Self-Immolator Protests Gaza Bloodshed
Excerpts from a piece By Matt Stieb, New York Post, gathering reports from Washington Post. Feb 29, 2024 09:59 AM
Aaron Bushnell. Photo: Twitter.
Dear friends,
Last Sunday afternoon, outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old Air Force service member, placed his phone on the ground to set up a livestream. He then stood before the embassy gates and lit himself on fire while shouting “Free Palestine.” Bushnell died from his wounds on Sunday night.
Aaron Bushnell posted on his Facebook page this note:
“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.'”
I found myself deeply moved by Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation — the second in the US that was occasioned by the ongoing war/ devastation in Gaza.
My emotions were stirred in contradictory directions, as yours may have been when you heard the news. I decided to divide them up according to the Four Worlds of Jewish mysticism.
What came first to me: Briyyah, Intellect: Aaron’s act makes intellectual sense to me. He himself called it an extreme act. Yes, but I said to myself, Much much less extreme than the attack of October 7 against Israelis or the incessant attacks since then against Palestinians by bullet, bomb, rocket that have killed quickly or as slowly and with utter pain as that fire he contrived for —— himself. That is the only thing we consider “extreme” — He arranged to cause terrible pain to —— himself, not another. Killing others is normal, at least if you have a colorful flag to wave.
Some people have already said, Mental disease. Traumatic childhood in a small top-down “Community of Jesus,” then a trip in the top-down military. I read it different: working toward freedom from tight authority, finding friends and loose community, feeding the hungry on the streets, Fire.
Second: A wave of utter physical fear of that terrible pain, O God! The world of Asiyah, Physical Actuality. O God! Too late to stop it. Too late to ease it. Pain pain pain.
Third, Yetzirah, Emotion and Practical Ethics, Community. What is the effect on us? Only we can answer. Writing this, only I can answer. I invite you to write us to answer to Office@TheShalomCenter.org yourself, and say whether you want us to include your name. Fear. Horror. Awe. Respect. Repugnance. Or maybe FearHorrorAweRespectRepugnance all-at-once, and more.
Fourth: Atzilut, The Spirit, Dancing in the Light. Is that where my cousin Aaron is? I don’t know, How can I?
All I can do is this: I will not do the fire that Aaron kissed and screamed. I urge others to make a different choice from his. The fire he lit consumed him. For me, the fire must come from the Burning Bush whose fire did not consume the Bush it burned in. The deep interior fire of Love and Liberation.
And that does not mean that I am Moses. I am one of the multitude, trudging toward Sinai, learning from my cousin Aaron and many others. What I learn from Aaron is not to do the act he did but to act in the spirit of his action: I will increase and strengthen my own work to end this bloodshed of utter destruction in which my own nation has become a major part. Participant.
The name by which I am called to Torah is “Avraham Yitzhak Yishnael Yam — Abraham Isaac Ishmael Ocean.” When the children of Isaac and the children of Ishmael are at peace, so am I. When they are shedding each other’s blood. I feel torn. I share my blessing with you that each of us chooses an action we WILL take to end this bloodshed.
— Arthur