On Sunday afternoon outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., 25-year-old Air Force service member Aaron Bushnell placed his phone on the ground to set up a livestream. He then stood before the embassy gates and lit himself on fire while shouting “Free Palestine” in a horrific and ultimately deadly protest against the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Below is everything we know about Bushnell, who died from his wounds on Sunday night.
Bushnell was a 25-year-old member of the U.S. Air Force stationed in San Antonio. He joined the Air Force as an active-duty member in May 2020 and has since worked in information technology and development operations. On his LinkedIn page, Bushnell wrote that he was looking to “transition out of the US Air Force into software engineering.”
Hours before lighting himself on fire, Bushnell posted a Twitch link on his Facebook page with the caption:
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.
Shortly before 1 p.m. on Sunday, Bushnell began his livestream and walked toward the Israeli Embassy with an insulated water bottle full of flammable fluid. “I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” he said in his video. “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 then placed his phone on the ground and walked to the gates of the embassy, where he doused himself in liquid from the bottle. “Free Palestine,” he said, as he struggled to light himself. A law-enforcement officer approached, asking, “Can I help you, sir?” At this point, Bushnell lit himself on fire, screaming, “Free Palestine.”
As Bushnell screamed in pain, a law-enforcement officer off-camera yells at him to “get on the ground.” A second officer yelled at the first: “I don’t need guns, I need fire extinguishers.” By the time D.C. Fire and EMS arrived on the scene, the fire had been put out.
An incident report filed by a Secret Service agent states that they “received a distress call regarding an individual exhibiting signs of mental distress outside the Israeli embassy.” (The Secret Service is responsible for foreign-embassy security.) “Before the Secret Service officers could engage, [Bushnell] doused himself with an unidentified liquid and set himself on fire. The Secret Service officers promptly intervened, extinguishing the flames before the arrival of the fire department. [Bushnell] was subsequently transported to a local hospital due to the burns sustained from the incident. The report states that Bushnell was pronounced dead at 10:06 p.m. on Sunday.”
Bushnell’s video was taken down by Twitch for violating its terms of service, though edited versions blurring out his burning figure are circulating on social media. The Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are investigating the incident along with the Metropolitan Police Department.
Bushnell’s act was not the first self-immolation in protest of the Israel-Hamas war. In December, an unnamed man lit himself on fire in front of the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta. Since the Vietnam War, self-immolation has been a dramatic but rare act of protest.
