To many, the Israeli-Hamas war is nothing new, an ongoing conflict that has many divided and has led to many acts of hate towards people on either side. The war is one that people took sides of extremely fast and has led to the boycotting of major corporations like Starbucks and McDonalds.
These acts of protest are not out of the ordinary and are some of the small ways people are showing their solidarity for a particular side.
However, on Sunday we saw a new a devastating protest that is leaving people either doubling down in their protesting efforts or mourning the loss of yet another life in this conflict.
An active-duty member of the US Air Force set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC. The Airman was later pronounced dead.
The airman, Aaron Bushnell, was a 25-year old was an active duty member of the Air Force. He was a cyber defense operations specialist assigned to the 70th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing. He served with the 531st Intelligence Support Squadron and had been on active duty since May 2020, and held rank of senior airman.
Bushnell was raised in Massachusetts on a religious compound called ‘Community of Jesus’, he also attended public schools on the Cape Cod peninsula.
He posted his act of protest on streaming website Twitch saying he did not want to be “complicit in genocide.” As he burned he shouted “Free Palestine”.
In case you didn’t know this act actually has an official term: Self-immolation. It is defined by Oxford dictionary as “the action of setting fire to oneself, especially as a form of protest or sacrifice”. Self-immolation is rare, but it is not completely uncommon.
In the case of a Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, who set himself on fire in Saigon during the Vietnam War is most famously known. An American Quaker also self-immolated in 1965 at the Pentagon. In our very own state of Colorado even in 2022, a man died after setting himself on fire outside the Supreme Court in what his father thought was a climate change protest.
This is not even the first time someone has done this in protest of the Israeli-Hamas war. In December, a person set themselves on fire in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta. Authorities stated the person had a Palestinian flag with them.
So why does this matter?
Aside from the very obvious takeaways that we mourn this loss of life, what else should we be considering? Well, for starters people are arguing that rather than mourning Bushnell’s life we should be living out his dying wishes of protest. No matter my views on the matter of this war as I only seek to provide an unbiased view on this, my mind goes to what precedent does this set? In times when we jump to conclusions fast Bushnell is being portrayed as a hero. When people can be so easily affected by what they see or hear this might serve as a dangerous ideal that doing this is ok, that taking ones life in the form of extreme protest is ok. So I leave you with this: peaceful protest is one of the very foundations that our nation is built upon and should always be protected, but please consider the harmful effects extreme protest has on the people around us.
