A man in US military fatigues set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC on Sunday, in protest of what he called a “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza.
The protester was identified on Sunday by the independent journalist Talia Jane as Aaron Bushnell, 25, an active-duty service member of the US Air Force, who, from a public LinkedIn profile, appeared to work in the service’s IT department.
Late Sunday night, Jane reported that Bushnell had succumbed to the wounds sustained in the self-immolation.
Loved ones of Aaron Bushnell, 25, reached out to me and gave me consent to post a blurred version of Bushnell’s protest today against genocide in Palestine.“Aaron is the kindest, gentlest, silliest little kid in the Air Force,” said Errico, who met Bushnell in 2022. https://t.co/oQFc5r5XFo pic.twitter.com/wpRKVb8KSW
— Talia Jane ❤️ (@taliaotg) February 26, 2024
A video posted by the journalist showed Bushnell identifying himself before lighting himself ablaze.
“I am an active duty member of the US Air Force,” he said, “and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people in Palestine have been experiencing at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all.
“This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal,” he added.
The man then doused himself in what was presumably gasoline and set himself on fire, shouting “Free Palestine!” as he went up in flames. After almost a minute, several men responded to the incident, using fire extinguishers to attempt to put out the blaze.
The Washington DC fire department responded to the incident at 12:58 p.m., it later confirmed on X, writing that a man was transferred to the hospital with life-threatening injuries after setting himself on fire outside the embassy.
The US Air Force did not confirm Bushnell’s specific identity but did tell several news outlets that the protester was, in fact, an active-duty Air Force service member.
History behind the extreme form of protest
Bushnell is not the first to engage in the extreme form of protest or even the first to do so on this issue since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.
In December, a protester set herself on fire outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta. The protester was left in critical condition, though her current status remains unclear.
Self-immolation as a form of protest has a long history, particularly in Asia, where Buddhist monks in Vietnam and Tibet have used the method to protest religious persecution by non-Buddhist governments.
In 2011, the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouzazi, a Tunisian street vendor, set the Arab Spring in motion.
Bushnell invoked "genocide" in Gaza
In the video posted online, originally a live stream shared by Bushnell in real time to the platform Twitch, the soldier invoked what he called a “genocide” in Gaza, by Palestinians’ “colonizers.”
Allegations of genocide have followed Israel’s military response to the October 7 attack since the early days of the country’s war against Hamas, most notably with South Africa’s complaint to the International Court of Justice alleging that Israel violated the genocide convention and asking that the court demand Israel cease military action in Gaza.
The court, without ruling on the merits, determined that the case was plausible at ‘face value,’ meaning that it could not be dismissed outright. Still, the court declined to demand that Israel cease fighting, however, and instead issued only a series of ‘provisional measures’ directing Israel to comply with its existing obligations under international law and to report back to the court about it doing so.
Israel’s war with Hamas began with the terror group’s attack on Israel’s South on October 7, when thousands of Palestinian invaders killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, raping, torturing, and kidnapping others.
The subsequent war in the Gaza Strip has resulted in the deaths of about 30,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-governed Health Ministry, whose numbers do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
According to Israel, about 10,000 of those have been Hamas or other terrorist operatives, suggesting a civilian-to-combatant fatality ratio of about 2:1. The typical ratio in urban warfare is about 9:1, according to the Center for Civilians in Conflict.