Aaron

TW: S**cide. Aaron Bushnell's self-immolation.

If you saw the video, I’m sorry. I started watching, but I couldn’t finish. I didn’t want to have seen it. In bed last night, eyes closed, the audio (which I did hear) came back to me so powerfully I had to reach out, turn the light on and avoid sleep for hours. Since I watched him walking to the embassy, since I heard the screams of “Free Palestine!” weaken and melt, since I saw the still photograph, flames in sunshine, I’ve found myself overcome by tears in waves, again and again. I didn’t watch it, I wish I didn’t know it, I cannot, in my conscience, look away.

Aaron Bushnell was a US airman who self-immolated outside the US embassy yesterday because, in his words, he “could no longer be complicit in genocide”. He live-streamed his action, which he called an “extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people”, before setting himself on fire.

I cannot glorify, I cannot judge. I want to join the chorus singing praises to his sacrifice but I am so afraid that more like Aaron Bushnell will arise and I do not want anyone else to do this. I wish Aaron had not done this. I don’t want any more burnt offerings to a Mercy that seems absent in our leaders and institutions, I don’t want any more of God’s children to kill themselves for peace and I also do not blame Aaron. I will not criticise him, despite the horror his death has made me feel.

Because my feelings are not of primary importance, because Aaron is not the only victim, because nobody has been listening and I understand the desperation to change that. Aaron was American, not Palestinian. He was a member of the most powerful military in the world. He was white. A man, brought up Christian in a nation where that matters. He knew that his privilege would make people notice what he did.

Or I can only assume he hoped so. He said before he died: “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.”

The charred remains of thousands of human beings still lie half-buried in the scorched earth and the rubble of Gaza. Children and men and women, shot and starved and bombed, fatalities from surgeries without medicine, weeks without clean water. Victims of a nation that claims to be defending itself. Victims of our leaders and our media and our vicious indifference — all that has given covering fire for the slaughter. I am terribly aware that I do not know their names.

Aaron Bushnell said: “This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

Aaron was the second person to burn themselves outside an Israeli building in the US since the genocide in Gaza began¹. I have no doubt his act of conscience will be dismissed and his memory defiled before too long by those who wish to undermine the message he wrote in his own suffering and death. There will be those who will judge and denounce him. Our own screaming horror at his pain, at the appalling waste, may tempt us to agree with them.

But we who worship Christ and venerate the martyrs who scattered the seeds of the Church must not rush to write off violent self-sacrifice as ‘madness’ or a worthless despair. The Arab Spring also began in the same kind of terrible conflagration. Monks in Vietnam gave themselves up to the flames. Our culture venerates those who willingly sacrifice themselves in battle, those who walk into the flames to bring out families.

Perhaps our minds reject this kind of sacrifice, in this kind of context, because, deep down, we do not think the cause is worthy. This is not a fire inside a family home somewhere within the suburbs. This is not us, but them. Perhaps it is because we know, deep down, that leaders who didn’t baulk at 20,000 Palestinian dead will not be swayed by even ten white Americans.

Or maybe, please God, maybe, we know that no life should end in violence, that all suffering should be eased and every human sacrificed is a failure on the part of all humanity.

Aaron’s dying words were “Free Palestine!”

He screamed them.

Perhaps a world that has been deaf to screams coming from Gaza, from people who did not choose to suffer or to die, will open its ears now. I hope it does, even as I realise the terrible truth that reveals about us. I hope no more will be sacrificed. I wish for the true madness, of killing tens of thousands of people, of excusing it with political and religious sophistry, to end. I pray none of this becomes normal.

Please don’t do this. Please don’t make anyone else feel like they have to do this.

Christ have mercy.

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Affected by this story?

If you are having suicidal thoughts, please speak to someone. You will be glad you did.

In the UK, you can speak to someone on the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at
0800 689 5652 from 6pm until midnight.

You can find more phone lines and people who want to help here.

The world is better with you in it.

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Want to help Palestinians?

Prayer is good. Protest is good. Let’s also give.

Donate to Medical Aid for Palestinians

Donate to UNRWA

These are the organisations I’ve been donating to because of their access, but I am happy to hear of others if you have word of them getting through.

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1. Another protest happened in Atlanta in December 2023 outside the Israeli consulate there. The name of the person who suffered thrid-degree burns was not reported.

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The end bit.
Hey, thanks for making it all the way to the end. Sorry this is not a very cheerful installment. I’ve been crying quite a lot. That’s not really new since we started watching an ethnic cleansing and genocide unfold on our phones — I know a lot of us have been broken by our sense of powerlessness and horror at what Palestinians have been facing. Aaron’s actions just shocked me so much. I don’t know what that says about me and about us, I am still trying to work it out. I do know that if you think it is mental illness to do what he did but sane and healthy to be a soldier continuing to kill civilians (or a politician or journalist making those killings likely to continue), we may have different understandings about what constitutes mental and moral health. Not that I have it all together my damn self. Please do be gentle with yourself at this time. Keep protesting, keep speaking out, keep praying for Palestine and for justice. Please stay with us. We love you.
And finally, importantly, please pray for Aaron’s loved ones. J