Written By: Holly Pulley, Staff Writer
COURAGE: One man, through fire, ignites a movement.
On February 25, a US Air Force member by the name of Aaron Bushnell paid a visit to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC. He set his phone which was streaming on Twitch on the wall opposite of him, and poured gasoline over his body. “I am an active duty member of the United States Air Force,” he said, “and I will not be complicit in genocide.” He then flicked a lighter, and set his body on fire.
Self-immolating, the technical term that means to set oneself on fire, is the most dangerous and attention-grabbing form of protest. It is done in a plea for freedom and change, and isn’t taken lightly. The Vietnamese did it to protest the atrocities of the Vietnam War, and the Tunisians participated in the fiery cry when protesting their government during the Arab Spring. According to Time Magazine, the act of self-immolation to protest the Israel-Palestine Conflict is not new. An “unidentified individual self-immolated outside of the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta,” which was rumored to be an extremist act of protesting.
Twitter has, of course, taken the story of a desperate hero pleading for change and turned it into a completely narrative. Some have called him mentally ill and an “enemy,” which is not a joke. Mossad Commentary, a Zionist appreciation page, posted a picture of Aaron Bushnell burning with the caption, “the enemies kill themselves.” Of course this is ironic because, though Bushnell was pro-Palestinian, he was literally a member of the US military, which is ran by the US government, which is one of Israel’s closest allies… you get the picture. But, this is also disgusting, because a human life was destroyed from the maddening fact that their government does not hear them, nor care about them.
As of 2023, the military has faced higher rates of suicide in the last twenty years, and part of this is because many veterans as well as current duty members disagree with the wars that America is involved in and regret their participation in them. In 2004, the Iraq Veterans Against the War was formed, and consisted of former active-duty members of the Iraq War, who advocated against the invasion of Iraq and demanded reparations be paid to the Iraqi people. Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried tells a fictional story of a man fighting in the Vietnam War and his life post war, and how he deals with the things he did. It also describes how the main character’s friends came to terms with their actions during the war, and the suicide of one particular friend, who couldn’t seem to go back to normal after facing injustice. Lots of soldiers are ashamed and embarrassed in their participation in global conflicts and the murders that they saw and enacted, and with that self-loathing comes depressive thoughts, and even worse, the taking of a life. People seem to always act surprised when a veteran commits suicide, as if serving your country is the highest honor in the world and should never be the cause of pain. But for many, serving your country, especially one that seems adamant on being on the wrong side of history, is a memory they don’t want to remember.
Aaron Bushnell’s last words were “free Palestine,” and as a cop held a gun to his head while another grabbed their fire extinguisher to calm the flames engulfing Bushnell, a man sacrificed his life in hopes of creating change. He will not be forgotten.