Thank you so much for this deeply insightful exposition of the true motives and spiritually/mentally/emotionally healthy state of Matt Nelson and Aaron Bushnell as their final blazing moments on Earth cried out for justice in Palestine. I just finished a painting of Bushnell’s very intentional self-sacrifice. It followed a painting of Shaban Al Dalou, the 19-year-old Palestinian who was burned alive with a IV in his arm after an Israeli strike on the grounds of the hospital where he was recovering from injuries sustained in a strike 10 days earlier. Both were painful in the extreme to paint, and brought a host of thoughts and feelings to the surfaced. I hope to post them with essays at least a quarter as revelatory as what you’ve written before long and now I’m determined to include links to what you’ve written about Aaron and Matt. It’s a sad and horrible time when thoughtful young men of conscience are driven to such extremes to condemn the our society’s acceptance and enabling of genocide. Thank you for making sure the mainstream narratives have a heavy counterweight of truth and exceptional active compassion available for people to balance their perspectives and activate their own consciences.
Thank you for taking the time to read and consider my efforts in this work. I'm also very glad to hear that you are using your artistic capabilities to explore these important subjects. We need artistic imagery as well as the written word to contemplate and document our experiences and concerns. I'm honored to hear you will be considering linking to my work in your future posts. I'm very interested in seeing your paintings when you are ready to share them.
It feels very strange to say it this time around, but happy new year. I published a post with my painting of Aaron, “Burnt Offering.” Knocked a little rust off with an essay to accompany it after not writing anything in a very long time. I’d be grateful for your thoughts. https://open.substack.com/pub/hanasazi/p/burnt-offering?r=gjylh&utm_medium=ios
That's great, Jeremy. Authentic dialogue and heartfelt expression are valuable in themselves and vital to solving so many problems. I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to read your poem.
I posted it a few minutes ago. Again, thank you. I'm not sure I would have shared it otherwise. But now that I have, it's cause for my own further reflection. And for that, too, I'm very grateful.
Both men deserve our respect and admiration, however I am glad that the article ends with encouragement to stay alive. The cult or martyrdom is as much the problem as the cult of divine decree, or the idea of "military action," a euphemism for systematic and organize murder on command. The victims view their dead as "martyrs," or "heroes" but it does not seem to lessen to anguish of survivors. I have had to ask myself "could I do it?" and just the thought of the pain alone is enough to convince me. This does not always apply, and it definitely does not apply here, but all too often the advocates of self-sacrifice, are advocating sacrifice by person other than themselves. I will not post the harsh and potentially controversial song from which this comes (I do that in my own articles), but the line "Monsters rule your world, are you too scared to understand?" -Ian Frazer Kilmister AKA "Lemmy" of Motorhead keeps coming up. Yes I have known and understood this for a long time now it seems. While guys in suits with salaries see how far they can push before someone threatens the use of nuclear weapons.
I've been trying to come to terms with this tradition for years, and I sincerely appreciate your efforts to analyze and discuss it.
I read "Held In The Light, " by Anne Morrison Welsh some years ago. She discusses her husband Norman's decision to set himself on fire at the Pentagon, and how it impacted her and her children. She discusses their Quakerism and the mystery behind Norman's decision to take this step. It's a beautiful book, and I found I was even more mystified after reading it.
I agree that whatever drives us to bear witness against injustice and horror can guide us to make efforts that don't involve death by our own hands. But I also know that nonviolent resistance to injustice means taking the possibility of one's death at another's hands deeply seriously. It seems to me that that understanding and identification with others is what all of this is really about.
That's really well put. Thank you for sharing your own exploration of this difficult topic. I find that flippant dismissive attitudes reveal very little about the subject and much more about the person commenting on the subject. But when we take time to think it through, I think that we can't simply dismiss such acts of what frankly must be understood as a form of spiritual-ethical martyrdom, something that has been with us for millennia and is at the bedrock of some of our most ostensibly cherished traditions. I do think that these acts force us to deal with ethical and existential questions we are sometimes inclined to avoid or obscure.
I'm delighted you chose to write about this, so thank you for the opportunity to share.
I could not agree more that our responses to the actions of others reveal our own feelings more than the seriousness, rightness, or effectiveness of what they've done. I wrote a poem about Aaron Bushnell which I plan to share on my Substack now that you've brought this discussion to bear. I admit, I hesitated to share it, but our interaction has changed my mind. Again, thank you.
Dead they go into the dust been of history. Alive their passion for the humanity and the santity of life could have spread . Dead means 2 less carng people to spread the word of peace over gemevide. To me both didn't think it through logically.
The article actually addresses some of these questions/points. Give it a read when you get a chance and see what you think. The goal of the article is actually to facilitate some deeper thinking on the matter
I read the whole article. I still maintain that his actions were lost in anonymity. He killed himself, very few noticed and nothing has changed.
If he indeed was not mentally ill, he could have served his cause more effectively by sticking around to do something about it!
Rather than saving lives by losing his own, like the Buddha did, he took his life and people are still dying.
On another note, why aren’t any of the Palestinian People revealing the location of any the Hamas criminals responsible for starting this whole debacle?
Surely someone knows where they are hiding and possibly where the hostages are being kept.
An anonymous tip could bring all this misery to a rapid conclusion.
David, three questions for you. I could ask you dozens, but let's settle for three.
1. Why has Israel been systematically starving the entire 'civilian' population of Gaza for over 13 months and what has a grotesque war crime like that got to do with getting hostages released?
2. Why did Israel, with Washington's help, try to force the entire civilian population of Gaza into the Sinai desert ? How did that move the needle on getting hostages released? Because that's exactly what the two countries did, but Egypt wouldn't have it. And if they had forced the civilian population of Gaza out that would have been both ethnic cleansing and genocide. Read the Genocide Convention (The Rome Statute), it's online and it's easily comprehended... it's very straight forward in it's language and interpretation.
3. Why has Israel carpet bombed all of Gaza, including using many hundreds of one-thousand and two-thousand pound 'bunker buster bombs', which utterly destroy multi-story concrete and steel buildings, have immense blast radii, and leave deep craters ... and how does THAT secure the freedom of hostages or in any fashion safeguard the lives of hostages?
Your not very good at connecting dots. You can't (won't) see ethnic cleansing and genocide of a people when it's been utterly and hideously blatant for well past a year now. And you won't recognize that this has been Israel's 'war aim' since October 8th, disregarding numerous statements by the highest ranking officials in the Knesset and in the IDF to exactly this effect... 'all Palestinians are culpable (collective punishment, a profound war crime) , and Gaza must be flattened' (once again, an aim to practice collective punishment and to destroy the means of life in Gaza.... ethnic cleansing) . But this disregard for Israel's war aims is entirely on you. Have a beautiful day, sunshine.
- **2011 - Itamar Attack**: A family of five, including three children, was stabbed to death.
- **2015-2016 - Stabbing Attacks**: Numerous lone wolf and small group attacks.
- **2017 - Barkan Industrial Zone Shooting**: An employee killed two coworkers.
- **2023 - October 7 Hamas Attack**: Hamas militants infiltrated Israel, killing over 1,200, mostly civilians, and taking hostages.
Although most attacks were against individuals or small groups, the attack on October 8 killed over 1200 Israelis. That’s an act of war! Enough is enough!
If a Mexican Cartel came across the border, murdered over 1200 U.S. Citizens and captured dozens of hostages in Arizona, we would not be asking them politely to stop! I’m sure it would an be all out war until we found every single one of the culprits and all hostages were released!
'Reasons' for what exactly? For deliberately and ceaselessly starving and attacking a CIVILIAN population, and denying them medical aid (destroying their hospital system from north to south in a systematic decimation, denying even the admission of 'gauze' to Gaza for sustained periods), and the essentials of life, destroying their sanitation systems, destroying their cultural heritage completely, killing aid workers and journalists in droves, attacking UN facilities , all universities, most schools, virtually all mosques, all markets and bakeries ? That's against the laws of war, it's against international law. It's against humanitarian law. It's against the Geneva Conventions. No matter which army does so .That's how it works. Consequently the arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant (and there will be more Israeli officials charged, count upon this) and the three Hamas officials (all presently dead). Arrest warrants issued by the world's top criminal court, because Israel has acted in defiance of international law for decades, and because Israel is very busy for the past year in the commission of the 'crime of crimes' which is the language employed explicitly to describe the gravity of committing genocide, which is the attempt to efface-extinguish a people from existence.
Sorry, it's MENTAL ILLNESS that drives a man toward SELF-IMMOLATION. Buddhist do things like that for street cred. A military man does it because he is desperate and weak.
That certainly is an opinion some hold. Once you get the chance, give the article a read and ponder some of the points made therein. You might be right but you might also have some things to reconsider.
Does glibness and loose-cannon bravado give you 'street cred' ? Mental illness is a complex phenomenon, characterized by diverse behaviors and states of mind. You're in no manner qualified to make your diagnosis of either man, you have no professional insight, and no professional would ever make a diagnosis remotely, they'd do necessary clarifying interviews,... but none of that discernment or rigor for you. You can 'sticky note' others with your characterizations and aspersions of them until you're blue in the face, but your own words say far more about you than they do about the targets of your arrogance.
"I know it's been awhile since I posted. I’ve been going through some things😕 Not fun things at all. Still working up the necessary nerve to talk about the trauma I've been experiencing for these last 6 years. Loss of a job I hated with a passion but needed to survive, the subsequent eviction, living out of hotels because no one will rent to me now. I'm trying to get SSDI because of my mental illnesses. That's not going well. Two attorneys already refused to take my case. Maybe if I was a wealthy oil industry executive, I could get government funding or a wealthy country like Israel. But no, I'm just an average person who's struggling to survive a system that is expressly designed to do what it's doing."
No I'm not 'confused'. Jasmine was telling you that you're a projecting weakling because you're blithely denigrating the character of two men of (readily evident) conscience whom you've never met. Cobble together whatever rationale you choose if it makes you believe you've got high ground, 'IceBox'. You seem committed to broad brush assertions. Like you're omniscient. You're not. And your brazen arrogance is not a good look.
Thank you so much for this deeply insightful exposition of the true motives and spiritually/mentally/emotionally healthy state of Matt Nelson and Aaron Bushnell as their final blazing moments on Earth cried out for justice in Palestine. I just finished a painting of Bushnell’s very intentional self-sacrifice. It followed a painting of Shaban Al Dalou, the 19-year-old Palestinian who was burned alive with a IV in his arm after an Israeli strike on the grounds of the hospital where he was recovering from injuries sustained in a strike 10 days earlier. Both were painful in the extreme to paint, and brought a host of thoughts and feelings to the surfaced. I hope to post them with essays at least a quarter as revelatory as what you’ve written before long and now I’m determined to include links to what you’ve written about Aaron and Matt. It’s a sad and horrible time when thoughtful young men of conscience are driven to such extremes to condemn the our society’s acceptance and enabling of genocide. Thank you for making sure the mainstream narratives have a heavy counterweight of truth and exceptional active compassion available for people to balance their perspectives and activate their own consciences.
Thank you for taking the time to read and consider my efforts in this work. I'm also very glad to hear that you are using your artistic capabilities to explore these important subjects. We need artistic imagery as well as the written word to contemplate and document our experiences and concerns. I'm honored to hear you will be considering linking to my work in your future posts. I'm very interested in seeing your paintings when you are ready to share them.
It feels very strange to say it this time around, but happy new year. I published a post with my painting of Aaron, “Burnt Offering.” Knocked a little rust off with an essay to accompany it after not writing anything in a very long time. I’d be grateful for your thoughts. https://open.substack.com/pub/hanasazi/p/burnt-offering?r=gjylh&utm_medium=ios
That's great, Jeremy. Authentic dialogue and heartfelt expression are valuable in themselves and vital to solving so many problems. I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to read your poem.
I posted it a few minutes ago. Again, thank you. I'm not sure I would have shared it otherwise. But now that I have, it's cause for my own further reflection. And for that, too, I'm very grateful.
Both men deserve our respect and admiration, however I am glad that the article ends with encouragement to stay alive. The cult or martyrdom is as much the problem as the cult of divine decree, or the idea of "military action," a euphemism for systematic and organize murder on command. The victims view their dead as "martyrs," or "heroes" but it does not seem to lessen to anguish of survivors. I have had to ask myself "could I do it?" and just the thought of the pain alone is enough to convince me. This does not always apply, and it definitely does not apply here, but all too often the advocates of self-sacrifice, are advocating sacrifice by person other than themselves. I will not post the harsh and potentially controversial song from which this comes (I do that in my own articles), but the line "Monsters rule your world, are you too scared to understand?" -Ian Frazer Kilmister AKA "Lemmy" of Motorhead keeps coming up. Yes I have known and understood this for a long time now it seems. While guys in suits with salaries see how far they can push before someone threatens the use of nuclear weapons.
These 2 men must remain alive in our hearts and actions.
I've been trying to come to terms with this tradition for years, and I sincerely appreciate your efforts to analyze and discuss it.
I read "Held In The Light, " by Anne Morrison Welsh some years ago. She discusses her husband Norman's decision to set himself on fire at the Pentagon, and how it impacted her and her children. She discusses their Quakerism and the mystery behind Norman's decision to take this step. It's a beautiful book, and I found I was even more mystified after reading it.
I agree that whatever drives us to bear witness against injustice and horror can guide us to make efforts that don't involve death by our own hands. But I also know that nonviolent resistance to injustice means taking the possibility of one's death at another's hands deeply seriously. It seems to me that that understanding and identification with others is what all of this is really about.
That's really well put. Thank you for sharing your own exploration of this difficult topic. I find that flippant dismissive attitudes reveal very little about the subject and much more about the person commenting on the subject. But when we take time to think it through, I think that we can't simply dismiss such acts of what frankly must be understood as a form of spiritual-ethical martyrdom, something that has been with us for millennia and is at the bedrock of some of our most ostensibly cherished traditions. I do think that these acts force us to deal with ethical and existential questions we are sometimes inclined to avoid or obscure.
I'm delighted you chose to write about this, so thank you for the opportunity to share.
I could not agree more that our responses to the actions of others reveal our own feelings more than the seriousness, rightness, or effectiveness of what they've done. I wrote a poem about Aaron Bushnell which I plan to share on my Substack now that you've brought this discussion to bear. I admit, I hesitated to share it, but our interaction has changed my mind. Again, thank you.
In memoriam.
✌🏼❤️🙏🕉
Alive they could have accomplished so much more.
Dead they go into the dust been of history. Alive their passion for the humanity and the santity of life could have spread . Dead means 2 less carng people to spread the word of peace over gemevide. To me both didn't think it through logically.
We all will miss their voice.
What a shame! He took his life to make a point and it didn’t move the needle 1 millimeter!
Makes you wonder what is going through a persons head?
Did he think that this act would cause a groundswell of outrage and finally change things for good??
People get so caught up in their own little dramas, they don’t see that in the grand scheme of things it means nothing!🥺
The article actually addresses some of these questions/points. Give it a read when you get a chance and see what you think. The goal of the article is actually to facilitate some deeper thinking on the matter
I read the whole article. I still maintain that his actions were lost in anonymity. He killed himself, very few noticed and nothing has changed.
If he indeed was not mentally ill, he could have served his cause more effectively by sticking around to do something about it!
Rather than saving lives by losing his own, like the Buddha did, he took his life and people are still dying.
On another note, why aren’t any of the Palestinian People revealing the location of any the Hamas criminals responsible for starting this whole debacle?
Surely someone knows where they are hiding and possibly where the hostages are being kept.
An anonymous tip could bring all this misery to a rapid conclusion.
David, three questions for you. I could ask you dozens, but let's settle for three.
1. Why has Israel been systematically starving the entire 'civilian' population of Gaza for over 13 months and what has a grotesque war crime like that got to do with getting hostages released?
2. Why did Israel, with Washington's help, try to force the entire civilian population of Gaza into the Sinai desert ? How did that move the needle on getting hostages released? Because that's exactly what the two countries did, but Egypt wouldn't have it. And if they had forced the civilian population of Gaza out that would have been both ethnic cleansing and genocide. Read the Genocide Convention (The Rome Statute), it's online and it's easily comprehended... it's very straight forward in it's language and interpretation.
3. Why has Israel carpet bombed all of Gaza, including using many hundreds of one-thousand and two-thousand pound 'bunker buster bombs', which utterly destroy multi-story concrete and steel buildings, have immense blast radii, and leave deep craters ... and how does THAT secure the freedom of hostages or in any fashion safeguard the lives of hostages?
Your not very good at connecting dots. You can't (won't) see ethnic cleansing and genocide of a people when it's been utterly and hideously blatant for well past a year now. And you won't recognize that this has been Israel's 'war aim' since October 8th, disregarding numerous statements by the highest ranking officials in the Knesset and in the IDF to exactly this effect... 'all Palestinians are culpable (collective punishment, a profound war crime) , and Gaza must be flattened' (once again, an aim to practice collective punishment and to destroy the means of life in Gaza.... ethnic cleansing) . But this disregard for Israel's war aims is entirely on you. Have a beautiful day, sunshine.
Here’s just a handful of reasons although there are many more…
- **1948 - Deir Yassin Massacre**: Militants from the Irgun and Lehi groups attacked the village, killing a significant number of the Arab population.
- **1956 - Suez Crisis**: While this was a no state conflict, it involved attacks against Israel.
- **1969 - Israeli Embassy in The Hague Bombing**: Although outside Israel, it's often cited due to its targeting of Israeli interests.
- **1970 - Avivim School Bus Massacre**: Palestinian militants attacked a bus carrying children, killing 12.
- **1972 - Lod Airport Massacre**: Japanese Red Army members, supported by the PFLP, killed 26 people, including 17 from Puerto Rico.
- **1974 - Ma'alot Massacre**: Militants took over 100 hostages, mostly schoolchildren, leading to 22 deaths.
- **1975 - Zion Square Bombing**: A refrigerator packed with explosives killed 14 and injured 62.
- **1978 - Coastal Road Massacre**: PLO militants hijacked a bus, resulting in 38 deaths.
- **1994 - Dizengoff Center Bombing**: A suicide attack by Hamas killed 22 people.
- **1995 - Beit Lid Junction Bombing**: Two suicide bombings by the Islamic Jihad killed 22 Israeli soldiers.
- **1996 - Jaffa Road Bus 18 Bombing**: Hamas suicide bombing killed 16 passengers.
- **2001-2005 - Notable Attacks during Second Intifada**:
- Dolphinarium Discotheque Bombing (2001) - 21 killed
- Sbarro Restaurant Suicide Bombing (2001) - 15 killed
- Park Hotel Passover Massacre (2002) - 30 killed
- Haifa Bus 37 Bombing (2002) - 17 killed
- Maxim Restaurant Suicide Bombing (2003) - 21 killed
- **2011 - Itamar Attack**: A family of five, including three children, was stabbed to death.
- **2015-2016 - Stabbing Attacks**: Numerous lone wolf and small group attacks.
- **2017 - Barkan Industrial Zone Shooting**: An employee killed two coworkers.
- **2023 - October 7 Hamas Attack**: Hamas militants infiltrated Israel, killing over 1,200, mostly civilians, and taking hostages.
Although most attacks were against individuals or small groups, the attack on October 8 killed over 1200 Israelis. That’s an act of war! Enough is enough!
If a Mexican Cartel came across the border, murdered over 1200 U.S. Citizens and captured dozens of hostages in Arizona, we would not be asking them politely to stop! I’m sure it would an be all out war until we found every single one of the culprits and all hostages were released!
'Reasons' for what exactly? For deliberately and ceaselessly starving and attacking a CIVILIAN population, and denying them medical aid (destroying their hospital system from north to south in a systematic decimation, denying even the admission of 'gauze' to Gaza for sustained periods), and the essentials of life, destroying their sanitation systems, destroying their cultural heritage completely, killing aid workers and journalists in droves, attacking UN facilities , all universities, most schools, virtually all mosques, all markets and bakeries ? That's against the laws of war, it's against international law. It's against humanitarian law. It's against the Geneva Conventions. No matter which army does so .That's how it works. Consequently the arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant (and there will be more Israeli officials charged, count upon this) and the three Hamas officials (all presently dead). Arrest warrants issued by the world's top criminal court, because Israel has acted in defiance of international law for decades, and because Israel is very busy for the past year in the commission of the 'crime of crimes' which is the language employed explicitly to describe the gravity of committing genocide, which is the attempt to efface-extinguish a people from existence.
Well said. I pray your comment hits its target and changes a heart. ❤️🩹
Moron
Sorry, it's MENTAL ILLNESS that drives a man toward SELF-IMMOLATION. Buddhist do things like that for street cred. A military man does it because he is desperate and weak.
That certainly is an opinion some hold. Once you get the chance, give the article a read and ponder some of the points made therein. You might be right but you might also have some things to reconsider.
He's a coward. These men's courage and conviction makes him feel like the piece of trash he actually is.
I hope you get that SSDI for your mental illnesses soon! God Bless You, Stay icy!
To Dr Jeffrey - Jasmine is an example of what I am talking about.
Dude, you're a dick🤷♀️ Why? 🤣
You're a fucking coward. You wish you had these two outstanding men's courage and conviction. And you also have a public humiliation kink.
Does glibness and loose-cannon bravado give you 'street cred' ? Mental illness is a complex phenomenon, characterized by diverse behaviors and states of mind. You're in no manner qualified to make your diagnosis of either man, you have no professional insight, and no professional would ever make a diagnosis remotely, they'd do necessary clarifying interviews,... but none of that discernment or rigor for you. You can 'sticky note' others with your characterizations and aspersions of them until you're blue in the face, but your own words say far more about you than they do about the targets of your arrogance.
I simply quoted Jasmine's own WRITING on her SUBSTACK. Check it out if you are confused.
https://substack.com/@jasminewolfe/p-136480016
"I know it's been awhile since I posted. I’ve been going through some things😕 Not fun things at all. Still working up the necessary nerve to talk about the trauma I've been experiencing for these last 6 years. Loss of a job I hated with a passion but needed to survive, the subsequent eviction, living out of hotels because no one will rent to me now. I'm trying to get SSDI because of my mental illnesses. That's not going well. Two attorneys already refused to take my case. Maybe if I was a wealthy oil industry executive, I could get government funding or a wealthy country like Israel. But no, I'm just an average person who's struggling to survive a system that is expressly designed to do what it's doing."
No I'm not 'confused'. Jasmine was telling you that you're a projecting weakling because you're blithely denigrating the character of two men of (readily evident) conscience whom you've never met. Cobble together whatever rationale you choose if it makes you believe you've got high ground, 'IceBox'. You seem committed to broad brush assertions. Like you're omniscient. You're not. And your brazen arrogance is not a good look.
That's exactly what I would expect a blind person to say. It isn't difficult to SEE that Bushnell was a retard.
Blah, blah, blah....