Man Dies After Setting Himself on Fire Outside Israeli Embassy in Washington, Air Force Says
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Man Dies After Setting Himself on Fire Outside Israeli Embassy in Washington, Air Force Says
Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty senior airman, repeatedly shouted, “Free Palestine!” as he filmed and livestreamed his protest against Israel’s deadly military actions in Gaza. He had been taken to a hospital on Sunday with life-threatening injuries.
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- Published Feb. 25, 2024Updated Feb. 26, 2024
An airman who had set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington in protest of civilian deaths in Gaza died of his injuries on Sunday night, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Air Force, Rose M. Riley, said on Monday.
The airman, Aaron Bushnell, 25, of Whitman, Mass., was a cyberdefense operations specialist with the 531st Intelligence Support Squadron at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas and had served on active duty since 2020, the Air Force said in a statement on Monday night.
Mr. Bushnell appeared to have filmed the protest on Sunday and livestreamed it on the social media platform Twitch. The New York Times could not confirm who was behind the account that posted the video, but the footage matched the details of the episode released by the police.
A man dressed in fatigues identifies himself in the video as Mr. Bushnell and calls himself an active-duty Air Force officer.
“I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” a man says in the video, echoing language that opponents of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza have used to describe the war. “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.”
Standing in front of the gates of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, he sets his phone down to douse himself in a clear liquid from a metal bottle. He then lights himself on fire while yelling, “Free Palestine!” until he falls to the ground.
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