In an extreme act of political protest, US Air Force senior airman Aaron Bushnell, 25, set himself on fire as he called for a "free Palestine" amid the Israel-Hamas war.
"I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I'm 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," Bushnell said during a Twitch livestream on Feb. 25.
"Free Palestine," he said multiple times before passing away outside the Israeli embassy in Washington.
The genocide of the Palestinian people by Israel has been the subject of an International Court of Justice proceeding initiated by South Africa on Dec. 29 last year.
Islamist group Hamas, which rules Gaza, launched an attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that resulted in the deaths of 1,200 Israelis and seized 253 hostages in a cross-border attack.
In response, Israel promised to wipe Hamas "off the face of the Earth," leading to the destruction of most of the coastal enclave with nearly 30,000 confirmed dead, based on Palestinian health officials' reports.
As of January, 1.9 million people or 80 percent of Gaza's total population have been forcibly displaced amid Israel’s military operations, according to the UN.
The Hamas attack on Oct. 7 is an escalation of decades of conflict between Israeli and Palestinian forces, with Israeli settler violence displacing hundreds of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2022 and tensions flaring around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site.
There have been numerous political self-immolations in recent history.
In December last year, an unidentified woman with a Palestinian flag lit herself on fire outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta, Georgia.
During the Vietnam war in 1963, Vietnamese monk Thích Quảng Đức set himself on fire to protest the persecution of Buddhists by the US-backed South Vietnamese government.
As for media coverage of the story, some news agencies followed media guidelines on reporting suicide and provided helpline information.
US Secret Service spokesperson Joe Routh told Time in a statement that officers of the agency's uniformed division responded to what appeared as “an individual that was experiencing a possible medical / mental health emergency.”
Bushnell reportedly declared he was "planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people," in an email sent to reporters before the incident.
Bushnell was a cyber defense operations specialist with the 531st Intelligence Support Squadron, according to the Air Force.
He joined the Air Force as an active-duty member in May 2020 and was stationed in San Antonio, Texas.
On his LinkedIn profile, he said he was looking "to transition out of the US Air Force into software engineering."
On his Facebook profile, Bushnell's last post read: "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."
Anarchist group Agency said that Bushnell was an anarchist.
"A much loved friend to many, and heavily involved in mutual aid and solidarity work in San Antonio, TX. May his memory be a blessing, and a reminder to never stop struggling for total liberation. Free Palestine!" the group posted on X, formerly Twitter.
Advocacy group Serve The People Akron said Bushnell was a valued member of the community.
"Aaron... immediately jumped in to help the unhoused and any project that came up. He was dependable and persistent with the mutual aid work he did in a city that was still new to him," the Ohio-based group said in a post on Facebook and Instagram.
This has been edited to add info about Thích Quảng Đức.
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