The Most Extreme Form of Protest: U.S. Airman self-immolates, saying “Free Palestine”

Outside the Israeli Embassy on February 25, Air Force Service member Aaron Bushnell lit himself on fire as he walked towards the embassy gates, declaring his refusal to take part in a genocide. The 25-year-old man live streamed the event on Twitch, the video now having been taken down for violation of the app’s terms.

Bushnell shared the link of the livestream to his Facebook with the caption, “Many 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.”

As the stream goes on, Bushnell continues toward the embassy with a water bottle of flammable fluid, saying, “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 the colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

He struggles to light himself, but he catches fire soon after- screaming, “Free Palestine.”

Law enforcement officers arrive on the scene with guns pointing at Bushnell. An officer can be heard off-camera yelling to “get on the ground.” Another shouts, “I don’t need guns, I need fire extinguishers.”

Bushnell succumbed to his injuries 7 hours later at the hospital.

Preceding the event, a friend of Bushnell’s spoke to the New York Post speaking of how Bushnell was distressed at what was happening in Gaza; and on Sunday, friends of Bushnell received messages such as, “I hope you’ll understand. I love you,” according to the Post. 

Aaron Bushnell was not the first to self-immolate. An undisclosed woman lit herself on fire in front of the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta in December in protest of the Israel-Hamas War. She survived, but suffers third-degree all over her body. 

This extreme, yet non-violent form of protest is a rare form of protest, with its most well-known iteration being Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese monk who set himself on fire in Saigon in 1963 in protest against the persecution of Buddhists. The US was complicit in the persecution, as they had backed the South Vietnamese Government.

Jack Downey, a professor at the University of Rochester writes, “People are killing themselves in an explicitly gruesome way. They’re choosing to end their own life as a public statement. The statement is meant to be shocking, and is meant to articulate their level of grievance.”