May We All Find Such Courage

on Aaron Bushnell and combatting U.S. Empire

Yesterday, around 1:00pm local time, active duty U.S. Air Force DevOps Engineer Aaron Bushnell doused himself in gasoline and lit himself aflame in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C. He chose to stand while doing this, shouting “Free Palestine” as the flames engulfed him. As he burned he stomped, he clenched his fists, he screamed from unimaginable pain, and again he shouted “Free Palestine.” These were presumably his last words. 

I know this because I watched the video. I was only able to do so because Bushnell streamed it himself, ensuring the world could, and hopefully would, see his act of monumental political protest. This is in contrast to a similar self-immolation in front of an Israeli embassy in Atlanta in December of 2023, which went virtually un-reported. We still know basically nothing about this person, including whether they survived, although a local Atlanta news outlet apparently confirmed they were a woman, and multiple outlets report them being draped in a Palestinian flag. Perhaps this is why Bushnell documented his act so meticulously, going as far as to send a statement ahead of time to media outlets, to ensure his act could not simply be buried or forgotten. 

While approaching the embassy on a sunny Sunday afternoon, Bushnell started streaming live on Twitch. This is what he said:

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. 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. 

He then sets his phone down, facing the gate of the Israeli embassy, where he pours gasoline on himself from a personal water bottle covered in stickers. He struggles for a moment to light himself, the water bottle clinks as it rolls across the sidewalk. Someone offscreen asks if he needs help, then Aaron catches flame. Aaron screams “Free Palestine” as sirens start to wail. One security officer approaches with a fire extinguisher, another with his gun drawn. The fire is put out, but Aaron would succumb to his wounds a few hours later. 

This is the last thing Aaron posted on his Facebook page, with a link to his twitch stream.

I recap all of this here despite the fact that we have all likely seen this by now because it feels like the least I can possibly do.

This image of Aaron Bushnell has, refreshingly, spread like wildfire across the world. Even the PFLP—the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—described Bushnell’s act as the “highest sacrifice” and “a poignant message to the American administration to stop its involvement in the aggression.” They also write that his act “confirms the state of anger among the American people due to the official American involvement in the zionist genocide war being waged on the Gaza strip.” This, I think, points to something very important. 

The reaction to Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation has been so intense, on both sides, because it precisely reveals the reality of the situation; what is necessary, and what is possible. For those who support Palestine, there’s an obvious identification with Bushnell. A mixture of deep admiration, crippling sadness, and not a small amount of guilt. Guilt from the fact that—even if one has been protesting for Palestine in whatever ways they can—he committed an act of immense courage that was true to his ideals. While we should not and cannot destroy ourselves in the process of revolution or protest, Bushnell’s self-immolation still urges us to greater action. As, deep down, we know that even if we are not active duty members of the American military we should be taking more extreme measures to end this genocide. In my view, the only way to honor his sacrifice is to redouble our efforts against the U.S. war machine while staying alive to do so. Just as Bushnell looked to the anti-war movement of the 1960’s and 70’s for inspiration, so too should we.

For those who support Israel, Bushnell’s action is a significant blow to the legitimacy of the Zionist project and all traditional media narratives deployed by them. They cannot call Bushnell a terrorist or an anti-semite. They cannot say it is not the alleged duty of an active duty service member to die for the cause they believe in. So they will result to frothing vitriol, further weakening their cause in the process. Let them seethe.

It is hard to look at Aaron Bushnell’s tragic sacrifice and conclude that what we on the pro-Palestine left have done so far has been enough. I am not saying we should all go light ourselves on fire, quite the contrary. What I am saying is that we should take a hard look at what we’ve been doing so far, conclude that it hasn’t been incredibly effective, and start working out (likely clandestinely) what more we can do. Again, we are not all military service members, but we are (if you’re American) in the beating heart of the empire funding and arming the genocide in Palestine currently taking place. We owe it to every victim of an American bomb to force an end to this brutality.

And don’t get me wrong, I have sympathy for most of us—myself included—who feel utterly paralyzed and helpless. We go to protests when we can, we post on social media, we call our elected officials. Nothing changes. We also have jobs to go to so we can pay for the food and bills and everything else in this country that’s getting exponentially more expensive by the day. We are exhausted, by design, and everything continues to get worse. We need to break out of this, and we cannot do so alone.

To quote the excellent Crimethinc piece on this: 

If your heart is broken by the horrors in Gaza and you are prepared to bear significant consequences to try to stop them, we urge you to do everything in your power to find comrades and make plans collectively. Lay the foundations for a full life of resistance to colonialism and all forms of oppression. Prepare to take risks as your conscience demands, but don’t hurry towards self-destruction. We desperately need you alive, at our side, for all that is to come.

I have no prescriptions or answers. All I know is that this means we need to talk to each other, preferably on Signal, about what we’re capable of. We need to take this crack opened up by Aaron Bushnell’s sacrifice and turn it into a fissure. Everything about this society is deeply broken and nothing about this state of affairs should continue.

I’ve had the quote “when there is nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire” bouncing around my head all day. I briefly considered using it as the title for this piece, before realizing that I didn’t agree with it. There is, in fact, much left to burn. May we all find such courage to light a spark.