Aaron Bushnell, who died last month, ‘sacrificed everything’ for Palestinians, says mayor of Jericho
A few of the initial paragraphs for context follow - but the article is worth reading fully:
The Palestinian town of Jericho has named a street after Aaron Bushnell, the US air force member who set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington to protest against the war in Gaza.
The 25-year-old, who died on 25 February, “sacrificed everything” for Palestinians, said the mayor of Jericho, Abdul Karim Sidr, as the street sign was unveiled on Sunday.
“We didn’t know him, and he didn’t know us. There were no social, economic or political ties between us. What we share is a love for freedom and a desire to stand against these attacks [on Gaza],” the mayor told a small crowd gathered on the new Aaron Bushnell Road.
Bushnell livestreamed his self-immolation on the social media platform Twitch, declaring he would “no longer be complicit in genocide” and shouting “free Palestine” as he started the fire. Law enforcement officials put out the flames, but he died in hospital several hours later.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 31,000 people, the majority of them women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The war was triggered by the cross border attack on 7 October when Hamas killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 250 people.
Even as governments in Europe and the US have largely continued to back Israel’s campaign in Gaza as part of the country’s right to self-defence, Palestinians have taken heart from popular protests held from Michigan to Madrid.
There was that Islamophobic Buddhist monk who self-immolated in Sri Lanka in 2013 to protest Muslim butchers. People across the spectrum weighed in on the idea of burning yourself alive to protect cattle. I don’t recall anyone calling it crazy then. At most, reprehensible, misguided, etc. But the idea you’d kill yourself to protest the treatment of cattle/Muslim butchers wasn’t considered “crazy” at the time.
The line seems to be when you’d do it not just for cattle, but also for Palestinians? Is that the conclusion I’m supposed to draw? That’s when self-immolation starts becoming “crazy?”
No, the difference is the person who did it. You’re probably reading western news and opinions. Those people feel like they have a similar perspective to Bushnell, which they probably don’t feel they share with a Sri Lankan monk, so they don’t judge- but they do judge the person they relate to. To make it related to just US politics for example, if someone self-immolated in either support or opposition of Trump then most Americans would consider them crazy.
I’m actually ok with people self-immolating in support of Trump.