doing my best to stay up to date, every day and night

Israeli real estate company Hareyzahav announcing plans to build beach houses in the rubble of thousands of dead children. So when you ask, "why is Israel genociding Palestine," this is the real answer. Beach houses and basic colonizers doing what colonizers do. They want the land, rest assured they don't care about the hostages. Hamas has offered them hostages and they've said no. Israel has shot hostages on their way home. 

It's not about the hostages. It's about the beach houses.

December 15, 2023

A mass grave  for the bodies of Palestinian men, women, and children killed by Israel with the help of the United States.

Something has to be clarified about this: Self immolation should not and cannot be conflated with suicide or self harm. This was not a mental health crisis. It was a clear declaration to the government and to the world that this genocide is unacceptable, and he was unwilling to be complicit. People are devaluing his sacrifice by rewriting his story, when he told us so explicitly why he was doing what he refers to as "an extreme act of protest." 

There is also a bizarre cognitive gap in the mental illness claim. He was active duty in the military. That means he had already committed his life to service of a cause, one he believed in so strongly he would be willing to die for it. That is what the military is, it is self sacrifice. So why is it that when he sacrificed his life, his sanity was called into question? Why is it acceptable to give his life in service of genocide, but not in protest against it? Why would he be called a hero then and not now? He is a hero. 

Genocide is insane. Apathy in the face of genocide is insane. An extreme form of protest, an attempt to make the world stop and listen, that is not insane. Sometimes rational responses to insane situations look like mental illness, but listen to his words. He told us exactly why he did it, and he did so calmly, clearly, and rationally. 

Listen to his words, he gave his life that you might hear them.

Aaron Bushnell is not the first person to self immolate as an act of protest. In fact, he is not even the first person to self immolate over the Gazan genocide. This is the first we are hearing about because when a woman did this last year, the story was buried. Think about that for a moment please. The amount of times throughout this genocide I have desperately thought, "what do I have to do to make the government listen, set myself on fire?" Can you imagine having that thought, acting on it, and still being silenced? Censorship. An oppressive ruling class. Pure fucking dystopia.  This, and many moments before this, should have been a turning point, should have crossed a line, should have put an end to it. So how far is too far? Do we still go to work tomorrow like everything's normal? As he said, "this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal."