US Airman Dies After Setting Himself Ablaze Outside Israeli Embassy in Washington
© AFP 2023 / MANDEL NGAN
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The disturbing incident follows a string of other protest actions by other soldiers in the US capital, including meetings with lawmakers, aimed at pressuring their government to halt its military aid to Israel amid the Gaza war.
A US Air Force airman who set himself ablaze outside Israel’s Embassy compound in Washington, DC has reportedly succumbed to his injuries.
The grisly act of self-immolation took place Sunday afternoon, with the man, wearing military fatigues and later identified as 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell, filming the incident as it happened, shouting “Free Palestine” while he was on fire.
The Air Force has confirmed to local media that Bushnell was an active duty airman.
Secret Service agents at the scene took over a minute to extinguish Bushnell, with one bizarrely continuing to point a weapon at the airman as he burned and fell to the ground.
Bushnell was sent to hospital with critical life-threatening injuries. He died late Sunday night, according to independent US journalist Talia Jane.
“I’m 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,” Bushnell said while approaching the Embassy and before dousing himself with a clear liquid held in a thermos and setting himself ablaze.
⚠️ WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
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An active-duty member of the US Air Force protesting the fighting in the Gaza Strip set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington and was hospitalized in critical condition.
In a video of the incident, a man named Aaron Bushnell… pic.twitter.com/BgtMQqjdfS
"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," Bushnell wrote in a social media post before the incident.
DC Police followed up an investigation into the incident by searching a nearby “suspicious vehicle that may be connected” to Bushnell, but said no hazardous materials were found.
Self-immolation became a widely publicized form of protest in the 1960s during the Vietnam War, with several Vietnamese monks burning themselves in protest amid persecution by South Vietnam’s US-backed puppet government. The practice is apparently widespread in India, where over 1,450 and 1,580+ self-immolations were reported between the years 2000 and 2001 alone. The practice is more rare in the United States, with acts of self-immolation over in recent years linked mostly to persons seeking to bring attention to environmental issues.
Bushnell is the second American to have self-immolated amid the ongoing Gaza war. Last December, an unidentified individual with a Palestinian flag set themselves on fire outside the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta, Georgia for reasons similar to the US airman. Authorities did not release the protestor’s name, age or gender, with the person reportedly suffering critical burn injuries to the body. Their current condition is unknown.
26 February, 04:01 GMT
