A man who said he was a journalist lit himself on fire outside the White House on Saturday in an apparent attempt to protest Israel’s war in Gaza through self-immolation.
The man, who was identified as Samuel Mena Jr, was captured on video lightning his left arm on fire, lifting it into the air, and screaming in pain before bystanders and police rushed to help him. Bystanders doused him with water and beat the flame out with towels.
Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department officers restrained the man, who shouted that he was a journalist.
Mena was transported to a local hospital with non-life threatening injuries, according to police chief Pamela Smith.
“The District of Columbia has a long and proud history of peaceful First Amendment activities and the Metropolitan Police Department handles hundreds of protests, demonstrations, and other events every year,” she wrote.
“We will continue to support those who choose to protest peacefully and safely, and we will continue to hold accountable those who commit criminal acts while in our city,” the statement said.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in major cities across the world on Saturday to demand that Israel end its military campaigns in Gaza and in Lebanon in the hopes of averting a wider Middle East war following the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians after last year’s Hamas attacks in Israel.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through London while thousands gathered in Paris, Rome, Manila, Cape Town and New York City.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and displaced more than 2 million people, driving a hunger crisis and allegations of genocide at the Hague that Israel has vehemently denied.
In February, Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old Air Force service member dressed in his fatigues, self-immolated outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC. At the time, Bushnell said he was protest against “what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers.”
He then said he “will no longer be complicit in genocide” and lit himself on fire, shouting “free Palestine” as he burned. He died from his injuries.
Mena’s protest comes just days before the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 terror attack in Israel that preceded the Israeli’s actions in Gaza.
Federal law enforcement agencies issued a warning this week that the upcoming anniversary “may be a motivating factor for violent extremists and hate crime perpetrators to engage in violence of threaten public safety.”
On Saturday, Mena wrote on his X profile that he was planning to attend the pro-Palestine rally.
“I will be streaming live from the White House exterior on instagram live in 30 minutes. The first 30 minutes will be spent doing tech trouble shooting, and I will give a speech in an hour from now,” he wrote.
Several hours before that, he sent a tweet saying “End settler colonialism.”
The post includes a photo of Mena in front of a Palestinian flag with the phrase “from the river to the sea” above his head. Supporters of Israel claim the phrase is antisemitic, while supporters of Palestine state that the slogan is referencing the reclamation of the land Palestinians lost to Israel and the freedom of Palestinians to live in peace.
Mena says on his profile that he is a graduate of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, and is currently “employed as a photojournalist for AZFamily Channels 3 and 5.”
