by MARGARET KIMBERLEY
Aaron Bushnell was desperate for the world to know what was happening to the people of Gaza. So much so that he died by his own hand, publicly, and in a painful way. But Palestinians are dying painfully and publicly and all because of decisions made by the U.S. and Israel. Aaron Bushnell presente!
“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 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 is not extreme at all. This is what our ruling
class has decided will be normal.”
Aaron Bushnell’s video statement before he self-immolated at the Israeli embassy in Washington
On December 1, 2023 an as yet unknown person self-immolated outside of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, Georgia. It is strange that no one was ever publicly identified, that no name, age, or gender was ever revealed. There were no follow-up stories as to their condition or whether any criminal charges were filed against them. The public hasn’t been informed as to this person’s current whereabouts.
We only know that this person was taken to the hospital in critical condition and that a security guard who tried to extinguish the flames was himself burned, treated at a hospital, and later released. Police chief Darin Schierbaum labeled the incident, “Extreme political protest,” but no other information was given. It appears that Atlanta media, law enforcement, and the Black plantation overseers wanted that person to be disappeared, and unfortunately, they succeeded.
The entire world has been in protest against the U.S. and Israeli war crimes being carried out in Gaza. As they did in Atlanta, the corporate media discredit any action that exposes the ongoing genocide. Even after the Republic of South Africa brought charges of genocide against Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the media still worked hard to hide and to obfuscate on behalf of the state. The ICJ declared the genocide charge “plausible” but the misleading New York Times headline read in part, “The top United Nations court in The Hague did not rule on whether Israel was committing genocide in Gaza .”
The New York Times and other media are still up to their old tricks. Along with the Washington Post, Reuters, and CNN they reported on the death by self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell without mentioning the words Palestine, Gaza, or genocide. On February 25, 2024, Bushnell, a cyber defense operations specialist with the 531st Intelligence Support Squadron, self-immolated at the Israeli embassy in Washington. He set up his phone to record dousing himself with a flammable liquid, lighting a match, and yelling, “Free Palestine” repeatedly until he collapsed.
Unlike the still-unknown protester in Atlanta Bushnell identified himself in a social media post with this statement. “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.”
The corporate media either buried the entire story outright, or they questioned Bushnell’s mental health without reporting on why he and millions of other people around the world feel so strongly about the plight of the people of Gaza. Self-immolation as a form of protest is not new. Both Vietnamese and Americans used the same tactic to protest the U.S. war against the people of Vietnam.
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