By Desmond Nleya, Daily Times Reporter
In act that will leave Joe Biden and the United States of America with an egg on the face, Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty senior airman, set himself on fire on Monday while shouting, “Free Palestine!”.
The soldier filmed and livestreamed his protest against Israel’s deadly military actions in Gaza.
The airman set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington in protest of civilian deaths in Gaza died of his injuries on Sunday night, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Air Force, Rose M. Riley, said on Monday.
The airman, Aaron Bushnell, 25, of Whitman, Mass., was a cyberdefense operations specialist with the 531st Intelligence Support Squadron at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas and had served on active duty since 2020, the Air Force said in a statement on Monday night.
Mr. Bushnell appeared to have filmed the protest on Sunday and livestreamed it on the social media platform Twitch. The New York Times could not confirm who was behind the account that posted the video, but the footage matched the details of the episode released by the police.
A man dressed in fatigues identifies himself in the video as Mr. Bushnell and calls himself an active-duty Air Force officer.
“I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” a man says in the video, echoing language that opponents of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza have used to describe the war. “I am 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.”
Standing in front of the gates of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, he sets his phone down to douse himself in a clear liquid from a metal bottle. He then lights himself on fire while yelling, “Free Palestine!” until he falls to the ground.
The video shows law enforcement officers approaching him seconds before the fire catches. One is heard off-camera saying, “Can I help you, sir?” The officers scramble for more than a minute to put out the flames.
Officers with the U.S. Secret Service were the first to respond at the embassy, in northwestern Washington, around 1 p.m., said Vito Maggiolo, a spokesman with the city’s fire department.
US has been vetoing any efforts to end the genocide in Gaza and this latest act of bravery by the US Serviceman will put a dent on Joe Biden’s reelection bid.
