Aaron Bushnell May You Rest in Power and Peace

February 5th 2024

Homage to Aaron Bushnell who self-immolated on February to protest the genocide in Gaza. Ali Abunimah, the founder of The Electronic Intifada, wrote on social media, “Aaron Bushnell gave his life so that America would hear his message: End the genocide. He kept calling 'Free Palestine' through intense, horrifying pain. He gave his life so people in Gaza might live. There’s no greater love than that. I feel sadness and awe for this human being.” 

The New York Times saw fit to describe/dismiss/disrespect Aaron Bushnell with this summary headline: A Winding Path: The U.S. airman who lit himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington to protest the war had left an isolated Christian community for the Air Force before turning to leftist and anarchist activism. Yeah NYT, how to suggest personal struggles as the reason for Bushnell’s fiery protest and exclude the actual focus of his protest, that is, genocide.    

On February 28^th Democracy Now! Levi Pierpont talks about his friend Aaron in a powerful and moving program, offering an implicit rebuke to the NYT. The Life & Death of Aaron Bushnell: U.S. Airman Self-Immolates Protesting U.S. Support for Israel in Gaza. 

On the morning of February 25th, Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force, set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington to protest Israel’s assault on Gaza and U.S. support for the military campaign. Bushnell, who live-streamed the action, spoke as he purposely walked to the Embassy: 

“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.” 

“I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, 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 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.” 

Lighting himself on fire he repeatedly shouted “Free Palestine” as he was engulfed in the flames. He was pronounced dead in the hospital later that day. 

Bushnell’s friend and conscientious objector Levi Pierpont says his friend’s death was not a suicide but was about using his life to send a message for justice. “We have to honor the message that he left,” he says tearfully, Bushnell died “to get people’s attention about the genocide that’s happening in Palestine.” 

Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army colonel and former diplomat who also participated in the program, lays out the history of self-immolation to protest war and how Bushnell’s act could impact U.S. policy for the war on Gaza. “It was an act of courage, an act of bravery, to call attention to U.S. policies,” says Wright. www.democracynow.org/2024/2/28/aaron_bushnell_self_immolation_gaza_protest 

Levi Pierpont published an essay in The Guardian March 2^nd titled Aaron Bushnell was my friend. May he never be forgotten.

Aaron did not die in vain. He has already inspired so many to stand up for truth and justice Aaron did not die in vain. He has already inspired so many to stand up for truth and justice. It breaks my heart that his life ended this way. I could never do what he did, and I don’t believe anyone should do what he did. But we’ll never get Aaron back. All we can do is hear the message he died to shine a spotlight on: the horrors of the genocide in Gaza, and the complicity we share as military members and taxpayers of a government deeply invested in violence.  www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/02/aaron-bushnell-death-washington-gaza