By Acsah Lemma
With mass atrocities being committed in Gaza with the aid of U.S. taxpayers’ money, are Aaron Bushnell’s actions so shocking? Senseless death does not seem to trigger the “empathy” of the American government unless they have a U.S. passport.
On Sunday, Feb. 25, 25-year-old active-duty Air Force member Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.
In a self-taped video that can be found all over the internet, Bushnell can be seen calmly talking to the camera as he walks towards the embassy.
“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,” Bushnell says in the video.
“I can no longer be complicit in genocide,” he adds. Bushnell then puts his phone down, proceeds to douse himself with a flammable liquid and sets himself on fire.
While on fire, he chants “Free Palestine,” on repeat until he succumbs to the flames and is no longer able to speak. He has sadly died from his injuries.
Self-immolation is not a new concept. It has a history of being done in countries around the world as an extreme form of protest.
A man who self-immolated started the chain of events that led to Arab Spring, a wave of pro-democracy uprisings and protests that occurred in the Middle East and in North Africa from 2010 to 2012, according to Al Jazeera.
In this case, Bushnell wasn’t the only one to commit this act in support of Palestine, as an unidentified woman in Atlanta did the same last December.
Consul General of Israel to the southeastern U.S. Anat Sultan-Dadon responded to the incident by saying, “‘It is tragic to see the hate and incitement toward Israel expressed in such a horrific way. The sanctity of life is our highest value,’” reports The Sun.
I have never read a more ironic statement. The death toll in Gaza is close to reaching 30,000 Palestinians, according to The Guardian. The remaining 1.4 million Palestinians are trapped in the Rafah crossing, essentially waiting for death.
It is also ironic here that the Rafah crossing is where they were advised to go by Israel to seek refuge and escape the bombardment. Now, the starving population survives on animal feed and the limited aid they are able to receive from United Nations trucks that make it through the Strip without getting obliterated by Israeli bombs, according to AP News.
Seeing this horrific treatment of human life leads me to believe that Bushnell’s sacrifice was not unprovoked.
We have never seen a genocide happen before our very eyes. Social media allows us to witness what is happening in Gaza in real time. Even when videos pop up on our Instagram or TikTok timelines showing the corpses of children or homes turned to rubble, there are people that still deny the atrocities being committed in the name of Israel’s “self-defense.”
What Aaron Bushnell did was bring that violence to the home front, to the United States. It’s increasingly more difficult to deny the genocide occurring in Gaza with U.S. support when you have an active-duty U.S. solider lighting themselves on fire as an act of protest.
Yet, there are still those who don’t care. Those who say things like “he wasted his life” and “this won’t change anything.” I disagree.
Those who did not care previously about the death of 30,000 Palestinians are not likely to care now.
What Aaron Bushnell did was more for the people who do care, who do boycott and who do protest. It is a call to action to continue the fight and affirmation that if the deaths are not stopping, we should not either.
Slavery, Jim Crow, the horrible treatment of Indigenous people, South African apartheid, the Holocaust, all these events and many more are examples of the worst of humanity. Times where the sanctity of human life was discarded and greed, bloodlust and genuine evil took over.
What is happening in Gaza and what has been happening in Palestine for decades are more atrocities to add to that list.
We’re leaving a legacy behind, whether we like it or not, and I for one hope that I look back at my past with pride and not shame.
