The death of active-duty US serviceman Aaron Bushnell, who killed himself by self-immolation outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC, was met with a profoundly unsettling response.
Bushnell, 25, live-streamed his death on the broadcasting website Twitch, filming himself saying: “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’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
Outside the embassy, he put his camera on the ground, poured an accelerant over himself, set himself ablaze, and shouted, “Free Palestine!” until he collapsed.
Bushnell was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.
Aaron Bushnell’s death caught the world’s attention, but he’s not a hero, and he won’t free Palestine.@DrJillStein @CornelWest @ItsAyaHijazi @m7mdkurd
*while we verified Sulaiman Ahmed’s tweet used in this video, his specific account should not be trusted. pic.twitter.com/ABnVGaFNa4
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 29, 2024
Shortly after his identity was confirmed, details about Bushnell’s disturbing views emerged.
A review of his social media profiles found that he held extreme anarchist views and had posted numerous anti-Israel comments online, including one in which he seemingly condoned the October 7 Hamas massacre in which scores of Israeli civilians were raped, tortured and murdered.
According to posts seen by the ADL, Bushnell posted on Reddit earlier this month: “Israel is a white supremacist, ethnonationalist, settler-colonial apartheid state… it has no right to exist.”
In October 2023, he wrote: “Can you or I really say that Indigenous people are wrong for retaliating against colonizers who are rubbing their domination in their face?”
Worryingly, however, Bushell’s warped and antisemitic views that led him to set himself alight in front of horrified bystanders have not stopped some high-profile journalists from lionizing him.
The Guardian published an op-ed four days after Bushnell’s death — more than a day after his social media history was uncovered — in which he is described as a “person of such profound commitment and depth of feeling” who “could be much more useful to the world alive than dead.”
Written by Moira Donegan, the headline of the piece laments what she deems the “loss” to society that is Bushnell’s death.
Sickeningly, Donegan scorns commentators who rightfully questioned the state of Bushnell’s mental health before he killed himself. Such questioning, she contends, should be extended to Israel and its “insane” war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
It is insanity (apparently) to wage war against a genocidal terrorist group that slaughtered and kidnapped more than 1,200 Israelis — but, we must assume, it is not insane to douse yourself in gasoline in the middle of the street in protest of a war happening 6,000 miles away.
Even worse, Donegan states it would be wrong to question what “struggles” led to Bushnell’s suicide because it is “the wrong question to ask, a way to avoid confrontation with the stated meaning of Bushnell’s self-immolation: that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza, one that is only possible with US money and US support, and that this moral catastrophe implicates all Americans in complicity.”
Of course, the article ignores that Bushnell had defended the Hamas massacre, which presumably would make him seem less heroic.
Later in the piece, Donegan suggests that “the [political] left,” which is used as a synonym for pro-Palestinians, is a “much less violent group” than the right.
Publicly-available hate crime statistics, however, tell a different story.
Antisemitism has surged globally, with almost daily reports of Jews being physically assaulted, synagogues attacked and antisemitic graffiti sprayed in public spaces.
The pro-Palestinian marches that have taken place in major cities all over the world have also featured antisemitism.
Donegan isn’t alone in her praise of Bushnell.
Fellow Guardian opinion writer Owen Jones, who previously cast doubt on whether Hamas terrorists carried out rapes or intentionally killed children during the October 7 invasion, posted online that Bushnell died “because he had too much humanity for a world run by people who don’t have any.”
Aaron Bushnell died because he had too much humanity for a world run by people who don’t have any https://t.co/9WcyjBUH0v
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) February 27, 2024
For the likes of Jones, it is a mark of one’s “humanity” to justify the rape and slaughter of Jews, as Bushnell did.
Others who also suggested Bushnell’s actions were in some way laudable included Hamas, which praised him as a “heroic pilot” and The Nation’s “Palestine correspondent” Mohammed El-Kurd, who defended violent actions such as plane hijackings and throwing Molotov cocktails.
Aaron Bushnell’s death is a tragedy — but not for the reasons the likes of Moira Donegan and Owen Jones believe.
No, the tragedy is that he was so radicalized to hate Israel that he ended up doing the unthinkable and took his own life in such a gruesome and public manner.
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