Last Sunday night, as I was getting ready for bed, my friend Ali from the South Hebron Hills of Palestine sent me a text which read, “Israel is burning sleeping people alive in the refugee camps.” I clicked on the accompanying video and I could not believe what I saw: an inferno blazing, people running around screaming, and there, amidst the flame, a body writhing, crackling; a raised arm, reaching out for help, still attached to an IV. I waited for the following morning to share the video, until the event had been reported by reputable news outlets, because the images appeared too gruesome to be real – like they were something out of a movie – but they were real: an Israeli airstrike hit near the grounds of al-Aqsa Martyrs’ hospital in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah and killed at least four people. The man that we saw burning alive? His name was Sha’ban al-Dalou, a 19-year-old software engineering student…..more
