Imani Tafari-Ama | Self-immolation as a protest strategy against genocide

If a dog bites a man, that’s not news, but if a man bites a dog, that’s news. So, on February 26, when Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old serviceman in the United States Air Force set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington to protest the genocide in Gaza, that was a classic case of a man biting a dog.

However, when I tried to find accounts of what should have been treated as breaking news under normal circumstances, the event was hidden from public view. There was no trace of the incident on the principal mainstream channels in the US, such as CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. Zilch. The story was suppressed for several days following the dramatic occurrence. When journalists asked a White House spokesperson to comment on the case, the non-committal response was brief commiseration for the grief of the family. No reference to the sensational political framing of the episode.

A most compelling feature of Bushnell’s self-immolation was the speech that he self-recorded in a Facebook livestream on his dramatic march to his death. “I am an active-duty member of the US Air Force,” he said, “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 of Palestine have been experiencing at the hands of their colonisers, it is not extreme at all. This is what our ruling classes have decided would be normal.”

Dressed in his camouflage uniform, Bushnell, a young white soldier, epitomised the quintessential model of the hawkish USA nation state. After making his stunning declaration, the Air Force man then strode decisively up the paved driveway, past the sign bearing the Israeli embassy’s name and seal, to the gate of the compound.

In preparation for his carefully curated fiery self-sacrifice, he laid down his phone and after taking his final steps to his staged platform in front of the gate, he put on the cap that he pulled from his pocket and poured the gasoline he was carrying in a flask over his body. After igniting himself from his feet with a lighter, he exploded into flames, shouting “Free Palestine, Free Palestine!” several times until, overcome by the sheer agony of his exit strategy, he fell to the ground.

As Bushnell lay smouldering, a voice from behind the embassy wall was heard repeating, “Can I help you sir?” before three Secret Service agents scurried to the scene. One took command by shouting, “Bring a fire extinguisher!” As two officers responded to this command and proceeded to put out the blaze raging on the body of the gravely wounded soldier, a third agent was immobilised by his intent to take defensive action. For over 70 seconds of the riveting three-minute recording, this third agent had his gun, held in his extended double-fist, trained on the defenceless body of the self-sacrificing officer. This defensive pose demonstrated the depth of his policing programming, which had only prepared him to use violence as a response to a crisis. Even when there was neither clear nor present danger, he was unable to detect the illogical texture of his reaction.

COUNTERACT

Subsequent but subdued media reporting on this political performance has painted the martyred soldier as mentally ill and a religious extremist. However, critical content analysis of his final soliloquy immediately counteracts such claims. The USA has a troubling history of engaging in several overseas wars as a persistent device of hegemonic power. Opponents of the USA’s war in Vietnam used self-immolation as a popular strategy to protest against this foreign policy practice.

In acknowledgement of the deep significance of Bushnell’s actions in the face of growing global opposition to the complicity of the USA in the five-month Israeli Genocide in Gaza, Palestinians and other concerned citizens set up a monument outside the Israeli embassy. Vigils have also been held in several other locations honouring the young hero.

Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of people continue to articulate opposition to the shocking evidence of the catastrophic crisis in Gaza. The Ministry of Health has recorded the deaths of over thirty thousand civilians, mostly women and children, with over seventy thousand injured and thousands more missing. People martyred in this unequal war include over a hundred journalists, medical personnel, aid workers and, in a word, anyone and anything that moves.

Displacement, bombardment, and starvation are principal weapons of a war that has no end in sight.

Meanwhile, the USA is dodging the bullet of oppositional public opinion by using the tactic of deception by double-tongued discourse. On the one hand, the Biden administration conjured a fictional cease fire deal to appeal to domestic voters. On the other hand, the USA continues to utilise its veto power, weapons, and billions of dollars as leverage for the enablement of the genocide.

Anchored in its experience of apartheid, South Africa, which brought Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to answer to the case of genocide, is calling upon the hapless United Nations (UN) to mandate the immediate lifting of the Israeli blockade against the hundreds of trucks bearing life-saving supplies. The trucks have been impotently parked at the heavily policed access points that deny the passage of the life-saving aid provisions to the Palestinian population.

MASSACRE

On two successive occasions, satellite footage revealed that soldiers of the Israeli Defence Force, who were enraged by the losses they suffered at the hands of Hamas fighters, posed as aid workers and drove supply trucks to the northern section of the Gaza Strip. In the first incident, civilians who were made desperate by their starvation, were duped into thinking that help was at hand. Too late, they became aware of their plight. It was a massacre. The soldiers opened fire on the crowd, killing 110 people and wounding over 700 more.

The Israeli disinformation discourse that followed the massacre was that the Palestinians were killed in a stampede for food. This disingenuous narrative conjured up the dehumanisation representation of innocent civilians as “human animals”. Evidence provided during the ICJ hearing by the legal team advancing the South African claim of genocide illustrated that such racist responses have characterised statements uttered by Israeli officials in their references to Palestinian civilians.

The cacophony of dissent against Israel’s acts of genocide has included the severing of diplomatic relations with Israel by countries including Belize, Spain and South Africa. In addition, the highest court in The Netherlands barred the continued sale of arms and weapons components to Israel. Yet, to date, the Jamaican Government remains deafeningly silent on the subject.

Paradoxically, the last speech made in the Senate by ailing Labour leader Lambert Brown, named the crisis in Gaza as a genocide. Brown claimed that all his People’s National Party comrades supported South Africa’s call for a ceasefire in Gaza. However, Lammy’s passion has not trickled up the ranks to move the party leader to make such a declaration.

The powers that be do not seem to mind that they are claiming a seat on the wrong side of history.

Imani Tafari-Ama, PhD, is a Pan-African advocate and gender and development specialist. Send feedback to i.tafariama@gmail.com.