US air force officer Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in DC, protesting The 25-year-old livestreamed the tragic incident, which we have decided not to show.
He remains in hospital in critical condition.Original video. On Sunday afternoon, Aaron Bushnell, wearing a mustard-colored sweater under his combat fatigues, walked up to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. As he approached the building, he filmed himself saying.
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 set his phone down, propping it up to continue filming, poured a flammable liquid from a water bottle over his head, then put on his camouflage hat and used a lighter to set himself on fire
Self-immolation is not a new form of political protest, but it is by no means a common one. Dozens of Buddhist monks have committed self-immolation, to protest the suppression of Buddhist leaders in Vietnam in the middle of the last century and, more recently, to draw attention to Chinese rule over Tibet, and the exile of the Dalai Lama.
In the nineteen-sixties, dozens of people in the United States and Asia died after setting themselves on fire to protest the war in Vietnam.
