A 25-year-old man and active-duty airman died on Sunday after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. in protest of civilian casualties in Gaza, according to the U.S. Air Force.
Aaron Bushnell, a resident of San Antonio, Texas, reportedly live-streamed the filmed protest to social media platform Twitch, though the New York Times indicated it could not confirm who ran the account that posted the video. The video shows a man dressed in military clothing known as fatigues identifying himself as Bushnell and referring to himself as an active-duty Air Force officer. The Times reported that a U.S. Air Force spokeswoman, Ann Stefanek, confirmed on Sunday that Bushnell was an active-duty airman.
“I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” the man in the video says. “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.” After lighting himself on fire, he continues to yell, "Free Palestine!"
Police officers soon rushed to extinguish the fire. The video has subsequently been removed from Twitch, which swapped it for a message noting that the channel violated the platform's guidelines. A spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy shared that no staff members of the embassy had been harmed.
In December, a person set themselves on fire outside the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta, with police referring to the incident as “likely an extreme act of political protest.”
If you are in crisis, please call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.
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