The winding path of the American aviator ended in self-immolation in protest against Israel

Dressed in his U.S. Air Force uniform, Aaron Bushnell walked to the Israeli embassy in Washington one afternoon this week and calmly described his intention to “engage in an extreme act of protest” against Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

He then poured a flammable liquid over his severed head, pulled his camouflage cap tight over his forehead and set himself on fire. “Free Palestine!” he shouted several times before falling onto the cement.

In the days since his stunning act, which Mr. Bushnell live, friends and family members have tried to understand how a young man they once knew as a shy, thoughtful boy in an isolated Christian community in Massachusetts, who later became a senior airman working in cyber defense in Texas, and came to organize such a final, fatal protest.

“It’s hard to keep my wits about me,” said Ashley Schuman, 26, who met Mr. Bushnell since his youth. “I’m like, ‘How? How did you get here?'”

Mr. Bushnell’s self-immolation has prompted a series of vigils in his honor, sparked new protests against Israel’s attacks and drawn criticism from some who saw the protest as a suicidal act that should not be celebrated.

It was the second such protest in the United States in recent months. In December, a woman carrying a Palestinian flag set herself on fire outside the Israeli consulate building in Atlanta; she was not identified and she remains in hospital, currently in stable condition. On Wednesday, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, asked the Defense Department whether Mr. Bushnell had ever shown any “extremist tendencies” in the past.

Recent writings by the 25-year-old Bushnell suggest that he carefully planned his action to draw attention to Israel’s attack on Palestinians in Gaza, where nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the local health ministry. Israel launched its campaign in October after a Hamas-led attack that killed about 1,200 Israelis and took another 250 hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

In the hours before Mr. Bushnell’s protest, he sent an email to several independent news outlets with the subject line “Against Genocide,” which included a link to a website where a video of his self-immolation later appeared. “I ask that you ensure that the images are preserved and reported,” he wrote. Mr Bushnell had also sent a will to a friend in recent days, dividing his assets.

In recent years, Bushnell had grown increasingly distant from both his conservative upbringing and his military career, according to those who knew him. He threw himself into left-wing and anarchist activism, often speaking about alleviating poverty and fighting capitalism. Along the way, he rejected the small, deeply religious enclave along Cape Cod Bay where he grew up, friends said.

Some former members of the neighborhood, known as the Community of Jesus, have claimed that they have been psychologically abused. Mr. Bushnell’s relatives have not spoken publicly, and a woman who answered the phone at the listed Community of Jesus number declined to respond or take a message.

Ms Schuman, who like Mr Bushnell was born in the community, said they both suffered from anxiety in their teenage years due to the high expectations and strict restrictions imposed by the community’s leaders and teachers. They attended a common home school there, although Mr. Bushnell also spent a year in public high school.

In the summer of 2016, after graduating high school, he visited Israel and the West Bank on a trip led by the Community of Jesus that took members to historical sites in the Bible, Ms. Schuman said. She did not recall any significant discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the trip, but said the students spent a day in the West Bank city of Bethlehem and spoke with several students from Bethlehem University, a Catholic university there.

“I know that trip meant a lot to all of us in the group,” she said.

In the years after Ms. Schuman and Mr. Bushnell graduated from high school, they both began to consider whether they wanted to remain in the community. That of the community constitution, known as ‘The Rule of Life’, describes a system of progression whereby adherents can achieve a status over several years that involves taking a vow of membership ‘for life’. Instead, Mr. Bushnell told Ms. Schuman in the fall of 2019 that he was leaving.

He left the community, where he had lived with his parents and younger brother, and worked for a brief period at a pawn shop elsewhere in Massachusetts before starting active duty in the Air Force in May 2020, stationed in San Antonio.

Ms. Schuman, who had also chosen to leave the community, said they spoke regularly by phone about handling the transition; Mr. Bushnell told her he had spoken to a therapist and urged her to see one as well, she said.

During their phone calls, Mr. Bushnell told Ms. Schuman that he spent most of his work time at a computer. He often sounded stressed, she said, and seemed to lack the enthusiasm he had shown in boot camp or at school, when he was a quiet boy who became passionate about history lessons and C.S. Lewis novels.

Outside of work, he seemed increasingly focused on solving the problem of homelessness. Ms. Schuman said she became concerned when Mr. Bushnell told her he had sent a significant amount of money to a woman in another state who said she was a homeless mother. Ms. Schuman believed the two had never met.

“He didn’t really say much, except that he wanted me to keep her in my prayers,” Mrs. Schuman recalled. “I was like, ‘Whoa, Aaron, you don’t even know this person.’ But I think what fueled him was helping someone else who was less fortunate than him.

In 2021, Mr. Bushnell was still talking about a possible return to the commune on Cape Cod, something that Ms. Schuman found difficult to hear as she sought a new life outside. Eventually they stopped talking.

Another friend said that Mr. Bushnell complained mildly about his Air Force job — varying schedules, lack of sleep — and occasionally talked about his disagreements with the U.S. military over past conflicts, such as the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

In November 2022, fresh off a vacation to Hawaii with his younger brother, Mr. Bushnell appeared alone at an event hosted by the Party for Socialism and Liberation in San Antonio, where he quickly made a new group of friends.

Lupe Barboza, 32, said she and her friends invited him to join their mutual aid group’s weekly visits to homeless camps. She said Mr. Bushnell told her group, known as San Antonio Collective Care, that his political views had changed dramatically not long after he joined the military.

“He said he went from one extreme — the conservative beliefs he had grown up with — to the opposite, forming his anarchist, anti-imperialist values,” Ms. Barboza said. “And he said it was a very rapid shift, and he just said it went from one extreme to another.”

Mr. Bushnell volunteered to assist with the mutual aid group’s internal communications and mission statement. He set up a discussion channel on Discord, a messaging app, and launched a “constitutionalization” effort by drawing up a list of questions for members to answer in writing.

“I’d like to think I bring an open mind to the table, a desire to help and learn, and a commitment to radical ideals,” he wrote in one of his own responses in February 2023.

He also wrote that he was frustrated because he had difficulty connecting with new people.

“Although I care deeply about people, I tend to find social interactions very challenging, especially with strangers or with someone I am not close to,” he said.

But shortly after leading that initiative, he announced he had to step back from the group because he was dealing with a trauma from his past that had resurfaced, Ms. Barboza said. Still, he kept in touch with many of his friends in the group.

He told them he looked forward to leaving the military when his military service expired in the spring of this year, Ms. Barboza said. On his LinkedIn profile, he wrote that he was “truly passionate about writing software and can’t wait to help drive innovation in the civilian world.”

Late last year, Mr. Bushnell had decided he would move to Ohio to participate in the Army’s SkillBridge program, which allows members nearing the end of their service to get paid while they train or work for private companies. He created a flyer asking someone to bring his cat, Sugar, and sang old songs — including a Bon Jovi tune — at a karaoke broadcast hosted by his friends.

Friends in San Antonio said he did not share with them the nature of the past trauma he was dealing with.

Susan Wilkins, 59, who also lived in the Community of Jesus from 1970 to 2005 before leaving it, said she was not close to Mr Bushnell and his family but knew them and worried he may not have had enough support to transition to a community. less structured world.

“I understand that if you grew up in a somewhat restrictive environment, anarchy has appeal,” she said.

Ms. Schuman, like other former community members, has struggled to understand Mr. Bushnell’s fatal protest.

“I will never be able to support the extreme measures,” she said. “But where we grew up, and because we didn’t have a say in what we really wanted or what we believed in, it’s admirable what he did for people who don’t have a voice right now.”

Air Force officials did not discuss the incident in detail. When a reporter asked the Air Force’s top spokesman this week whether Mr. Bushnell’s protest could signal broader discord within the ranks over the civilian deaths in Gaza, he declined to answer directly.

“This is certainly a tragic event,” said Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder at a press conference. “We express our condolences to the pilot’s family.”

Erik Schmitt reporting contributed. Kirsten Noyes research contributed.