(Washington, D.C. – 2/27/2024) – The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) – the nation’s umbrella group of national, regional, and local Muslim associations today reiterated its call on President Biden to stop the Gaza genocide after 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the United States Air Force died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy to protest U.S. support for the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
In a statement, USCMO Secretary-General Oussama Jammal said:
In a video recorded immediately before his self-immolation, Aaron Bushnell said he could “no longer be complicit in genocide” and “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 is not extreme at all.”
On Facebook, he once posted, “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I were alive during slavery, or the Jim Crow South, or [the South African] Apartheid?’ What would I do if my country was committing genocide?” The answer is, ‘You’re doing it right now.’”
On November 21st, the U.S. Air Force issued orders to specific active duty personnel, under the heading: “Compliance with This Guidance Is Mandatory.” The orders contained “specific guidance for Airmen and Guardians deploying to Israel,” according to The Intercept. The U.S. special operations forces are likely participating “for the first time in history,” to provide satellite targeting intelligence and surveillance activities “for the purposes of offensive targeting” of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, “information used to conduct airstrikes and fire long-range artillery weapons.”
After Bushnell’s death, an anonymous group of White House staffers today released a letter calling on President Biden to change course.
Since at least November 2023, government workers from the White House to the State Department to NASA have been promulgating open letters of dissent insisting that President Joe Biden bring about a ceasefire to end the gratuitous Israeli mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
A recent 12-nation, mass international protest of 800 U.S. and European and EU officials warns their leaders of the “plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes, and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.”
USCMO extends sincere condolences to Aaron Bushnell’s loved ones. American Muslims know too well the great moral brink of sadness and frustration caused by President Biden’s steadfast support for the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
USCMO calls on President Biden to immediately stop supporting and enabling the mass starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as the massive Israeli military and extremist settler-colonist assault on Palestinians in the West Bank.
The U.S. and the world can no longer aid and abet this clear Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, the most egregious act of mass slaughter in our time. Palestinians are paying with their lives and livelihoods for our inaction.
