The airman, who filmed the incident and could be heard yelling “Free Palestine,” was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after collapsing to the ground.
The U.S. Air Force member who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., in an apparent protest against the Israel-Hamas war has died, according to a U.S. official.
Next of kin notification is continuing, so the Air Force won’t release his name until 24 hours after the final notification is complete.
The District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Service Department responded to a call about a person on fire outside the embassy just before 1 p.m. Sunday, and found the flames extinguished by the Secret Service’s uniformed division.
It’s easy for far away things, even horrific things, to just seem like trivia with no real salience to our lives. A statement like this is meant to wake people up that caring about the victims of our foreign policy is something for Americans to do. We as Americans have some small input into the process by which our taxes fund a genocide. And even if we don’t, maybe famously “empathic” Joe Biden might spend a second thought on the morality of his actions.
As I told someone else- after Thích Quảng Đức’s suicide by setting himself on fire, the Vietnam War raged on for 12 more years.
Based on that, this is, unfortunately, not going to have any effect.