US Air Force member dies after setting himself on fire at Israeli Embassy in DC yelling, ‘Free Palestine’
Posted 67 days ago
From NYPOST.COM
US Air Force member Aaron Bushnell has died from his injuries after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, officials confirmed on Monday.
A US Air Force spokesperson confirmed to The Post that 25-year-old Bushnell died overnight, though she did not officially name him citing the ongoing notification of next of kin.
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Officials were still contacting family members Monday and will not officially announce his death until 24 hours after that is complete, the Air Force representative said.
A Metropolitan DC police spokesman also confirmed Bushnell’s death to The Post, but would not say when or where he succumbed to his injuries.
There was no immediate word on Bushnell’s cause of death.
A harrowing video livestreamed on Twitch on Sunday afternoon appeared to show the serviceman dressed in uniform standing in front of the embassy and identifying himself as a member of the US Air Force.
“I will no longer be complicit in genocide [in Gaza]. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest,” Bushnell reportedly said, before dousing himself with an unknown liquid and setting himself ablaze while repeatedly crying out “Free Palestine.”
Just hours before his deadly act of self-immolation, Bushnell posted a final message on Facebook.
“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,” he wrote.
The message included a link to the Twitch livestream, which was later removed for violating the platform’s community guidelines.
A closer look at the airman’s social media page revealed that he followed two Ohio-based anarchist groups — Burning River Anarchist Collective and Mutual Air Street Solidarity.
He also liked an account belonging to the Kent State University chapter of the radical pro-Hamas group Students for Justice in Palestine.... (Read more)
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