After U.S. Airman Aaron Bushnell Sets Himself On Fire To In Front Of Israeli Embassy To Protest Gaza War, His Friends Search For Answers

On February 25, Aaron Bushnell, a U.S. Air Force member, stood in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., and set himself on fire while yelling, “Free Palestine!” He sustained major injuries from the act that caused his death.

Bushnell, 25, covered his body in an unknown liquid and set himself ablaze in an act of extreme protest. He died overnight in the hospital after succumbing to his injuries.

The event was livestreamed on Twitch where Bushnell was recorded saying, “I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest.”

He also was recorded repeatedly chanting “Free Palestine.”

Hours before his death, Bushnell posted 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.”

Bushnell was following two anarchist accounts: Burning River Anarchist Collective and Mutual Air Street Solidarity. He also liked the Kent State University chapter of the radical pro-Hamas group Students for Justice in Palestine.

Bushnell was sprayed with a fire extinguisher before firefighters arrived and took him to a hospital in critical condition.

Now, his friends and family are trying to make sense of the tragedy. One friend, Levi Pierpont, recently wrote in The Guardian about the death.

“Aaron did not die in vain. He has already inspired so many to stand up for truth and justice,” he said. “It breaks my heart that his life ended this way. I could never do what he did, and I don’t believe anyone should do what he did. But we’ll never get Aaron back. All we can do is hear the message he died to shine a spotlight on: the horrors of the genocide in Gaza, and the complicity we share as military members and taxpayers of a government deeply invested in violence.”