Abigail Shimniok

Aaron Bushnell, 25, member of the United States Air Force, died on Feb. 25 after self-immolating outside of the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C.
On a Twitch livestream, “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” Bushnell stated.
Bushnell had set his phone down and doused himself in a flammable liquid outside the gates of the embassy. As he lit himself on fire, he managed to remain standing for 44 seconds and scream out “Free Palestine” six times before falling to the ground.
A law enforcement officer had yelled at Bushnell to get on the ground while pointing a gun at him. A second officer yelled, “I don’t need guns, I need fire extinguishers.,” Washington D.C. fire and EMS arrived on the scene and took Bushnell to a local hospital where he passed away later that evening.
Bushnell’s act was the second self-immolation protesting the United States’ support for Israel in its recent engagements in Gaza, which have killed over 30,000 Palestinians and resulted in a major humanitarian crisis at an Israeli diplomatic station in the United States. Another protestor set herself on fire at the country’s Atlanta, GA consulate in Dec. 2023.
Bushnell claimed to have secret knowledge of US troops fighting in Gaza. He served in the Air Force’s 70th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance wing, where his duties included processing intelligence data. Some of the processing involved the Israeli Gaza conflict.
A friend of Bushnell’s stated, “(Bushnell) told me that we had troops on the ground, you know, that were there and killing large numbers of Palestinians.”
The White House has stated numerous times that they will not put U.S. troops on the ground in Gaza, and President Biden has said he hopes to negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza.
US special operations forces have been deployed since the Oct. 7 attack to “identify hostages, including American hostages,” according to the New York Times. A report noted that troops are “not assigned any combatant roles.”
In an official statement, Hamas expressed “our deepest condolences and our full solidarity with the family and friends of the American pilot Aaron Bushnell, whose name has been immortalized as a defender of human values and the oppression of the Palestinian people who are suffering because of the American administration and its unjust policies.”