Refaat Alareer

Early life and education Refaat Alareer was born 23 September 1979 in Shuja'iyya in Gaza City. Growing up in Gaza, he said, meant "every move I took and every decision I made were influenced (usually negatively) by the Israeli occupation." in 2017 with a dissertation entitled "Unframing John Donne's Transgressive Poetry in Light of Bakhtin's Dialogic Theories."

Career Alareer edited two volumes in English. One was a collection of Palestinian short stories, Gaza Writes Back (2014), the other, which he co-edited with Laila El-Haddad, was Gaza Unsilenced (2015), an anthology of mainly non-fiction accounts of, and reactions to, Israel's 2014 attack against Gaza. In an interview, he stated: "Gaza Writes Back was an attempt to provide a testimony for future generations."

In 2007, He identified his ultimate teaching goal as highlighting parallel experiences of Palestinians and Jews. At the same time, he sought to show that Israel also used literature "as a tool of colonialism and oppression." a mentorship program that matches writers in Gaza with authors abroad. The organization promotes the power of storytelling as a means of Palestinian resistance.

During the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, he wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times about the war occurring in the Gaza Strip, ending it with a conversation with his 8-year-old daughter, Linah:

During the Gaza war, Alareer made media appearances on the BBC, Democracy Now!, and ABC News. Additionally, he served as a key contact for El País, offering updates about the situation in Gaza. In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks, he described the attack as "legitimate and moral" and said it was "exactly like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising." He also rejected allegations of Hamas engaging in sexual violence during the 7 October attack as lies used to "justify the Gaza genocide."

Patrick Kingsley, Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times, wrote that Alareer's critical remarks about Israel drew accusations in Israel of being "virulently anti-Israeli and antisemitic". In response to the claim, since debunked, that Hamas had killed a baby by placing it in an oven, Alareer jokingly responded "with or without baking powder" on Twitter, which subsequently provoked backlash. The New York Times reported that many of Alareer's views reflected his anger at Israel, which was worsened by the killing of his brother in an Israeli airstrike during the 2014 war, and the fact that the Israeli blockade on Gaza had at times prevented him from leaving the Gaza Strip to study and teach abroad.

Personal life Alareer and his wife had six children. His brother, Mohammed, as well as his wife Nusayba's grandfather, brother, sister, and three nieces were killed during the 2014 Gaza War by an Israeli bombing campaign.

On 26 April 2024, five months after Alareer's death, his eldest daughter Shaimaa, her husband Mohammed Siyam, and their newborn baby were killed by an Israeli airstrike on their home in Gaza City. Shaimaa had written to her father Refaat in a message after she delivered her baby a few months after Refaat's death:

Death

Alareer was killed by an Israeli airstrike at approximately 18:00 on 6 December 2023 in northern Gaza. He had refused to leave northern Gaza at the start of the Gaza war. His brother Salah with son Mohammed, and his sister Asmaa with three of her children (Alaa, Yahia, and Mohammed) were also among those killed in the same airstrike. The Euro-Med Monitor report stated that prior to his death, Alareer had been sheltering in a UNRWA school in Gaza with his wife and children when he received a threat via phone call stating that they knew the school where he was located. This prompted Alareer to evacuate the school and move to his sister's apartment.

"If I must die"

Alareer's poem "If I Must Die" was widely circulated after his killing and was translated into more than 250 languages.

His close friend Asem Alnabih, who had spent many moments with him and was with him just an hour before his death, mourned him. Asem recalls that in his final hours, Refaat was moving between shelter centers. He visited Yarmouk Stadium and took some photographs.

Tributes The founder of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, Ramy Abdu, stated that Israeli soldiers "targeted, went after and killed the voice of Gaza, one of its best academics, a human, my dear and precious friend."

Poet Mosab Abu Toha wrote: "My heart is broken, my friend and colleague Refaat Alareer was killed with his family."

Palestinian-American professor Sami Al-Arian noted: "He was an amazing poet, an articulate voice for Gazans, and a true bridge to people outside Palestine. His loss will be missed by many inside Palestine and around the world".

Works

Collections

(with a foreword by Susan Abulhawa)

Edited collections

Essays

PhD thesis