In the past couple of days, news of a United States airman setting himself on fire outside an Israeli Embassy in Washington broke across all headlines.

Identified as 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell, according to the New York Times, Bushnell was a “was a cyber defense operations specialist in Texas and had served on active duty since 2020”.

Broadcasting live on the popular streaming platform, he made a chilling statement that resonated with viewers.

“I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” Bushnell declared, as reported by the New York Times during his live stream.

The streamer went on to justify his extreme act, stating, “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”.

Bushnell was rushed immediately following the act of protest to a nearby hospital, however lost his life due to the life-threatening injuries, according to NBC News.

Bushnell’s act of self-immolation was undoubtedly extreme, but his motive was clear: bring light to the Israel and Hamas war.

According to NPR, Israel's retaliation invasion of the Gaza strip since late October in 2023 has cost more than 29,000 lives of Palestinains.

Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7th, 2023 alone has killed nearly 1,200 people, according to NBC News.

However, Bushnell’s act of self-immolation has only been the latest example of protests taken to the extreme level.

In fact, only a few months back in December of 2023, according to CBC News, a woman set herself ablaze outside of an Israeli consulate in Atlanta.

Fortunately, she survived, but she suffered from third-degree burns.

Similar to Bushnell, the woman’s motive may have been to seek an ending to the Israel and Hamas war through extreme political protest.

Self-immolation is not only applicable to political protesting but also environmental ones, too.

According to CNN, in 2022, climate activist Alan Bruce died while setting himself on fire in front of the United States Supreme Court in Washington, DC.

Moreover, in April of 2018, David Buckel, who was a lawyer and environmental advocate, “drenched” himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire in Brooklyn, New York, according to CNN.

Before his death, Buckel sent an email to news outlets stating:

“Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result – my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves”.

Moving even further back in time, the act of self-immolation, similarly to current cases, to protest wars.

For example, according to TIME, since 2009, Tibetan monks self-immolated in protest of Chinese rule in Tibet.

In fact, according to the International Campaign For Tibet, a total of 159 monks, 131 men, and 28 women, have self-immolated.

Though the visualization of even processing one’s motivation to protest using self-immolation is unfathomable, it is important to understand why this occurs in the first place.

Given time, the suppression of one’s beliefs can amplify into a situation that, perhaps for certain individuals, there is no other choice than to take extreme measures.

Even though the protest itself is extreme, its message is clear.

In the fight for the greater good, risk, and leaps of faith must be taken.

It is, therefore, imperative that moving forward, an equilibrium in which society may function cohesively must be found, to eliminate such acts of protest.

Ian Park

Grade 11

Chadwick International