Aaron Bushnell had classified knowledge of US activity in Gaza
According to the The New York Post, not long before Aaron Bushnell self immolated, he had told a close friend that he had secret knowledge of US troops fighting in tunnels under Gaza.
"He told me on Saturday that we have troops in those tunnels, that it's US soldiers participating in the killings... His actual job involves the processing of intelligence data. Some of what he was processing had to do with the Israeli Gaza conflict."
Friends who spoke with the Post say that while Bushnell was stationed in San Antonio, he was attending events for a socialist organization and delivered food to people on the street. Friends state that his contract with the military was to expire in May and he was looking for a career transition. Following the police killing of George Floyd, they say he had become more open in his objection to the military.
On Sunday, hours before he went to the Israeli embassy, Bushnell texted a friend who shared the message with the Post. “I hope you’ll understand. I love you,” Bushnell wrote. “This doesn’t even make sense, but I feel like I’m going to miss you.” Weeks earlier, Bushnell talked on the phone with the same friend about “their shared identities as anarchists and what kinds of risks and sacrifices were needed to be effective,” according to the Post.
A friend who spoke to the New York Post states that Bushnell spoke to him on the phone on Saturday night. Bushnell said that he had top-security clearance and that he was distressed by what he was seeing in Gaza. “He told me on Saturday that we have troops in those tunnels, that it’s U.S. soldiers participating in the killings,’’ the friend said. “There’s just too many things I don’t know, but I can tell you that the tone of his voice just had something in it that told me he was scared,’’ the friend said. (While the U.S. has special operations troops in Israel to reportedly identify American hostages, the Biden administration has stated that there will be no American soldiers in Gaza.)
The self-immolation at the embassy
Hours before lighting himself on fire, Bushnell posted a Twitch link on his Facebook page with the caption:
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.
Shortly before 1 p.m. on Sunday, Bushnell began his livestream and walked toward the Israeli Embassy with an insulated water bottle full of flammable fluid. “I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” he said in his video. “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.”
Bushnell then placed his phone on the ground and walked to the gates of the embassy, where he doused himself in liquid from the bottle. “Free Palestine,” he said, as he struggled to light himself. A law-enforcement officer approached, asking, “Can I help you, sir?” At this point, Bushnell lit himself on fire, screaming, “Free Palestine.”
As Bushnell screamed in pain, a law-enforcement officer off-camera yells at him to “get on the ground.” A second officer yelled at the first: “I don’t need guns, I need fire extinguishers.” By the time D.C. Fire and EMS arrived on the scene, the fire had been put out.
