Dedicated to the memory of Aaron Bushnell
On Sunday, February 25, 2024, a 25-year-old active-duty American soldier named Aaron Bushnell approached the front gate of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC.
I am about to engage in an act of extreme protest, he live streamed.
Many of us like to ask ourselves, he said, what we would have done during slavery.
The answer is, you are doing it.
Right now.
I will no longer be complicit in genocide, he said. Then, dousing himself with gasoline, he lit a match.
Free Palestine! Free Palestine! Free Palestine! he shouted for as long as he could before succumbing to the flames.
Free Palestine!
Free Palestine!
Free Palestine!
Free Palestine!
They called him a "suicide"
and "mentally ill."
We call him a hero
and brother.