There’s Nothing Noble about Self-Immolation in Support of Hamas

Feb. 29 2024

On Sunday, an American airman doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, after recording a video denouncing U.S. support for the Jewish state. The twenty-five-year-old, named Aaron Bushnell, did not survive, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) praised his suicide as “honorable.” A short essay in the Nation soon echoed this sentiment and condemned those who argue that the death of an apparently troubled young man shouldn’t be celebrated. Kyle Orton comments:

By far the most intense dispute [about the subject on social media] has been whether Bushnell was disturbed or mentally ill. To the “pro-Palestine” set, this is a terrible calumny against a brave man by liberals, centrists, and other political detritus whose concern for comfort blinds them to the fact some humans hold beliefs so sincerely they are willing to die for them. . . . If the invitation to accept Bushnell as a political martyr is to be accepted, then it is important to be clear what his political cause actually was. For an idea of Bushnell’s politics, we can examine his posts [on the influential online chat site] Reddit since October 7.

“There are no ‘civilians’ or tourists who have no part in the oppression of Palestine,” Bushnell declared. . . . Many of Bushnell’s other post showed a minor obsession with how awful white people are, in the manner so frequently seen in American race discourse, and he had exported this framework to the Holy Land.

We are left, then, with a straight choice. Either we mourn the loss of a troubled young man, a human tragedy of the kind that is all too common at the present time, or we accept that Aaron Bushnell died trying to further a grisly political program that includes support for Hamas, the massacre of Jewish civilians, and the destruction of Israel.

Read more at It Can Always Get Worse

More about: Anti-Zionism, Hamas, PFLP, Suicide

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023