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Aaron Bushnell's Facebook Reveals Final Message Before Self-Immolation
(www.newsweek.com)
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this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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Seems pretty self-explanatory. What is there to investigate?
I will never understand this kind of "protest," because it presumes that you have value to the people you are protesting. Israel certainly doesn't give a fuck about a US citizens' opinions, and the US government doesn't know who you are. You are killing yourself to make a point to people who literally don't care if you live or die, and any meaningful activism you could have done as an able-bodied person is lost forever.
People might remember that this happened, but it will be like a half-remembered dream when the next event oozes out of the ragebait news machine.
Based on what I leaned from the article about his final message, the protest wasn't for Israel's sake, it was to draw those living under the rule of a government's attention (whether Israel's, the U.S.'s, or wherever else's) to the situation. To point out that we are indeed living through a genocide perpetuated by our own government. Like I question his method, but realisticly speaking, you and I wouldn't be talking about it if he hadn't.
And maybe nothing will ultimately come of it, maybe it was a desperate act against his own powerlessness to stop it.
I would argue self immolation is a pretty powerful statement though, you weigh everything you are, everything you could be; against the hope that a message takes off somewhere.
More people have died in so many other wars, but this is a genocide? I keep reading it but I don't see it. Land displacement is not genocide.
Where do you think it falls short in the definition of genocide: "the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group."?
1.5% of the population has been killed. That's a lot but 2% of the US died in the civil war, and far higher numbers. I know the wars are very different but larger numbers have also died in the current Ukraine war.
If they're trying to eliminate them as a people they need to pick up the pace. Also, my family was displaced from their land in the 1900s and had to seek asylum in the US. Nobody called it a genocide but also everyone was mostly white.
The criteria for genocide is not "kill a percentage of a population larger than the percentage that died in the US Civil War". There's no minimum requirement for per-capita death. It's about intent and action. They are trying to kill or displace everyone in Gaza. How good they are at it isn't relevant, it is still genocide.
@doingless
The American Civil War ran from Apr 1861 – 9 Apr 1865. Four years
The Gaza genocide hasn't even been going for 6 months and it's already racked up 3/4 of the deaths of the entire US Civil War. If it runs for 4 years at the present rate it will kill 12% of the population and half of those are children.
The UN Convention on Genocide defines it like this:
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml
"a) Killing members of the group;
b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
So, point for point, the only one Israel hasn't done in Gaza is "e". But to be clear, you don't have to hit all 5 to be a genocide, just one is enough. Russia is hitting all 5 in Ukraine.