He remained standing for an unbelievable amount of time while he was burning. I don’t know where he got the strength to do it. He remained standing long after he’d stopped vocalizing.
By Caitlin Johnstone
I watched the uncensored video of US airman Aaron Bushnell self-immolating in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington while screaming “Free Palestine”. I hesitated to watch it because I knew once I put it into my mind it’s there for the rest of my life, but I figured I owe him that much.
I feel like I’ve been picked up and shaken, which I suppose was pretty much what Bushnell was going for. Something to shake the world awake to the reality of what’s happening. Something to snap us out of the brainwashed and distracted stupor of western dystopia and turn our gaze to Gaza.
The sounds stay with you more than the sights. The sound of his gentle, youthful, Michael Cera-like voice as he walked toward the embassy. The sound of the round metal container he stored the accelerant in getting louder as it rolls toward the camera. The sound of Bushnell saying “Free Palestine”, then screaming it, then switching to wordless screams when the pain became too overwhelming, then forcing out one more “Free Palestine” before losing his words for good. The sound of the cop screaming at him to get on the ground over and over again. The sound of a first responder telling police to stop pointing guns at Bushnell’s burning body and go get fire extinguishers.
He remained standing for an unbelievable amount of time while he was burning. I don’t know where he got the strength to do it. He remained standing long after he’d stopped vocalizing.
Bushnell was taken to the hospital, where independent reporter Talia Jane reports that he has died. It was about as horrific a death as a human being can experience, and it was designed to be.
Shortly before his final act in this world, Bushnell posted the following message on Facebook:
“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’
“The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
Aaron Bushnell has provided his own answer to this challenge. We’re all providing our own right now.
I would never do what Bushnell did, and I would never recommend anyone else does either. That said, I also can’t deny that his action is having its intended effect: drawing attention to the horrors that are happening in Gaza.
I know this is true because everywhere I see Aaron Bushnell being discussed online I see a massive deluge of pro-Israel trolls frantically swarming the comments in a mad rush to manipulate the narrative. They all understand how destructive it is to US and Israeli information interests for people to be seeing an international news story about a member of the US Air Force self-immolating on camera while screaming “Free Palestine”, and they are doing everything they can to mitigate that damage.
As I write this, there are with absolute certainty people digging through Bushnell’s history searching for dirt that can be spun as evidence that he was a bad person, that he was mentally ill, that he was steered astray by pro-Palestine activists and dissident media — whatever they can make stick. If they find something, literally anything, the smearmeisters and propagandists will run with it as far as they can.
That’s what they’re choosing to do at this point in history. That’s what they would have done during slavery, or the Jim Crow south, or apartheid. That’s what they’re doing while their country commits genocide right now. People are showing what they would have done with their response to Gaza, and they’re showing what they would have done with their response to the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell.
I’m not going to link to the video here; watching it is a personal decision on which you should probably do your own legwork to make sure it’s really what you want. Whether you watch it or not, it happened, just like the incineration of Gaza is happening right now. We each own our personal response to that reality. This is who we are.
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Comments
15 responses to “Aaron Bushnell Burned Himself Alive To Make You Turn Your Eyes To Gaza”
Proof the military makes fools insane.
This idiot troll, chrisirish67, whoever the punk is, drops his dirty mark on anything factual and humane.
A disgrace to both true Irish and true Christians
That 67 stands for the bot’s IQ.
It needs debugging.
Paul, don’t you realize you satisfy his goals by responding in any way? The worst thing you could do to him is ignore him.
A martyr of justice
Aaron was more powerful that the gun pointing at him, so is and will be his legacy.
Why is no one mentioning the women who self-immolated in front of the Israeli consulate on December 1st 2023 in Atlanta GA holding the Palestinian flag? Not even her sex was revealed. Is the misogyny that deep!
It has not gone unmentioned.
And where it is avoided does not necessarily indicate ‘misogyny’.
It is more likely just plain everyday inhumanity.
Try not to see EVERYTHING through the gender lens.
It has affinities with seeing every criticism of Israeli barbarism as ‘antisemitic’.
When you consider the fact that in the same way that the USA invented, weaponized, then used the atomic bomb, or that Germany invented, weaponized, then used Nazism, Judaism invented, weaponized, then used Zionism, you understand that we can be antisemitic merely because we mention that fact.
Doesn’t this call for a new definition of “antisemitism?” You’re damn right.
As it is now, there’s no terminology you can use in public that describes the horrible things Judaism conducts, as a group of people in the same way we group the USA, Germany, China, Russia, etc. as a group of people. In otherwords, Judaism cannot do anything wrong, according to the way we as a society have been brainwashed by Judaism. Those Jews are really clever, aren’t they?
Anyone who thinks that Aaron Bushnell, an American who opposed the USA’s complicity with genocide committed by Israeli Jews, and many other American citizens like him, absolve the USA from its crimes just because of the fact they are Americans, you’re morally and mentally ill. In the same way, anyone who thinks the Jews, such as Jewish Voice for Peace and other Jews who vehemently oppose Zionism, absolve Judaism from its crimes, you are also morally and mentally ill. For well over a hundred years now, Palestinians have been fighting all of Judaism and it greatly demeans their monumental struggle by saying it’s only Israel or Zionism. Even today all of Judaism, as a group of people are necessary to keep the Israeli Jews in the murder and land stealing business.
The same way much of the western world was anti-German in those horrible WWII years, we can be justified in being anti-Jew in these days of witnessing the Conquest of Palestine by Judaism. Even Jews can be anti-Jew in the same way that some Germans during WWII were anti-German, and that Aaron was anti-American. And certainly, Aaron was not blaming individual Americans for the crimes of America. So don’t give me the childish argument that “not all Jews” are involved with the crimes of Judaism.
The current way we deal with these life and death concepts is at the level of childhood – the same level at which Jews and everyone else is indoctrinated. The brain washing is done by adults who were likewise brainwashed as children. Children leading children.
It’s time we remove the strait jacket we voluntarily put on our minds because we are too afraid to be labelled as an antisemite. Me? I never found a straightjacket that fit, and I’m not afraid of being called an antisemite. For me, it’s a moral duty. How about you, either Jew or Goy?
Total condemnation of a whole entity–whether of a faith, a race, a people, or a nation–defines prejudice and bigotry, and abdicates the ethical necessity to use scrupulous and discriminating judgment in assigning responsibility for any movement, action or event.
To blame a whole people for what a mass of them, however dominant or large, does, is simply prejudice. If you embrace it, own it.
History demands the statement, “The Allies fought Germany,” even though not every allied soldier fought a German and not every German fought in the war. Such a statement arises because of the normal rules of English usage and the attempt by many Jews to change those rules in order to hide some Jewish evil behavior is unconscionable. In effect, Jews are saying it’s impossible for Jews to do any wrong or that there could be anything wrong with the Jewish ethos. Only individual Jews or Jewish members of a scapegoat group can do wrong, but never their common beliefs and common values. This is an example of Jewish Exceptionality, and I know of no other large group of people that make such an argument. Do you?
So Jews are subverting the English language to hide their “evil behavior”? And all Jews are saying Jews can do no wrong? And their “common beliefs and common values” can not be implicated in wrongdoing, and that is an example of their “exceptionality”?
Does that remind you of any other nation, that sense of being an exceptional people whose ethos does not permit them to do any wrong, and should all the bastards from that nation be lumped together and condemned?
Your whole point seems to be that Jews, as a whole people, and Judaism, are evil. That belief, while pure prejudice, reductionist and silly, is comprehensible and many people hold it. Why not just say plainly that that that is your belief.
Typical cops response, pull a gun instead of getting a fire extinguisher.
Here is a very interesting article on the subject. I hope Caitlin will take note.
From Rachel Corrie to Aaron Bushnell: sacrificing for Palestine, By Aya Youssef https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/from-rachel-corrie-to-aaron-bushnell–sacrificing-for-palest