The Words That Burned Through His Throat

The sacrifice of Aaron Bushnell.

Photo of Aaron Bushnell from his LinkedIn account.

“My name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide.”

Aaron Bushnell was known to be kind. He was known to be gentle. He was an activist who had worked to support the homeless. He believed in liberation. Bushnell, like many of us, had seen the murderous rampage Gaza was being subjected to. He had likely seen as many images of carnage, of suffering, of untold destruction, as we have all not averted our eyes away from.

Bushnell was an active-duty serviceman in the United States Air Force. He had obviously trained in flight, claiming he graduated “top of his class”, and at the time of his death, worked as a software engineer within this branch of the American military. During his time in the Air Force, four wars would be waged against Gaza. This genocide would be the one that set him on this path.

In the early afternoon of February 25th, Bushnell, after having apparently traveled from his home in San Antonio to Washington DC, began broadcasting from what appeared to be a specially-created Twitch streaming channel. Before he had set out that day, he had emailed reporters saying that he was going to be engaging “in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people.” Bushnell was headed for the Israeli embassy.

In the video, Bushnell declares before his final act, walking down the street in his Air Force uniform:

“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 is calm and he does not waver, but he is not stoic. He is breathing heavily and carefully, knowing the severity of what he is about to do.

After placing his camera down, Bushnell stands in the driveway of the embassy, opens a water bottle, and then douses himself with fuel accelerant. He declares in front of the camera, “Free Palestine”, before setting himself alight.

He is consumed by the fire within less than a minute. As soon as the flames erupt over his body, Bushnell begins yelling, “Free Palestine” with all the force, conviction, and pain of a man who knows he is about to meet his death. He continues yelling “Free Palestine” even as his screams of anguish at the fire burning through his skin and organs attempt to overtake all other thoughts. Those words would be his final, as he would collapse on that driveway, and would succumb to his injuries shortly thereafter.

In the video, we witness the actions of both the police and the Secret Service. While the Secret Service extinguished the flames, police yell at the still-burning Bushnell, clearly on the verge of dying, to “get on the ground”, and then come up on his charred and flaming body with guns drawn, as if anticipating a violent confrontation with a man who was burning to death. Exasperated, one of those attempting to put out the fire tells the cops, “I don’t need guns, I need fire extinguishers!”

Bushnell was not the first to self-immolate in protest of the ongoing war against the Palestinians in Gaza. In December of last year, a protester with a Palestinian flag burned themselves to death in front of the Atlanta consulate of the State of Israel. This story, while reported, felt suppressed, with personal details left unreleased by authorities and stories, such as in the Associated Press, commenting with assurance to its readers that there was no “connection to terrorism” to be concerned with, instead focusing on the consulate security guard who was injured trying to put out the fire.

The Israeli consulate responded to the self-immolation in December with dismissiveness and insult, a statement dripping with the expectation that no one would care, and that no one would possibly follow.

"We are saddened to learn of the self-immolation at the entrance to the office building. 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. Our prayers are with the security officer who was injured while trying to prevent this tragic act. We are grateful to the city of Atlanta's law enforcement and first responders for all they do to ensure safety.”

Official statement released by the Atlanta Israeli consulate after a protester self-immolated in front of its building in December 2023.

Bushnell, by live-streaming his protest, and by arguably shielding himself with the respect that is given to members of the American military by the press and by governments, has managed to break through barriers that would have existed for other people who would take similar action. This doesn’t mean there was a lack of trying on the part of some.

Initial reporting from CNN, despite Bushnell clearly describing his motivations on camera and the fact that the protest took place in front of the Israeli embassy, somehow described the soldier’s motivations as “unclear” and that agencies were investigating. In The Jerusalem Post, an Israeli newspaper which until recently had an editor-in-chief who was a former IDF spokesman, declared in its official write-up that Bushnell was an “arsonist”, writing in similar language one would use for domestic terrorists whose names should not be uttered that he was “not known to the embassy”. On the Israeli television network i24 News, columnist Emily K. Schrader declared that the real issue was exaggerated rhetoric, that the real genocide was not happening in Gaza but in fact was the one allegedly being attempted by the Palestinians against the Israelis, and that Bushnell’s death was caused by “inflammatory terms [on social media] that ultimately only leads to destruction and in many cases, self-destruction,” said with a tone of condescension and contempt whose depth is unable to be fully articulated with the written word.

In the absence of a clear and obvious angle to attack Bushnell’s protest, most likely due to his status as a serviceman that would make outright insulting him or suppressing the news itself scandalous, discussions on Western shores have now taken on the familiar framing of mental illness. In Time Magazine’s write-up of Bushnell’s death, the article finishes with a link to the suicide hotline, and asks readers to contact mental health providers if they are experiencing a “crisis.” Mark Joseph Stern, a writer at Slate, seemingly unasked, also wrote on Twitter/X:

“I strongly oppose valorizing any form of suicide as a noble, principled, or legitimate form of political protest. People suffering mental illness deserve empathy and respect, but it is wildly irresponsible to praise them for using a political justification to take their own life.”

Conviction does not exist to the American. To be willing to die in a selfless act for what they believe in only exists for those outside America's sphere of influence. Many will recall reporting on those who self-immolated in protest in Iran and in Russia for instance where this sort of approach, unwilling to engage with the root of its cause, would not even be entertained, let alone written and published with sincerity. The Arab Spring began with a self-immolation. The self-immolation of Buddhist monks in protest of South Vietnam’s persecution became defining images of the war and its corruption. Within America’s walls however, there is a belief, unspoken and ingrained from birth, that democracy allows for everyone’s voices to be heard and that its representatives are inherently inclined to respond to the people and their widespread wishes.

Desperation at inaction or complicity in terror and atrocity need not apply. Everyone incensed by their government to such an extent must simply have something wrong with them. To be able to go about one’s day knowing that children are screaming from the hunger that is eating their insides and that pregnant women are eating bread made from animal feed, and that the United States is supporting Israel’s creation of this famine, is apparently the real sign of well-adjustment.