By Palestine Chronicle Staff 
The young US soldier who set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC on February 25 wrote in his will that he wanted his ashes to be scattered in a free Palestine.
“I am sorry to my brother and my friends for leaving you like this. Of course, if I was truly sorry, I wouldn’t be doing it. But the machine demands blood. None of this is fair,” Bushnell wrote before his act of self-immolation according to the Crimethinc website.
“I wish for my remains to be cremated. I do not wish for my ashes to be scattered or my remains to be buried as my body does not belong anywhere in this world,” he continued.
“If a time comes when Palestinians regain control of their land, and if the people native to the land would be open to the possibility, I would love for my ashes to be scattered in a free Palestine,” he added.
Bushnell, 25, an active-duty member of the Air Force, told his friends that he had had direct knowledge of US fighters engaged in active combat in Gaza, according to a report published in the New York Post.
“I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all,” he said during a livestream on his mobile phone before setting himself ablaze.
Dressed in military uniform, Bushnell shouted “Freedom for Palestine” repeatedly, until he could no longer speak.
US Military in Gaza
Though the Biden Administration insisted that no US troops would be directly involved in the war on Gaza, media reports suggested that the US has some kind of direct military involvement in the Israeli war, which has led to the killing and wounding of over 100,000 civilians.
The Post cited an earlier New York Times report saying that US special operations forces have been deployed in Israel since Hamas’ October 7 to “identify hostages, including American hostages.”
Special forces have also been on hand to assist with strategy for Israeli troops in Gaza, who are flushing out Hamas members from the network of tunnels under the territory,” according to the Post, which added that the NYT report had noted that US troops are “not assigned any combatant roles.”
Israel’s Genocide
The Israeli genocide in Gaza has ignited anger all over the world, not just against Israel, but also against the US and its western allies who either directly supported the war or did little to stop it.
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 30,320 Palestinians have been killed, and 71,533 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire.’
(PC, Anadolu)
