Aaron Bushnell: Martyr for a Free Palestine
By Rikki
Aaron Bushnell died February 25th, 2024. His death shocked the world.
Death follows mankind better than a shadow. It has haunted us and inspired us. It has fascinated and terrified us. We have studied and analyzed it, we have theorized and divined it. But throughout millennia, we have failed to answer, definitively, what happens to us — our inner selves, our consciousness, our soul — after it arrives for us all. It’s very likely we may never answer this question: who’s to say we ever will.
Most of the time, we don’t think about death. It would weigh on us like sheets of concrete, as it does to those who have faced loss, murder, sickness, slaughter. So we push it aside, leave it to be contemplated on days we can’t predict, days that linger like a fresh-rain taste to the Earth. Yet there exists a strain of us who have, seemingly, overcome the lack of a universal answer, who have either decided to live their lives on their own accord, or dedicated themselves to controlling their own answer. They live with zeal, with an internal power. It emanates from them, their words, their actions. They have accepted their end, and have put themselves to work on what legacy they will leave.
When these people become leaders, they go down in history as some of our wisest, our boldest, and the most benevolent. Most these people who fight for the oppressed, who renounce injustice, and strive to win a world of life and liberation remain obscure, mentioned of course, but not exalted.
Those who wield power to oppress and deal in death — who also are afraid of their own death and live their days running from their demise — these are the ones who we warn about. For in their quest to conquer and exploit others, they use everything they can not only to maintain their power over those they oppress, but they also believe their power makes them invincible to resistance.
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The past months Israeli settler colonialism has perpetuated a genocide against the Palestinian people. This has been guided by the ideology of zionism which is the belief that Israeli settlers have the right to invade, seize and occupy the lands of Palestine through displacing and genociding the Palestinian people.
The construction of “Israel” as a nation has been made at the expense of Palestine — a history of colonial violence perpetuated against Palestine’s land, cities, crops, and its people. This history of Israel’s violent conquest of Palestine has been backed by western nations, beginning with Great Britain and now the United States. The human cost of this was and has been dealt on Palestine and its people, as century-old towns and numerous generations were wiped out by a force.
On October 7th of 2023, the Palestinian resistance movement initiated a campaign to defend against increasing Israeli aggressions. In retaliation, the “Israeli Defense Force” or better known as the Israeli Occupation Forces— backed by the most far-right government in Israeli history, led by Benjamin Netanyahu — proceeded to murder close to 40,000 people in the Gaza Strip over the course of the next several months and injure over seventy thousand. Half of Gazan buildings would be razed to the ground. The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas of the world, with over two million inhabitants, in an area 25 miles long and from 3 to 7½ miles wide — slightly smaller than the New York City borough of Queens and with just as many people, with a fraction as much infrastructure to support it. Every day since October 7th, the population of Gaza has been forced into a smaller and smaller area, congregating mainly around Rafah.
Israeli settler colonialism has forced the shadow of death onto Gaza, and Gaza has been fighting tooth and nail to escape it.
Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C. in an act of protest on February 25th, 2024. He live streamed his act of self-immolation, after stating; “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.” He added that, “This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.” As he burned, he shouted “Free Palestine!” until he could scream no more. One of the cops to arrive on scene cruelly pulled his gun on Bushnell, while another yelled, “I don’t need guns, I need a fire extinguisher.” Bushnell was pronounced dead later that day.
Media would pour out about Bushnell’s death. Some expressed sympathy, with some people even expressing open solidarity with his message and intent. Some were simply informative, a simple overview of what had happened in D.C. that day. But a direct response, mainly from the right, was an outcry against mental health. Labeling it as a celebration of suicide, Bushnell would be lambasted as mentally unstable, questions arising as to how such a clearly-disturbed man was even allowed to serve as a member of the United States Air Force with such radical views. Right-wing commentators characterized people sympathetic to Bushnell’s choice of resistance as dangerous, alleging that supporting Bushnell would possibly influence impressionable young people to commit violent acts of solidarity. An emphasis on double standards were made against the left — they had apparently thrown out all their care for mental health awareness in light of a mentally ill man killing himself for something they support.
These are forms of imperialist propaganda meant to undermine the meaning of Aaron Bushnell’s act of resistance. Aaron Bushnell died because he looked directly at the shadow of death. He looked directly at the shadow Israeli settler colonialism has cast over Palestine, and saw just how long that shadow had loomed. He looked at his own life — serving in the United States Air Force — and saw the shadow his work casts. He saw the weight it had on everyone it hovered over, sitting like sheets of concrete over their heads. In that moment, he accepted his own death, and decided to control it on his own accord. Aaron Bushnell decided to die in solidarity. Death no longer terrified him, haunted him. Death followed Aaron Bushnell better than a shadow.
As Palestinian resistance leaders have expressed, Aaron Bushnell died a heroic martyr for the Palestinian cause. May we honor Bushnell and his courage as we move in solidarity with Palestinian liberation.
