U.S. Air Force Airman Aaron Bushnell, 25, who poured gasoline on himself and set himself aflame in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington and died shouting “Free Palestine” until he could no more, made himself a beloved martyr of sorts to billions of people around the globe.

He also may have been ordered to go to Israel and “serve” there in some capacity, too, which he obviously and adamantly refused.

His self-immolation may have been foolish because his good life is lost, but Bushnell was no fool. He had no desire to become complicit in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in any capacity, and his background and earlier activities suggested he was a sensitive young man with a brain and a conscience. He even prepared a will before his death insisting that his savings be donated to a children’s relief fund established for Palestinians. Like Rachel Corrie, a young American woman who was in the Gaza Strip doing humanitarian work way back in 2003 where she stood defiantly in front of an Israeli bulldozer and was crushed to death, Bushnell will long be remembered as one American who rightly objected to Israel’s depraved actions in the Holy Land and beyond, but especially since last October when Hamas fighters managed to break out of Gaza briefly and carry out a deadly raid from the largest concentration camp ever on the planet on Israeli communities near the border fence between Israel and Gaza.

Bushnell also allegedly told a friend before he set himself on fire that he had heard as a member of the armed forces that some American troops were fighting alongside the IOF in Gaza. He clearly did not want to be shipped off to Israel and participate in any way supporting any U.S. soldiers assisting the IOF.

Bushnell also allegedly told a friend before he set himself on fire that he had heard as a member of the armed forces that some American troops were fighting alongside the IOF in Gaza.  Meanwhile, a clear majority of Americans deplore what the Zionists have been doing in Gaza even while most of the politicians in Washington, including Joe Biden, don’t seem to care and so far have failed to end shipments of enabling war provisions. People I know here in North Carolina are horrified by the failed “leadership” in Washington, especially when they note that the two most obvious horrors underway in the world today — the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza — were inspired or provoked, more or less initiated and then supported by the United States government. Calls for a definite ceasefire in Gaza have fallen on deaf ears. Calls for a definitive end to largesse for the Zelensky regime in Kiev have so far fallen on deaf ears while Congress toys with the proposal to waste another $60 billion atop many more billions of taxpayer dollars previously in arms shipments and other support to the regime in Kiev, which is fast running out of soldiers and ammunition to maintain the war against Russian efforts to secure eastern Ukraine, the domain of a vast majority of Ukrainians who are Russian speaking. Many have welcomed Russian annexation of the oblasts there. The number one objective for the bought and paid for politicians (either by the arms industry or organizations like AIPAC) in Washington? Maintenance of some semblance of world hegemony and the Western “empire” including NATO and the Apartheid entity in the Levant.

What’s interesting, and not just here in North Carolina, are many recent accounts of Americans lately who have bothered and to educate themselves about the Israeli colonization of Palestine and Zionism, find their old presumptions quickly shattered by their newly acquired historical knowledge, and find themselves doing 180 degree turns, if not in clear support for Hamas, at least in condemnation of Israel and U.S. complicity in the carnage.

Ignorance about the Mideast at least, long the aim of Zionist propagandists, mainstream U.S. media and corrupted politicians for decades, has been a huge obstacle to any general understanding of the roots of Palestinian pushback and desires for fair play, self-determination, and relief from at least seven decades of oppression and racist cruelty. On the other hand, it’s not hard to understand the (waning) ignorance because average, middle-class Americans are just trying to get by, tend their families of whatever composition and earn enough to provide in what for them is an economy that has been in decline for a very long time because built upon 34 trillion dollars in unsustainable debt. Unless pressed, they usually don’t have time to learn what the Balfour Declaration was, or the Nakba, or even the murder of some 14,000 former Ukrainians BY Ukrainians in the Donbas between 2014 and 2022.

But knowing much and perhaps even a little is to court dismay and perhaps despair. The U.S. empire is declining by the month as the majority, especially the Global South, shifts alliances and perceptions, bonds together to confront the U.S. and its Western “allies” and the misdeeds and wastes of a fraying empire. It’s a world defining race for an honest future or further travail between the forces of darkness and depravity and selfishness, clearly centered in Israel for now, and a world where fairness and cooperation between nations arise to save humanity from extinction.