter how powerful it may be at the moment. All moments pass. Genocide will not be normalized. Ever.
A couple more points about the self-sacrifice of the beloved and iconic Aaron Bushnell:
1. Aaron made a point of wearing his uniform. He was telling us: I am doing this as an American soldier. In doing so, he brought more honor to American uniforms than we have seen in decades. Aaron put actual meaning, a love for humanity, into an American symbol in an era where all symbols have become vacant of meaning, cold, cynical, and violent.
I hope that every soldier in every military looks at his act and uses it to undo at least some of the benumbing effect of their national propaganda. I especially hope so for members of the American military. Aaron was your brother. One of yours. You need to love and understand him.
2. Aaron was from San Antonio, which is not a small town by any measure but is nevertheless not Manhattan. American boys just like him have been joining the American military since forever, and they usually come from smaller towns and cities, from migrant communities, and from black neighborhoods. They are not the children of Hollywood producers and Pulitzer Prize winners, they are the children of farmers and teachers, bus drivers and corner shop owners, workers, builders, mechanics; America’s working class. Generation after generation, American elites make a mockery of their naivety and innocent belief in what America stands for, and send them to kill and die in imperial wars from which they return broken, suicidal, drug addicts, homeless, and traumatized for life.
Those cavalier elites, in their columns and “think tanks”, play their stupid, inhumane war games, showing the same contempt for the lives of American soldiers as they do for the foreigners they send them to hunt and destroy.
Beautiful American kids like Aaaron Bushnell pay the price for this. But for the column writing and donor class it is nothing. They never pay for anything. They just go on to the next campaign. America’s deformed class system is present nowhere as it does in its wars.
We should keep this too in mind when lucrative donor-owner bodies push for war with Iran when no child of their own is going to pay with their life for it.
3. Do not dignify those who speak ill of Aaron with an answer. Never get dragged into their twisted, amoral pseudo-reasoning (which is just a sadist’s playtime). Never defend. Always attack. All we need to be saying right now is: you are so dedicated to insane mass murder of innocents that American patriots have started to kill themselves not to partake in it.
4. You will mock Aaron, we will elevate his memory and character. You will make light of Gaza’s suffering, we will remember it forever. You will remain blind to its humanity, we will see it as a symbol for the ages. But you and only you will have to live with what you have become in the name of lust, sorry, indifference, for innocent blood. You will live to regret your own stupidity and heartlessness, and we will be there to rub your face in it.
Hamas statement on Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation and sacrifice
“We in the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) express our deepest condolences and our full solidarity with the family and friends of the American pilot Aaron Bushnell, whose name has been immortalized as a defender of human values and the oppression of the Palestinian people who are suffering because of the American administration and its unjust policies, as well as the American activist Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by a Zionist bulldozer in Rafah in In 2003, it is the same city that Bushnell paid with his life for putting pressure on his country’s government to prevent the criminal Zionist army from attacking it and committing massacres and violations there.
The administration of US President Biden bears full responsibility for the death of US Army pilot Aaron Bushnell due to its policy that supported the Nazi Zionist entity in its war of extermination against our Palestinian people, as he gave his life in order to shed light on the Zionist massacres and ethnic cleansing against our people in the Gaza Strip.
The heroic pilot, Aaron Bushnell, will remain immortal in the memory of our Palestinian people and the free people of the world, and a symbol of the spirit of global human solidarity with our people and their just cause.
The tragic incident that cost Pilot Bushnell his life is an expression of the growing state of anger among the American people who reject their country’s policy that contributes to the killing and extermination of our people, and who reject their government’s violation of universal human values, by providing cover to ensure the impunity of the entity and its Nazi leaders from punishment and accountability.”
Statement by Veterans against the War on X
As Veterans committed in the fight stop U.S. imperialist violence, we grieve the loss of Aaron Bushnell and honor his profound protest and sacrifice. We are taking the time we need to make a full statement, but we offer these suggestions for talking about Aaron’s action:
1) Center the cause he sacrificed his life for – uplifting the catastrophic violence Palestinians are suffering at the hands of our government and a call to action to do what we can to stop it
2) Avoid framing his death as more significant or important than the death of any individual Palestinian– all of these lost lives are precious
3) Respect Aaron’s agency. It’s ok to express our grief about the loss many of us feel, and important to be principled in not projecting our own wishes or judgements about his choice.
4) Don’t assume things we don’t know about Aaron’s state of mind, reasons, etc – his words are strong and clear, we can stick to echoing what he said about his own reasoning and choice. Do not frame this as a mental health issue.
5) It’s meaningful to contextualize this as a historical tactic in antiwar protest dating back to Vietnam. PRESENTE Touch Quang Duc, Monk 1963 Malachi Ritscher, Musician 2006 Charles Ingram, Navy Vet 2016 John Watts, Air Force Vet 2018 And others names known and unknown
6) Be careful to not advocate (intentionally or unintentionally) for people to self-immolate. Be careful to neither glorify this protest tactic above others, nor judge or denounce it.
7) Emphasize that this – opposition to the unjust violence against Palesitnians and the demand for a permanent ceasefire – is the majority position. Despite what media and politicians would have the public believe, thousands of Veterans and Military agree with what Aaron said.
8) Remind folks there is a long history of active military and Veteran resistance to war-mongering. Offer that if anyone knows Veterans and members of the military who are pro-Palestine and feeling complicated about their own complicity right now, there are resources available
Veterans and military members feeling isolated politically or complicated about their military service can use this encrypted form to connect with a community of like-minded Veterans in About Face https://form.jotform.com/203016322583042
Active military members who want to get out, protest or resist contact the GI Rights hotline to confidentially explore the options available to them without judgement https://girightshotline.org