From Never Again to Never Mind: Gaza and Aaron Bushnell’s wanted to free Palestine and all of us
When I first heard the news about Aaron Bushnell, the US Airman who self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy to protest the genocide in Gaza and demand a Free Palestine, I was reminded of the Buddhist monks who self-immolated during the Vietnam war. I also thought of Norman Morrison the father, Quaker, and peace activist who self-immolated in front of the Defense Department in 1965.
I had been thinking about self-immolation as a form of protest recently and wondering if it would even matter. Our society is so sick with disinformation, misinformation, and a general laziness when it comes to facing the truth, that I wasn’t sure. And seeing the media’s response to Bushnell, I’m even more disgusted.
I first learned about self-immolation when I was 8, and we watched Dirty Dancing at my cousin’s birthday party. The part that was most interesting to me and sent me scurrying to my grandmother’s Funk and Wagnall’s encyclopedia set and away from the “ewww it’s a kissing movie,” was when Baby told off her sister for being so self-absorbed while monks were setting themselves on fire protesting the war. I was a weird kid, but I’d always been curious about politics and peace activism.
Like Aaron Bushnell, I grew up caring deeply about justice and believing that, as long as enough Americans are committed to our highest ideals enough of the time, that we can be the best versions of ourselves. I still believe that most days.
He wasn’t crazy, he was grieving
I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. 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. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal. Aaron Bushnell
The media’s dishonest framing of Bushnell as a “mental health” case doesn’t sit well with me, and it shouldn’t with you. John Lewis once said that a person with integrity is mal-adjusted to living in an unjust society. Aaron Bushnell was mal-adjusted, and so should we all be.
His country that he dedicated his life to serving is aiding a genocide. US backed weapons are killing babies. It wasn’t mental health issues that caused Bushnell’s death, it was Biden’s refusal to even consider more than a finger-wag at Israel that did it. So when he’s saying his prayers, in addition to the tens of thousands of souls he failed in Gaza, Biden should add one brave American to the list.
Feeling bad is the right emotion
The grief I feel for Gaza pours out of me as I get a glass of clean water any time I want. It sneaks up on me as I write and talk about the rule of law, as though it matters. It knocks me flat when I kiss my children goodnight and know the plane I hear above my house isn’t going to bomb us.
It’s a grief for the mothers whose blood-stained clothes bear all they have left of their children. A grief for the rotting corpses of babies Israel left when it “secured” Al-Nasr hospital. The first time I ever read about something so depraved was in a book about the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp.
Israel has killed more than 12,300 children; those still left are eating grass in hopes of staying alive. And as of writing this, Isarael has shot at and driven tanks over people rushing to a humanitarian food delivery, one of very few Israel has allowed in.
I’m not antisemitic: It is a genocide
You know it is genocide not war because Israeli civilians are involved in the famine. Israel is so ravenous for land that they sing and dance as they starve millions. Soldiers show videos of themselves tormenting those who already suffer, stealing the stuffed animals and toys of the children they’ve displaced, traumatized, and killed. And the Israeli government refused the return of hostages while admitting it wanted to drive the Palestinians from Gaza and build settlements there. Throughout this, Israeli violence increases against Palestinians in the West Bank and in several places on the East Coast of the US and Canada, Israel will be offering real estate conventions to talk about homes in the West Bank settlements.
Meanwhile, I get warned not to speak out or I won’t have a job. Fathers are carrying their children’s body parts in plastic shopping bags. And well-meaning friends are worried about my financial security because academics can’t criticize Israel (which I learned a few years ago when I referred to Israel as an apartheid state and a student tried to lodge a complaint).
Our call to action
I love my job and want to keep it, but I heard the phone call of a six-year-old child who sheltered covered in the blood of her relatives, begging anyone to “come get her.” When she was able to hear her mother’s voice, they prayed together. She said she could see the ambulance—the brave souls from the Red Crescent. The IDF allowed them to come through and then murdered the people they said would have safe passage.
Hind Rajab, a beautiful child with a family who loved her, another victim of ethnostate supremacist ambitions. Ambitions I criticize in every country that tries them, but in the land of the free, I’m warned to “tone it down.” How could I live with my own silence in the face of Yusuf Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, Red Crescent workers who drove unarmed into a hellscape because one child was worth saving.
How can I stand for women and children around the world when I opened my phone and saw another child hanging from a wall, what’s left of her 12-year-old body dangling in the wind. Follow that link, and don’t look away. See what your taxes are paying for. Look at what a majority of the “liberal order” purchases with its silence or its complicity, and then ask yourself who is really crazy: Aaron Bushnell who would do anything to stop this, or the people who promote and perpetuate it.
Bushnell refused to look away, and we should follow that example
To hide its crimes, Israel is targeting Palestinian journalists and refusing entry to international journalists. Palestinians are livestreaming their own genocide and most white world leaders could care less. Or as Swedish European Parliament Member Abir Al-Sahlani said in her powerful speech: “Human rights have a skin color, and the darker you are, the less rights you have.”
Bushnell died so that we might be reminded to fight for some semblance of moral authority that has steadily eroded. The western liberal moral powers are removing funding from the UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, on charges they knew and still know to be lies. Bushnell joined those who refuse this moral death. Like the brilliant and beautiful Ireland being true to its identity and standing tall to defend Palestine. The land that knows enforced famine does not stand idly by but instead rises up to be the moral leader the US, UK, and EU pretend to be.
Watching the countries the global economic leaders have ignored when they’re not exploiting take leadership on this issue, especially South America and Africa especially (South Africa’s IJC case is pure moral leadership) has me hopeful that a multipolar future will be a free one. Colombia, Bolivia and Chile have protested Israel’s actions, and Brazil and Argentina have continued to be vocal in the public sphere.
Yemen has stood up to its UN responsibility to stop genocide and for its troubles has faced its own military attacks from those keepers of “Western democracy” the US and the UK (who are almost certainly violating international law).
Don’t be fooled about Bushnell isn’t the one who’s crazy
I know it hurts to look and to feel. I know the sense of powerlessness and dread that comes from recognizing that your “democratic” country won’t listen to you and that our western liberal tradition is a mirage. But we need to stay committed and let the pain in enough to make us work harder to protect those who need it.
Americans are too quick to shut off at the slightest sign of discomfort. Aaron Bushnell wanted to make sure we wouldn’t look away. Embrace the pain and use that to motivate you. It’s supposed to hurt: it’s awful and our tax dollars and politicians are supporting it.
If nothing else, recognize the way that the genocide in Gaza is part of you and is a threat to you. Use that to motivate yourself to get involved. If it can happen in Palestine, it can happen anywhere. That is the way of political violence, it is the way of evil. Make no mistake here. Israel is your problem, too.
Israel hides behind the slur of “antisemitism” when it is criticized. But if they think the slaughter of children is an important part of being Jewish, then who is the true antisemite? Zionism isn’t a religion. It is a political ideology. It is to Judaism what Christian nationalism is to Christianity. A wolf in sheep’s clothing designed to a fascist grasp for power.
Aaron Bushnell saw though the disguise, and veterans around the country are burning their uniforms in solidarity with him. If you’re going to burn something in protest, please do not kill yourself. Burn an effigy, burn a uniform, burn metaphorically. Take the moment he has given us and refuse to believe that he was crazy. Go out and live your truth, and in so doing, help those who are suffering now.
Demand an end to genocide. Demand a ceasefire. Refuse to be silenced.
Thomas Paine wrote something like, “These are the times that try men’s souls: the summer soldier and the sunshine Patriot will, in this crisis shrink from the duty to his country.” Do not shrink. Stand in the space Aaron Bushnell opened for us, and light to world on fire.
