Active-duty airman Aaron Bushnell, 25, of Whitman, Mass., a cyber defense operations specialist, died Sunday evening after he set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington earlier that day.
Before he set himself aflame, the airman announced he would “no longer be complicit in genocide,” shouting “Free Palestine” over and over in the moments after he was engulfed.
“For our Air Force, we look at this as, whether it was politically motivated or others, we lost one of ours,” said Allvin, who made the comments after he was interrupted multiple times by protesters at a Brookings Institution think tank event in Washington.
“Any suicide, whether by political protest or by resiliency issues or wherever it is, is a tragedy,” he continued. “As we’re looking at wherever the rationale might be, there’s a standard investigation process [to] go through that and we look at that to make sure we understand everything about it without invading the personal privacy.”
The Defense Department and White House have largely stayed quiet on the event, with spokespeople for both referring to it as a “tragedy.”
A statement from the Air Force only identified Bushnell as involved in “an incident near the Israeli Embassy.”
The protesters on Wednesday heckled the Air Force chief, shouting statements that included “say his name” and “cease-fire now.”
America’s ongoing support of Israel has drawn the ire of protesters, who say the U.S. is complicit in the devastating air and ground campaign in the Gaza Strip that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.
Allvin didn’t respond to the protesters directly, and Brookings silenced the sound on the event’s video feed when protesters attempted to be heard.
Later when asked about Bushnell’s death during a question-and-answer portion of the event, Allvin turned it into a moment to address the wider issue of suicide in the ranks.
“We have about 100 or so suicides per year, and every year we try to get after how do we reduce this? So right now, where we are in that status is, understanding that has a lot of political fervor attached to it,” he said.
“This is just one of our airmen that we lost and we’re looking after the family, we’re looking at the unit and really trying to understand if there’s any context behind this, what lessons can be learned.”
Read the full report at TheHill.com.
