Behind Enemy Lines, March, 2024

Many of us like to ask ourselves, “What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?” The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.

Those are words from Aaron Bushnell’s last post. Today, we honor and commemorate Aaron’s life and sacrifice, and for forcing everyone to ask themselves: What am I willing to do to fight for this cause? On video, you can hear Aaron saying, “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

This act of desperation comes as the protest movement is waning despite the extremity of the genocidal war on Gaza. A peace agreement could come, but the occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing will continue. A peace agreement means that Palestinians are going to be pushed into Egypt, they’re going back to what’s left of their homes among the rubble, they’re going to live under brutal occupation. What are we going to do about that?

Aaron’s message is clear: Give your life to this cause. Unless you make personal sacrifice and dedicate yourself to the struggle, you will come out of this genocide and go back to your regular life, and the enemy will have won from that. The energy from the mass protest will vanish, like it always does, cyclicly, with every wave of mass protests. To really fight this, you can’t just be a protester. You have to be a revolutionary. You can’t just be a dissident voice at a dinner party. You gotta flip the fucking table. This is a wake up call to all who have been on the sidelines, and it’s a call to everyone who’s been protesting and posting since October 7th to get real and throw down.

There are kids being suspended from school for protesting this genocide. There are teachers who are losing their jobs for being outspoken. AND there are people responsible for this shit. We can disrupt their whole damn show this Summer here in Chicago at the DNC.

The Palestinian resistance saw that their national cause was weakening internationally. Arab states were increasingly normalizing with Israel. US imperialism’s blank check to Israel was unquestioned by every politician in the US. They decisively moved to amass the forces needed to launch an offensive that moved the national and international situation in their favor. They dug tunnels, built a united front against Israel, strengthened their military capacity, deepened ties with resistance forces in other countries, and have been initiating and leading mass movements that mobilize Arab masses in the streets to confront Israel. People get killed for that. People get killed at funerals for journalists!

What are you going to do to throw your body into the gears of the war machine. Are you willing to give up time and energy to this cause after this is out of the public eye? It’s already being erased. The fucking news stories about Aaron were put at the bottom of every newspaper. They’re doing everything they can to erase this genocide and to justify this ethnic cleansing. So once this isn’t the cause celebre, what are you going to be doing to continue fighting for this?

“I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.

Free Palestine
Free Palestine
Free Palestine”
-Aaron Bushnell