Tributes pour in for Palestinian student burned to death in Israeli attack on al-Aqsa Hospital
Shaban al-Dalou with his parents and siblings
Firdevs Bulut reports in Middle East Eye on 15 October 2024:
Social media is flooded with tributes to Sha’ban al-Dalou, a 19-year-old Palestinian student who was burned alive after an Israeli air strike hit al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital and killed three others.
Sha’ban was connected to an IV drip when the strike on the hospital tents took place and footage on social media showed him trying to move as he was burned to death.
His brother, who watched his mother and brother burn in their tent, said Sha’ban had survived an earlier Israeli strike on 6 October that targeted the al-Aqsa Martyrs Mosque, where he had been sleeping. Twenty people were killed in that attack.
Sha’ban, who was forcefully displaced last year when Israeli forces destroyed his home, had just started his university studies in software engineering in September 2023. His final moments shocked millions and drew widespread condemnation of Israel’s targeting of Palestinian civilians.
Questions of accountability and the dehumanisation of Palestinians stormed social media after his death, with people pointing out the fact that he had been displaced several times by Israeli attacks and wounded before his death in the hospital tents.
Social media users honoured Sha’ban’s memory by focusing on life, describing him as a young man full of vitality and resourcefulness. He had even built the tent in the hospital compound where he lost his life.
Oxford University lecturer Jennifer Cassidy paid tribute to Sha’ban, saying that he was not an image on social media but a human being. She added that “the word war crime doesn’t even begin to cover” the atrocity committed against him.