Courtesy of JNS. Photo credit: Ting Shen/AFP via Getty Images
Police help a man who tried to set himself on fire during an anti-Israel demonstration, marking the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack on southern Israel, near the White House in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 5, 2024
(JNS) — A man attempted to self-immolate, lighting his left arm on fire outside the White House on Saturday during an anti-Israel protest.
The man, who identified himself as a journalist, was seen in video taken at the scene holding his arm in the air, engulfed in flames. Several members of the crowd tossed water on his arm and tried to put the flames out with towels, as the man screamed.
The sleeve of his shirt appeared to be burned off, with burn marks visible on his left arm in the video.
Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officers restrained the man, and rescue services transported him to a local hospital with non-life threatening injuries, according to police.
The man reportedly screamed at one point that “we spread the misinformation,” and later that “I’m a journalist, and I said it was OK.”
The man’s identity has not yet been confirmed publicly. An Arizona man with a similar photo has social media pages loaded with content on the Israel-Hamas war and posted that he would be at the White House protest on Saturday to give a speech. That individual also identifies as a journalist.
The incident took place at about 5:45 p.m. along the 800 block of 16th Street, close to the White House, where activists — some supporting Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre — gathered in protest ahead of the one-year anniversary of the attack.
The man on Saturday became the third known to have lit himself on fire, purportedly in protest of Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old U.S. Air Force serviceman, died of his wounds following his actions outside the Israeli embassy in Washington in late February.
Last month, a man identified in news reports as 45-year-old Matt Nelson died four days after lighting himself on fire across the street from the Israeli consulate in Boston.
