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 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.

  • RuBisCO@slrpnk.net
    1037·
    9 months ago

    "As a tactic, self-immolation expresses a logic similar to the premise of the hunger strike. The protester treats himself or herself as a hostage, attempting to use his or her willingness to die to pressure the authorities. This strategy presumes that the authorities are concerned with the protester’s well-being in the first place.

    It is not willingness to die that will sway our rulers. They really fear our lives, not our deaths—they fear our willingness to act collectively according to a different logic, actively interrupting their order."

    CrimethInc

    If you pull that trigger, Takeshi, it doesn’t all go away. Just you.
    -Quellcrist Falconer

    • whoelectroplateuntil@sh.itjust.works
      15·
      9 months ago

      This strategy presumes that the authorities are concerned with the protester’s well-being in the first place.

      Actually, it presumes access to media outlets/social media who will help build pressure on authorities. It’s a pressure campaign tactic whose success or failure relies on building outside, non-state civil society support. By failing to engage with why people resort to tactics like hunger striking or self-immolation and just making shit up, the piece fails to really make its case.

      While I don’t support self-immolation as a tactic, the mentality this critique relies on enables the abuses that lead people to self-immolate or go on hunger strike to start with.

      BTW about 98% of everything CrimethInc publishes is exactly this off-base and unhelpful.

    • Flumpkin@slrpnk.net
      131·
      9 months ago

      “This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
      – Aaron Bushnell

    • olivebranch@lemmy.ca
      9·
      9 months ago

      I think it is done to pressure the regular people to overthrow the government. Showing how important the issue is and how much he sacrificed himself just to motivate people, that everybody else can sacrifice far less by risking arrest overthrowing the government.