Aaron Bushnell, who died last month, ‘sacrificed everything’ for Palestinians, says mayor of Jericho
A few of the initial paragraphs for context follow - but the article is worth reading fully:
The Palestinian town of Jericho has named a street after Aaron Bushnell, the US air force member who set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington to protest against the war in Gaza.
The 25-year-old, who died on 25 February, “sacrificed everything” for Palestinians, said the mayor of Jericho, Abdul Karim Sidr, as the street sign was unveiled on Sunday.
“We didn’t know him, and he didn’t know us. There were no social, economic or political ties between us. What we share is a love for freedom and a desire to stand against these attacks [on Gaza],” the mayor told a small crowd gathered on the new Aaron Bushnell Road.
Bushnell livestreamed his self-immolation on the social media platform Twitch, declaring he would “no longer be complicit in genocide” and shouting “free Palestine” as he started the fire. Law enforcement officials put out the flames, but he died in hospital several hours later.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 31,000 people, the majority of them women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The war was triggered by the cross border attack on 7 October when Hamas killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 250 people.
Even as governments in Europe and the US have largely continued to back Israel’s campaign in Gaza as part of the country’s right to self-defence, Palestinians have taken heart from popular protests held from Michigan to Madrid.
Where were all these internet psychologists calling self immolation mentally deranged and suicidal when it was in the Vietnam war history books?
There was that Islamophobic Buddhist monk who self-immolated in Sri Lanka in 2013 to protest Muslim butchers. People across the spectrum weighed in on the idea of burning yourself alive to protect cattle. I don’t recall anyone calling it crazy then. At most, reprehensible, misguided, etc. But the idea you’d kill yourself to protest the treatment of cattle/Muslim butchers wasn’t considered “crazy” at the time.
The line seems to be when you’d do it not just for cattle, but also for Palestinians? Is that the conclusion I’m supposed to draw? That’s when self-immolation starts becoming “crazy?”
No, the difference is the person who did it. You’re probably reading western news and opinions. Those people feel like they have a similar perspective to Bushnell, which they probably don’t feel they share with a Sri Lankan monk, so they don’t judge- but they do judge the person they relate to. To make it related to just US politics for example, if someone self-immolated in either support or opposition of Trump then most Americans would consider them crazy.
I’m actually ok with people self-immolating in support of Trump.
That’s so accurate.
Beyond accurate. Malcolm X and Dr King were both correct how Liberals stand in the way of progress.
At some recent point, we decided that clearly ambiguous, philosophical questions had hard, fast, and absolute answers.
I really don’t understand, my definition of Liberal has always been “Favoring reform, open to new ideas, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; not bound by traditional thinking; broad-minded” which is something I subscribe to. Before I came to lemmy I never even heard of people refer to liberals as anything other than that.
Now if you were to say “Liberal Party of NY” or “Liberal Party of Canada” etc then I can see how more specific political beliefs across their ranks could be made points out of, but if you just say all Liberals then you sound like a frother to me.
Liberals tend to say that the system just needs a few tweaks here and there while the reality is that the entire thing is rotten to the core and the stuff they enjoy now in their “developed” countries was built upon centuries of exploitation of other people, which is still ongoing stronger than ever.
When confronted with these facts, some liberals act defensively and instead of learning and growing in their understanding, they start aligning with right wing thinking. That’s why the saying goes “scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds”.
You know this article pissed me off with the self-immolation bit.
Self Immolation in protest couldn’t be from preexisting mental illness. He clearly was emotionally impacted by his experience in the environment enough that his rational brain thought that by assuming such agonizing pain and stating the protest, the message would get heard a squeak louder.
Suicidal people don’t think rationally. They want the pain to end. Or they become wildly careless. They don’t sit there and go "how do I accomplish some good and end my suffering " while selecting the second worst way to die.
While I 100% agree with your interpretation in this case, I’m sure we can agree that “mentally ill person setting themselves on fire because the voices in their head told them too” is a plausible scenario. Self-immolation itself can absolutely be mental illness.
This was not mental illness.
You won’t ever know if it was or wasn’t a mental illness and stating it as fact that it wasn’t is about as misguided as the press calling it 100% a mental illness.
The thing about a mental illness is it’s not always visible, not always curable. There is a tiny red line that stands between a person killing themselves in protest, and because of a mental illness.
What’s the first worst?
Probably Starvation, because of the whole “body slowly eating iitself up” thing.
You know, the way Israel (with, lets never forget, the unwavering support of the US and Germany) is killing children in Gaza.
Drowning by far.
I only took a small amount of marsh water in, but Jesus Christ, the panick is unbelievable. You can’t get rid of what’s in there and you use up whatever is in your blood so quickly. Also the water fucking hurts like a mother fucker. And if you survive. Like I did, I got pretty bad pneumonia from it.
Horrible.
See, in order to assume his act was “crazy,” we have to start by making it a normative principle nobody should ever lay down their life for others. I think the divergence over whether his act was political or was he automatically crazy boils down to: are you a bootlicker?
The question is does it have any reasonable possibility at all of saving other’s lives?
Airmen. He wasn’t a soldier.
Airman, not plural
Airperson, not gendered.
Airbeing, not specied.
Airbender, not avatar.
Air, not solid.
Nair, not hair.
Also, this is the most Reddit I have seen come from Lemmy, which simultaneously entertains and worries me.
Air.
/Thread.
Zero 7
Airman is already the gender neutral term.
No, that would be airwoman.
here’s an af.mil article that includes the phrase “female airmen” multiple times https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3334170/female-fitment-program-drives-positive-change-in-air-force/
Kind of like how there are just humans and not humans and huwomans.
No, it’s more like how we used to refer to all professions as being different kinds of men. Mailmen, firemen, policemen, etc. because men were the only ones with those jobs. I’m sure it’s not intentionally gendered language, but it definitely is and we can change it if we want.
People dying because of border fuckery again, dude set himself on fire and we here unironically talking about the correct way to name a profession. Time and a place, person. this aint it.
The minimum viable sex chromosome combination is a single X, which appears female, therefore female is the proper default. Deal with it.
Wasn’t Jericho destroyed by the ark of the covenant or something?
No, it was destroyed by angry men screaming and blowing horns until the walls gave up.
Heck, it would be cooler if it were destroyed by plasma glassing by the scarier Covenant from Halo, not that pitiful ark from the bible tales /S
Nope. Just like most of the early books of the Old Testament, that was pure fiction.
https://www.britannica.com/video/179549/Battle-of-Jericho-archaeologists-event-Book-Joshua
Yeah, and if Indiana Jones hadn’t stuck his nose in, it never would have happened!
Whether it really happened or not, I think enough time has passed to allow rebuilding it several times over.
Loop of
I think it was unfortunate that the dude took the protest to the extreme by self-immolating.
I think it’s unfortunate you think there’s a reason to post week old articles.
