Friday May 24 – 5:30 pm – Fayetteville Town Square
Friends of Palestine NWA
Memorial Day is the day that the United States has set aside to honor and remember those who died while serving in the military. Many of us who have been following and understand what is happening in Palestine think immediately of Aaron Bushnell.
Aaron Bushnell died on February 25th of this year, succumbing to the injuries he sustained in an extreme act of protest. In his Air Force uniform, he walked to the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. and set himself on fire. This statement by the Veteran’s for Peace describes the act, and speaks to the suffering that veterans know as a result of war, accusing the policy makers and leaders that create and support the conditions under which innocents are killed of being “madmen arsonists”.
“These policymakers, swaddled in privilege, take their orders from those who profit from death and suffering. We know who they are: the people who run Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics and their fellow merchants of death, and the people who finance what the merchants do.
These madmen arsonists operate on a grand scale internationally but also on a singular, small scale as in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. They as much as lit the match for Aaron Bushnell. The fire that killed Airman Bushnell was simply the “collateral damage,” as it’s so callously called, of the ongoing conflagration in Palestine.”
Soldiers suffer and die in wars that our countries wage in efforts of colonialism and in favor of capitalism. Does the day that our country set aside to memorialize them make up for their needless deaths and suffering?
Come and join us this Friday, May 24th at the Fayetteville Town Square 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm to protest the deaths of innocent people in Palestine and in memory of the soldiers that lose their lives in our leaders’ pursuits of money and power, or that lose their lives in protest. We encourage you to make signs or banners in support of this week’s message. We will speak until we are heard; we demand a permanent ceasefire in Palestine.
You can also join our phone bank, making daily calls to the senators and congresspeople of Arkansas, to keep the pressure on. We have a message group where we post daily scripts, track our calls, and keep up with the news on WhatsApp: