Aaron Bushnell
25 year old US Airforce staff Aaron Bushnell was a man with a troubled conscience. The ongoing inhuman atrocities committed against the Palestinian civilians in the ongoing Israel’s war in Palestine troubled him. He had a conscientious objection.
Emotionally affected, this soldier wanted to demonstrate to the world that his suicide should send a strong message to Israel, to US, to the UN and to the world over that enough is enough.
Bushnell took such an extreme step by dousing himself with an inflammable substance and set himself on fire on 25 February.The act was done before the Israeli Embassy gates in Washington by shouting: Free Palestine.
The world should not write this off as the act of a crazy man. His daring act proved that the negotiations, dialogues, diplomatic exercises and the Security Council Resolutions were water on the Israeli duck. That the UN world body has failed the Palestinians who, as a nation, are being drawn, quartered, killed, thrown out into noman’s land amounting to ethnic cleansing and genocide.
His suicide in the U S also was intended to send a strong condemnation to President Biden and his advisers that their complicity to Israel’s crime against humanity was unpardonable, condemnable and ungodly.
Bushnell wanted to show his solidarity with the 30 thousand Palestinians killed by Netanyahu’s army and dog squads and the US supllied bombs.
His message was loud and clear: Free Palestine. It was the call of conscience, declaring that the Palestinian population had a right to exist as a nation, as a free people.
The wails of the starved children, the agonising cries of people forced to starvation by Israel’s blocking of the food supply line and the terror of the cruel Israeli soldiers were unacceptable to him.
Here was a man who rebelled against those who perpetrated crimes against humanity, against those who weaponise Israel, against those who collaborate as conspirators, and against the studied silence of the fence sitters.
Let no more people be provoked to self -immolation exercises in desperation. Let the conscience of the world find an answer and a permanent solution to the human-made catastrophe played out by cruel statesmen and their collaborators.
