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.
I dislike this. I’ve seen first hand what serious burns do to people, both in the immediate and long term. Imo, this is there should be no speech louder than this, but it just kinda gets an “oh, damn, really? Man. What’s on the next channel?” reaction. I dislike that people resort to this when they’re going to get ignored, and I dislike that it largely is ignored except for a fleeting moment of sensational headlines.
The problem is, as far as I see it, that this doesn’t change minds. Thousands of children are dead now. Unless you’re totally ignorant of that, in which case you will be totally ignorant of why he killed himself in this manner, it’s not going to make you suddenly care about Palestine when exponentially more dead children who didn’t die by their own hand will not.
Or discredit him as a libtard crazy. That is what people on the other side of this argument have been saying. I hate this world.
I wish I could say I was surprised.
It’s loud about the strength of this guy’s conviction but it provides no actual argument or information. I don’t think it’s cause to change one’s opinion about Biden’s foreign policy one way or another. In fact, I’d go further and say that it probably should be ignored as much as possible in order to avoid motivating other people to do the same thing.
I disagree. Fairly certain it got politicians attention. When your own soldiers are standing outside of your house setting themselves on fire it’s probably best to pay attention to the message.
It wasn’t “soldiers”, it was one guy. One person who wasted their life, instead of lobbying for what they wanted.
Now he’ll never get to vote, donate, or campaign for what he believed in. He actually hurt his cause in the long run.
“No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.”
– General George S. Patton
We already know the arguments. All that is left is for us to weigh it for ourselves. What this man did was heavy and affects that weighing process.
Self immolation started the Arab Spring.
We have no idea what still happen.
This was an active duty servicemember. I share your pessimism that anything will change, but I don’t think Biden can NOT comment on this. That should at least drive awareness. I’m sorry I have nothing less hollow than that to offer.
“Imo, this is there should be no speech louder than this”
I really don’t know what you were trying to say there, but you managed to fuck it up so badly it makes no sense.
That’s an awfully rude response to not being able to extrapolate this from the quoted bit:
“A man felt so deeply that this was wrong, and so powerless to get the attention of anyone who could even consider doing anything to help, that he doused himself in gasoline and burned himself to death in public, leaving behind his family and everything he cared about. Maybe people should pay attention to such a strongly sent message, and consider whether there are valid reasons that someone might feel so strongly about this topic.”