Screams of “free Palestine” burst through the flames lit by Aaron Bushnell as they consumed him.Â
Bushnell, a 25-year-old active-duty Air Force member, burned alive outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. in a radical protest against the ongoing Israel-Hamas war Sunday, February 25.Â
Bushnell stated before dousing himself in lighter fluid and catching himself on fire that he was “planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people.” Walking towards the driveway of the Israeli embassy, Bushnell continued that he would “no longer be complicit in genocide.”
On the pain that he was about to endure Bushnell said “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 U.S. support for Israel after the assault from Hamas, a terrorist organization based out of Palestine, has been a point of great controversy over the months that followed the October 7 attack that killed 1,200 people according to Israeli officials.
Gaza’s health ministry, overseen by Hamas, has said that some 30,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in retaliation for the October 7 attack.
Bushnell later died from his injuries.
