‘Free Palestine!’: Service Member Dies After Setting Himself on Fire Outside Israeli Embassy

The U.S. Air Force member who set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., on Sunday has died.

The service member, who identified himself as Aaron Bushnell in a video he shot of the incident, said he “will no longer be complicit in genocide.” He added, “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest,” before dousing himself in flammable liquid and lighting himself on fire. He repeatedly yelled, “Free Palestine!” as he burned.

According to The Washington Post, a D.C. police spokesperson said the man died Sunday night. In a statement shared with Rolling Stone, D.C. police also confirmed the man’s identity as Aaron Bushnell, 25, of San Antonio, Texas. The MPD is investigating the incident alongside the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

In a statement, an Air Force spokesperson said, “The individual involved in yesterday’s incident succumbed to his injuries and passed away last night. We will provide additional details 24 hours after next of kin notifications are complete.”

Bushnell self-immolated just before 1 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 25. The incident was live-streamed on Twitch, with the video lasting just over three minutes. In the video, police officers appeared to approach Bushnell in the moments before he lit himself on fire. Off-camera, one asks him, “Can I help you, sir.”

It took police and Secret Service officers extinguished just over a minute to extinguish the fire. In the video, one officer can be seen pointing a gun at Bushnell as he burns while others douse him with fire extinguishers. After the fire was put out, Bushnell was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Bushnell reportedly shared a link to the video stream on Facebook, alongside the message, “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now” (via Newsweek).

The Twitch account on which the video was posted contained no other content, according to The New York Times, and its header image was a Palestinian flag. The video of Bushnell was swiftly removed Sunday and replaced with a message saying the channel had violated the platform’s guidelines.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

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