No one can contend that they don’t know why Aaron Bushnell did what he did the other day in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. So, go on, then: why did he do it?
When the news broke with me, I was simply browsing the leading most clicked stories on The Guardian website. The headline popped up and it looked ... the best I can say is out of place: “Member of US air force sets fire to himself.” It took a moment to register.
It was noted, and I went and read some other stories first, and then worked my way back to the menu and clicked on Aaron Bushnell’s story (he wasn’t then named). The report said why he’d done it, or at any rate why he said he’d done it, and I still couldn’t fathom it. There was no click reaction in my mind of Sure, that’s what people do.
Even India’s runaway train or its airplane stuck under a bridge garnered more of a nod towards normality from me. Because you can explain how a train travels 70 kilometres without a driver, and you can even explain how an airliner gets stuck beneath a city centre bridge. But it takes something far more than technical goofery to explain why a young man douses himself in petrol and sets himself alight. Especially when there are, you know in your bones, rational explanations for all three.
The report said Aaron had direct-streamed the event online, but that the stream had been removed. I was almost disappointed: like the news report that told us a petrol station had a glitch in its computer, so it was delivering 50 euros of petrol and charging only five, but they’d since remedied the fault. “Dang, would’ve sure liked to take advantage of that.” “Dang, I’d have sure liked to see an airman first class setting himself on fire.”
Well, I still haven’t seen airman Aaron Bushnell set fire to himself but, if you want to, you can. He’s here.
I’ve watched and listened to 52 seconds. The film is a minute 52 long. But I can’t watch any further. Because watching any further won’t tell me any more of why he did it. For that doesn’t depend on watching him; it depends on watching me. He didn’t do it for what would happen to him. He did it for what would happen to us when he did it.
I don’t need to hear him scream Free Palestine! for his words to resonate within the core of me. And his words have been heard around the world. Commentators have all told us what he wanted to say with his act. Which is why I posed the question: So, go on, then: why did he do it?
He said he did it because he will not be party to a genocide, and by that he means the eradication of Palestine by Israel. But, was he indeed party to a genocide?
The Israeli army are in the Gaza Strip and in the West Jordan Bank and they are killing Palestinians but the Israeli government deny they are (and the International Court of Justice says only that they might be) carrying out a genocide there. Legally speaking, Aaron has jumped the gun. There is no genocide in Palestine: no one has been prosecuted for genocide; no court judgment has been handed down ruling that there is a genocide there; so the one hundred thousand injured and dead in Palestine are not the product of a genocide.
Genocide? What genocide?
Yes, there are those who have dismissed Bushnell as misguided and confused. How could he end his life as a protest against something that doesn’t even exist? Aaron should’ve waited until a legal finding had been handed down by a court, saying that Israel is engaging in genocide. Then, he could have self-immolated in order to stop it. Is that how it goes: that protest is there to stop what is already being stopped and until it is stopped by someone else, we don’t need to stop it?
Point is, if there is evidence of a genocide in Palestine, Aaron Bushnell left indications that it’s not simply the Israeli defence force that is doing it.
The sound bites are many in lauding Aaron’s character:
- he was the most principled comrade they’d ever known;
- he was the gentlest, kindest person;
- it’s just very difficult to understand, to fathom that this happened, ’cause there wasn’t any hint towards something like this happening;
- people are honouring him, mourning the loss of someone who was so dedicated to his values: this 25-year-old who had the whole world ahead of him, who decided instead to cut that short for this purpose greater than himself.
Watch it; watch the video and see if it will change your mind. Should you now think it was in vain, see whether watching him burn makes you want to free Palestine as well. And, should you believe Palestine ought to be freed, then watch it and see whether you think he wasted his time, life and effort.
What is it that Aaron hoped to achieve with his act? Was it a stunt? An act of martyrdom? Or simply something he needed to do … was he really carrying the knowledge he said he had? Is it indeed more than just IDF forces who are in the tunnels of Gaza? My mind turns to Jürgen Conings, a Belgian soldier who went AWOL during the pandemic and whose cadaver was found, after a large-scale manhunt, a whole 250 yards from where his car had been parked, the gunshot wounds to his body being self-inflicted. It all reinforces the notion that, if you know something you cannot bear to know, self-destruction is the only way out. After all, we’ve seen what happens to the likes of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. I had a houseguest for six months who’d been chased away from the other side of the world for knowing too much, in a hail of bullets no less. And that was just money-laundering. Whether Bushnell will change anything in Palestine and whether his death will change anything in the US policy towards Israel, are matters for your own and others’ judgment. Nothing I say will alter that.
What if he had done this because his girlfriend wouldn’t marry him? Would that make him crazy? What if he did it because he had an incurable disease and decided that this would give his life some purpose, at least? And would that have rendered him less crazy than unrequited love?
Ultimately, what Aaron wanted to achieve will not affect the effect his act has had, and will have, on us as individuals. He is dead. If he conveyed any message to you at all, now is the time for you to convey it to others, for he can no longer do so, whatever it is that you think he meant. His future is no longer in his hands. It’s in ours.
I hope to God that the 24,000 people who have died in Gaza will not have died in vain. I hope there will be no more of them. I hope the Israelis who have died as a result of these acts will likewise not have died in vain. And, finally, I hope Aaron Bushnell will not have died in vain. Whether he did or not lies in large part in the wrung hands of those who mourn his loss: either they will convey the message further, or they will let it, too, die, as did Aaron.
It is in all respects a matter of life and death. So, go on, then: why did he do it?