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Photos: Twitter\YouTube Screenshots
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 protest against the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Below is everything we know about Bushnell, who died from his wounds on Sunday night.
Aaron Bushnell’s background
Bushnell was a 25-year-old member of the U.S. Air Force stationed at the Lackland Air Force base in San Antonio and originally from Whitman, Massachusetts. 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.”
In a statement on Monday, the Air Force stated that he was a cyber-defense operations specialist with the 531st Intelligence Support Squadron.
Bushnell grew up in a religious group on Cape Cod called the Community of Jesus, whose former members have come forward alleging abuse and a rigid social structure. According to a family friend and former Community of Jesus member who spoke with the Washington Post, he was raised in a religious compound in Orleans associated with the group. The friend told the Post that young people in the Community of Jesus often join the military, moving from “one high-control group to another high-control group.”
Friends who spoke with the Post say that while Bushnell was stationed in San Antonio, he was attending events for a socialist organization and delivered food to people on the street. Friends state that his contract with the military was to expire in May and he was looking for a career transition.
Following the police killing of George Floyd, they say he had become more open in his objection to the military.
On Sunday, hours before he went to the Israeli embassy, Bushnell texted a friend who shared the message with the Post. “I hope you’ll understand. I love you,” Bushnell wrote. “This doesn’t even make sense, but I feel like I’m going to miss you.” Weeks earlier, Bushnell talked on the phone with the same friend about “their shared identities as anarchists and what kinds of risks and sacrifices were needed to be effective,” according to the Post.
A friend who spoke to the New York Post states that Bushnell spoke to him on the phone on Saturday night. Bushnell said that he had top-security clearance and that he was distressed by what he was seeing in Gaza. “He told me on Saturday that we have troops in those tunnels, that it’s U.S. soldiers participating in the killings,’’ the friend said. “There’s just too many things I don’t know, but I can tell you that the tone of his voice just had something in it that told me he was scared,’’ the friend said. (While the U.S. has special operations troops in Israel to reportedly identify American hostages, the Biden administration has stated that there will be no American soldiers in Gaza.)
The self-immolation at the embassy
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 [disturbing] video…
