In the video, Aaron begins by introducing himself. “My name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active-duty member of the US Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. 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.”
The video shows Aaron continuing to film as he walks to the gate of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, puts down the phone, douses himself in a flammable liquid, and sets himself alight, shouting “Free Palestine” several times. After he collapses, police officers who had been watching the situation unfold run into the frame—one with a fire extinguisher, another with a gun. The officer continues pointing the gun at Aaron for over thirty seconds as Aaron lies on the ground, burning...
We have since confirmed the identity of Aaron Bushnell. He served in the United States Air Force for almost four years. One of his loved ones described Aaron to us as “a force of joy in our community.” An
online post described him as “an amazingly gentle, kind, compassionate person who spends every minute and penny he has helping others. He is silly, makes anyone laugh, and wouldn’t hurt a fly. He is a principled anarchist who lives out his values in everything he does.”
Aaron’s friends tell us that he has passed away as a consequence of his injuries.
All afternoon, while other journalists were breaking the news, we discussed how we should speak about this. Some subjects are too complex to address in a hasty social media post...
Aaron was the second person to self-immolate at an Israeli diplomatic institution in the United States. Another demonstrator
did the same thing at the Israeli consulate in Atlanta on December 1, 2023. It is not easy for us to know how to speak about their deaths.
Some journalists see themselves as engaged in the neutral activity of spreading information as an end in itself—as if the process of selecting what to spread and how to frame it could ever be neutral. For our part, when we speak, we presume that we are speaking to people of action, people like ourselves who are aware of their agency and are in the process of deciding what to do, people who may be wrestling with heartache and despair.
Human beings influence each other both through rational argument and through the infectiousness of action. As Peter Kropotkin
put it, “Courage, devotion, the spirit of sacrifice are as contagious as cowardice, submission, and panic.”
Just as we have a responsibility not to show cowardice, we also have a responsibility not to promote sacrifice casually. We must not speak carelessly about taking risks, even risks that we have taken ourselves. It is one thing to expose oneself to risk; it is another thing to invite others to run risks, not knowing what the consequences might be for them.
And here, we are not speaking about a risk, but about the worst of all certainties.
Let’s not glamorize the decision to end one’s life, nor celebrate anything with such permanent repercussions. Rather than exalting Aaron as a martyr and encouraging others to emulate him, we honor his memory, but we exhort you to take a different path.
“This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
These words of Aaron’s haunt us.
He is right. We are rapidly entering an era in which human life is treated as worthless. This is obvious in Gaza, but we can see it elsewhere around the world, as well.
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