“I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, 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.” His last words were “Free Palestine”
Washington, DC- Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the US Air Force, died on Sunday after setting himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, in an act of protest against the genocide in Gaza.
His last words were “Free Palestine”.
“My name is Aaron Bushnell, I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” he says in a video of the incident. “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, 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 Pentagon said on Monday described his death as a “tragic event”.
Pentagon spokesman Major General Patrick Ryder said US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin was following the situation.
A Facebook post credited to Bushnell was widely shared on Twitter on Monday, with the following content: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
This is not the first time incidents such as this have taken place in the US in protest against wars, and it is the second such act of self-immolation since the war on Gaza started in October.
In December, a female protester self-immolated outside an Israeli consulate building in Atlanta, in what US police described as “an extreme act of political protest”. She sustained third-degree burns to her body. A Palestinian flag was found at the scene. Her name or age has never been released by authorities.
On November 2, 1965, Norman Morrison, an anti-war activist, covered himself in kerosene and ignited himself on fire below the office of Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara at the Pentagon, in protest against the United States’ participation in the Vietnam War.
In 1993, Graham Bamford poured gasoline all over himself and burnt himself alive in front of the Lower House of the British Parliament and during the middle of the day to point to the suffering of those in Bosnia dying from genocide.
Following the incident, mainstream media outlets were criticized for their choice of headlines that completely ignored the reasons behind Bushnell’s self-immolation.
“Why did he do it?” Assal Rad, a user on X wrote. “None one of [the headlines] mentions the words ‘Gaza’ or ‘genocide’, the reason for Aaron’s protest, or the word ‘Palestine’, his last words spoken.”
Biden’s complicity in the Gaza war genocide
Staffers in the Biden administration who are pressuring the administration towards a ceasefire mourned the loss of Bushnell and called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
“President Biden, our Commander-in-Chief, continues to ignore staff dissent over the mass suffering caused by our leaders’ complicity,” the statement read.
A Martyr
The Palestinian Youth Movement called Bushnell a “Martyr “
In a post on Instagram, they wrote that Bushnell “made the ultimate sacrifice to end a genocide perpetrated, supported, and financed by the Biden Administration”.
“The system is guilty of crimes against humanity in Gaza and Aaron Bushnell took a heroic stand. We honor him and his sacrifice.”
Ya Libnan/ News Agencies
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