These past five months have been some of the most harrowing of my life. Watching a genocide unfold in real time and hearing the deranged defenses coming from every hall of power — I haven’t written much about it because there are simply no words.
At every moment of the last nearly five months, I have been burning with rage. Rage at the Israeli military, rage at American funding, rage at media misinformation, rage at the callousness and complicity, rage at my own powerlessness. Rage, rage, rage. Burn, burn, burn.
I continue to dedicate as much of my life as possible to organizing for Palestinian liberation, and I do this because in my most sober moments, I know and I believe that we can win, that time and again people have succeeded in throwing off the yoke of oppression, in joining together in the bounds of solidarity to birth a new world from the ashes of the old.
Ashes indeed. Yesterday a young US Airforce engineer succumbed to injuries after self-immolating in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC. Aaron Bushnell shouted Free Palestine as police pointed guns at him. The fact that a medic had to scream “I need a fire extinguisher, not a gun” says everything you need to know about American society.
As I watched the headlines roll in, the punditry was ghastly, in all of the usual and predictable ways — trying to deny the political significance of his protest by alleging mental health issues, painting Palestine liberation activists as extremists, and all of the other drivel.
It was also predictable in another way — it erased all of the hundreds and thousands of Palestinians who daily resist their subjection, knowing that the consequences will be fatal. During the Great March of Return in 2018-2019, Palestinians marched every Friday, demanding among other things, an end to the blockade and the occupation; dozens of Palestinians were murderd and thousands were shot. And yet every Friday, they practiced sumud (steadfastness) in their resistance, marching in the tens of thousands, knowingly risking their deaths.
Image: Getty Images
Aaron Bushnell’s courage deserves to be honored, and his protest deserves to be remembered. But it cannot be at the price of erasing the millions of Palestinians who, over the last many decades, have also risked their own lives for their freedom. Self-immolation is a particular tactic to be sure, but it is not the only form of ‘extreme’ protest in this movement. All of the repression Palestinians are facing is extreme to the utmost, as is their courage in continuing to resist.
Last night as I lay in bed, I remembered that one year ago, almost to the day, I was standing in Ho Chi Minh City at the site of Thích Quảng Đức’s self-immolation to protest the Diem regime and Euro-American imperialism in Vietnam.
On June 11, 1963, the intersection of Phan Đình Phùng Boulevard (now Nguyễn Đình Chiểu Street) and Lê Văn Duyệt Street (now Cách Mạng Tháng Tám Street), was busy. When I visited last year, much of it had been turned into a serene park.
Thích Quảng Đức was a Mayahana monk. Among many of the other atrocities of American imperialism in Vietnam, the US-backed dictator of South Vietnam, Ngô Đình Diệm persecuted Buddhists in a variety of despicable ways. The domination of Catholicism was part and parcel of the long Euro-American colonial project in Vietnam, and encompassed not only religious, but also political, economic, and social domination.
At the tail end of a protest of 350 monks and nuns, Thích Quảng Đức sat down in the intersection, and a colleague poured petrol over his head. He meditated, lit a match, and was instantly engulfed in flames. Jounralist Malcom Browne captured the immortal photograph that forever changed the international perception of the struggle of the Vietnamese people. That image stands at the intersection to this day:
Journalist David Halberstam, who was present at this act of protest, said of it:
"I was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think ... As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.
The photograph is one of the most famous to ever be taken, and perhaps one of the most important in the history of anti-colonial struggle. Tens of millions of copies of it circulated across Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the States, galvanizing more and more people toward the cause of Vietnamese liberation specifically and anti-colonial struggle more generally.
It was a courageous act and an iconic photograph. It would presage so many photographs to come of so many people burned alive by bombs, napalm, and chemical weapons.
Thích Quảng Đức’s protest alone could not stop the violent occupation of Vietnam, which would only get worse, so much worse over the decade that followed. We cannot allow the next decade in Palestine to follow that trend.
For anyone looking to read more about the history and philosophy of self-immolation, I recommend checking out Banu Bargu’s Starve and Immolate, Terri Snyder’s The Power to Die and Huey P. Newton’s Revolutionary Suicide.
In November, I sat around a dinner table with two Jewish movement elders, who were amazed at how much different the resistance to this bombardment of Gaza has been compared to previous ones. Earlier that day, we had all marched in a crowd of over one million people in central London, demanding the end to the genocide, as well as to the longterm conditions of apartheid and settler colonialism that began in 1948. The swell of popular support for Palestine in the West certainly has made this moment feel so much different thatn 2018 or 2014 or 2012 or any of the others. Some days, remembering this change is the only thing that keeps me going, the only thing that cools my blood enough to continue organizing rather than collapse in despair. Across the table, my comrades looked at me and said, “This is your generation’s Vietnam.”
To this moment, I am not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
Rest in power, Aaron Bushnell. May your memory be for a blessing. Rest in Power, the 29,092 Gazans who have been slaughtered in the past five months. May your memory be for a revolution.
In love, burning rage, and solidarity,
Ash