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. -Aaron Bushnell, on the morning of 25 February 2024

From the moment I learned of Aaron’s self-immolation I have been thinking of him and his act of self-sacrifice. While I wish he had chosen another route, it was his life to give on behalf of a noble cause. Whenever I see the references to mental health and the hotlines for those considering suicide, I know Aaron’s decision to end his life was not the result of depression or any other mental health issue.

The first person I thought of was Norman Morrison, a US man who committed the same act on 2 November 1965 in front of Robert McNamara’s office after he put his baby daughter down. Norman, who became a hero in Vietnam (he’s the only US American with a street named after him – in Danang – and whose image appeared on a postage stamp), was stone-cold sober when he made the wrenching decision to end his life in a most public and brutal fashion to protest the Vietnam War. In a letter he had sent to his wife Anne Norman reassured her of the faith in his act: “Know that I love thee … but I must go to help the children of the priest’s village”

Nearly 60 years later in the globally connected age of social media, Aaron meticulously planned his final moments, including words and images. On a crystal-clear and chilly afternoon in Washington, D.C., he calmly crossed the street in front of the Israeli Embassy, drenched himself in gasoline, reached down for a lighter, set himself on fire, and yelled, “Free Palestine!” until the flames consumed him. While the fire that burned his body was still raging, a plainclothes Secret Service agent stood over him with his gun drawn as if a dying man might be an existential threat to others.

I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people are 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. Free Palestine. -Aaron Bushnell

At this moment, Aaron Bushnell became a global hero and a symbol of resistance. As one journalist put it, Bushnell’s extreme act of protest has put Western corporate media to shame. Masha Gessen wrote in a 28 February 2024 New Yorker essay, Bushnell wanted us to see him burn. We did and for many of us, it is an indelible memory.

Finally, I was deeply touched by an interview I saw with Levi Pierpont, one of Aaron’s friends. Here’s what Levi said in an article for The Guardian:

Aaron did not die in vain. He has already inspired so many to stand up for truth and justice. It breaks my heart that his life ended this way. I could never do what he did, and I don’t believe anyone should do what he did. But we’ll never get Aaron back. All we can do is hear the message he died to shine a spotlight on: the horrors of the genocide in Gaza, and the complicity we share as military members and taxpayers of a government deeply invested in violence.

Shalom (שלום), MAA