Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington and died. “I can no longer be an accomplice to the genocide”, were his last words.
- Aaron Bushnell was 25 years old and a US soldier serving in the US Air Force.
- The man said that the extreme act was nothing compared to the suffering of the Palestinian people.
- In recent months, the United States has always supported the military offensive on the Gaza Strip.
A US Air Force soldier, Aaron Bushnell, set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington and died. The episode occurred shortly before 1pm on Sunday 25 February and the origin of the gesture was the protest against the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, supported diplomatically and militarily by the United States.
Before dousing himself in petrol, the man denounced in a video that a genocide was taking place against the Palestinian people and his last words before starting the fire were “Free Palestine”.
This is Aaron Bushnell, 25, a US airman who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy, in protest at Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
He died yelling: ‘FREE PALESTINE!’
RIP. pic.twitter.com/ePMGbUfJtK
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) February 26, 2024
The death of Aaron Bushnell
Aaron Bushnell was 25 years old and a US soldier serving in the Air Force, as confirmed by an Air Force spokesperson.
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On Sunday 25 February his face appeared in a Twitch video. He identified himself in front of the camera and as he walked he said that “I will no longer be an accomplice to the genocide”, referring to the ongoing military offensive in the Gaza Strip, which has so far cost the lives of around 30 thousand people, 40 percent of whom are children. In a previous message sent to the media, the man announced that what he was preparing to do was nothing compared to the suffering of the Palestinian people.
Arriving in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, the man put the camera on the ground, doused his body with petrol, set it on fire and shouted “Free Palestine”. Bushnell died in the evening from the severity of his burns.
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The death of US soldier Aaron Bushnell in protest against the Israeli military offensive on Gaza, supported by the same US army he worked for, is reminiscent of other similar stories that have occurred in the past.
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In December a man he had set himself on fire in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, and was later hospitalized in serious condition. In 2022 Wynn Bruce, a 50-year-old climate activist, set himself on fire on the occasion of World Earth Day (Earth day) in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington, in United States. He died the following day from his burns. Other similar deaths occurred in the context of the Arab Spring and indeed, riots broke out precisely from a similar form of protest. In March 2010 Mohamed Bouazizi had in fact set himself on fire in Tunisia and it was dead in protest at the economic conditions of his country. Another iconic story is that of the monk Thích Quảng Đức, who he set himself on fire and died in Vietnam in 1963 to protest the persecution of Buddhists.
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