24-25_HANS_LI_ID OF A LETHAL CLINIQUE

distant suffering LI

cover page detail middle segment of the triptych back page by me censored still from the video www.hansovervliet.com

And if the Americans could bomb a hospital in Serbia or a civilian housing estate in Baghdad, who were the hypocritical West to object when the Israeli army slaughtered the innocents of Lebanon and Gaza in identical ways?

Robert Fisk | 1946 – 2020 Night of Power: The Betrayal of the Middle East | 2024

DISTANT SUFFERING LI i.d. of a lethal clinique Col

mar

dedicated to Sha’ban al-Dalou

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Triptych November 2024 – January 2025 Intra-Venous (IV) material folding mattress BASIC F15 | JYSK three plexiglas cubes 35 x 35 x 35 cm wooden console 110 x 105 x 35 painted matte white

Inescapability I thought the internalised journalist would protect me. Should that fail, there was always the artist in me to keep me from shock. After all, artists sublimate. Right?

Then I watched the video. Neither of my protections kickt in.

Of course, it happened before. In Colmar, standing in front of the retable of Isenheim. Three times we had driven hundreds of kilometers extra, coming from the Provence. Only to back off: too afraid to go inside. Too afraid of that magical place of suffering. The fourth time proved us right from the moment we finally entered. The retable would haunt me for years in nasty nightmares. Until I saw an image by Jasper Johns. He made an outline out of the soldier being brought down by the resurrection of the christ.

Jasper Johns’ image apparently neutralized something in me.

The video I referred to captures the moments after an Israeli strike with AGM-114 Hellfire in Deir al Balah on Monday, October 14, 2024 at about one o’clock at night.

An already wounded boy was sheltering there in a tent on the compound of al Aqsa Martyrs’ hospital with his parents and five siblings when the Israeli rocket hit.

Tha boy was Sha’ban al-Dalou. He was just days away from his 20th birthday. Because of the war in Gaza, he and his family had to leave their home in Gaza City. Shaban was being treated in a tent near al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after surviving an Israeli attack on a mosque in Deir al-Balah that killed more than 20 people earlier this month. In the process, he suffered head injuries for which he was treated at the compound of the remains of the hospital.

Hence the Intra-Venous drip in his arm.

I watched a person burning alive among tents on a hospital compound in Gaza. I still can't believe what I saw. To the extent that I can't forget it either: a flaring inferno, people screaming their lungs out, and there, amid the flames, a body in spasms; both arms raised, reaching for support, one arm still connected to an IV. An IV that refused to melt. That retained its distinctive form in the flames. Until the very last moment of his life, that healing element remained untouched, persisted in its function. It also protected me by fixing my gaze away from Shaban's burning body.

This horrible video and pictures with the speed of light made headlines all over the world in all possible media: ‘White House says imagery of Gazans burning alive after Israeli strike is 'horrifying', ‘Displaced Palestinians ‘burned alive’ by Israeli airstrike on tent encampment’, ‘Shaban

On tent encampment’, ‘Sha’ban al-Dalou: The Palestinian teen burned alive in Israeli bombing’, ‘Jeder könnte der nächste Sha'ban sein, denn Israel darf alles tun’, ‘Familie slachtoffer Israëlisch bombardement: we konden hem niet redden’, ‘A Gaza, Shaaban Al-Dalou, le brûlé vif de Deir Al-Balah’, ‘Siento que un día mis hijos van a saber esto y me van a preguntar qué hicimos para deter esto.’

It caused actions like the video of Sha’ban Al-Dalu’s horrific death projected on-to the UK parliament buildings by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC)’ on October 18, 2024.

On national American TV, in this case MSNBC: ‘Chris Hayes honors (sic!) Palestinian teen who burned to death after Israeli strike’: a full 4:14. And of course there was the cri de cœur, this cited from The Guardian: ‘Sha’ban al-Da-lou burned alive before the world. May his s his death awaken us’.

alive before the world. May his death awaken us’.

On the day our Sha’ban gruesome died, October 14, 2024 at one o’clock in the morning, more than 42,200 people have been killed in Gaza, mostly women and children, and over 98,400 have been injured.

In The Guardian, Zak Wittus wrote: ‘Let the memory of Sha’ban al-Dalou be the memory that brings us back to our common humanity and ends this war . . .’

Two weeks later ‘his’ Mr. Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union, The Right Honorable Sir Keir Starmer Knight Commander of the Bath, King’s Counsel and Member of Parliament, sold another muti-billion batch of wapenery to

the apartheid state Israel.

And the deeply concerned ‘White House’ which said that imagery of Gazans burning alive after Israeli strike is 'horrifying'? Well: “The images are very disturbing and we have conveyed our concerns to the Israeli government,” said a spokesman. “Israel must do more to prevent civilian deaths.”

Only to ship a multi-billiondollar batch of AGM-114 Hellfire to the the terrorist state the very next day without any reservation and/or demand. As do the Dutch, the French, in short, everybody . . .

So in the end Sha’ban’s horrible death was just another human interest story for the Western media and the memory of his death is already replaced by 1,789 other gruesome events. If the corporate media remain owned by the billionaire class, we will continue to be stunned with events instead of being informed of the backgrounds of this class's business model:

stead of being informed of the backgrounds of this class's business model: raking in as much money and power as possible by destroying or turning against us and the institutions that protect us.

A short while ago they installed the pathological liar Mark Rutte as head of their military NATO-club. Who, of course, within weks reported that war now is the new normal.

Speed and fear: Paul Verillio is smiling sadly from his cloud. We again might need the solace of Isenheim very soon; we might need writers to articulate the inexpressible again. Which also raises the question of whether this work - or any other work of art for that matter- still contributes helping expressing the the inexpressible . . .

Middelburg, May 2025

Sha’ban al-Dalou

Deir el-Balah | Ramadan Abed/Reuters

Thanks to O.

for the IV

Rita

who safely left from Deir al-Balah to Marseille

Maisara Baroud | I’m still alive Ahmed Mansour | September 05, 2024

DISTANT SUFFERING | the project Martha Jager, curator Vleeshal in MiddelburgNL about the oeuvre (2023) after a studio visit: The dedication to art as a relational verb is central to Overvliet's work. On the one hand, the balance between poetry and criticism is special, in that the work never becomes bitter or pedantic, while at the same time the dialogue with the viewer is actively maintained.

It is a tender form of activism that moves and urges action and also continuously questions the role of art.

DISTANT SUFFERING LI