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refaat alareer
Dear Refaat Alareer: A Letter of Gratitude
As per your wishes we’re striving to live—hopefully a deeper and more reflective life, including a life of action against the genocide in Palestine.
May 21, 2025
First, I heard of your death. Then I heard about your poetry; various—maybe many—people read the now-most-famous poem—“If I Must Die, Let It Be a Tale”—or sections of it as part of the news. Like many thousands of others, I bought your book, as a sort of remembrance or sympathy card, something concrete to hold onto, honoring and remembering your life and death. It’s a far cry from the kite you requested, a kite to be seen flying high in the heavens. A kite to bring hope and love to a child, perhaps to one of your children, looking skyward somewhere in Gaza.
Still, there is a tale and I’m writing to tell it. Let me say I found the poem’s opening lines, “If I must die / you must live,” extremely significant. Such a clear instruction to those of us under the weight of the ongoing catastrophe, wondering what to do. Wondering, can we, in good conscience, go about our daily lives knowing the urgency of the situation in Palestine, knowing, in my case, that it’s my government and my tax dollars funding the death and destruction. I’m inspired, and grateful for your dictate that we live.
For the first time, I’ve taken over some vegetable planting in our garden. I thought of you as I pushed in a pound’s-worth of onion sets, hoping to grow “better” onions than we’ve gotten in the past. I thought of you as I hoed and scratched the clumped, rich river-bottom dirt in the garden to ensure my tiny carrot seeds would grow into nice, straight carrots. I thought of you as I planted sweet peas along the garden fence. And the chickens; I had to rebuild my flock, diminished by predators. It was OK, I realized; this is also my life, to be obsessed by possible chick opportunities on Craigslist, OK to check every few hours even as things deteriorated in Gaza.
This is also part of the mandate to live—in a time of catastrophe, to take action, to call out the genocide is a critical part of living.
And then there’s the rest of the property. Areas of our large corner lot have been naturalized and “let go.” Areas where trilliums and jack-in-the-pulpits surprise me; where bloodroot and ferns sprout from out of nowhere. I found a renewed appreciation of these as part of “my life,” as part of living on when others are dying from lack of food, shelter, healthcare and endless bombs. When territory—land and all that lives and grows on it—is being poisoned and confiscated; hundred-year-old trees cut down. While tending and observing the wonders of spring in this verdant yard, I thought daily about your directive to live. I tried to hold it in my mind along with the thoughtful advice of Wendell Berry: “You can describe the predicament we’re in as an emergency,” he’s said, “and your trial is to learn to be patient in an emergency.”
And, then it was May and Mother’s Day was approaching. Mother’s Day! A day historically set aside to honor women dedicated to peace; how could we let Mother’s Day pass without calling attention to the ongoing Israeli-American femicide and infanticide in Gaza? How could the day pass without acknowledging the thousands of mothers without children, the thousands of children orphaned, without mothers? This is also part of the mandate to live—in a time of catastrophe, to take action, to call out the genocide is a critical part of living.
We declared a 24-hour Mother’s Day Vigil and Fast on Main Street—from noon on Sunday, May 11 until noon on Monday, May 12. Like Julia Ward Howe’s original call to action, we asked women to leave home for peace just as men leave house and home for war. We painted signs and banners, we hoisted a Palestinian flag on the wrought iron fence behind us. We wore our keffiyehs, and banged on pot tops. We splayed our stuffed-doll “dead babies” with signs about how many children have been killed on the sidewalk in front of us. Two comrades walked across the broad Main Street intersection with the walk light; horns blasted and whistles blew in support of freeing Palestine and Palestinians. Nao painstakingly copied out your poem in colored chalk on the sidewalk. And so the day passed.
(Photo: Laran Kaplan)
At one point late in the afternoon a man on a bike rode up and stopped in front of me: “What about us?” he screamed.
“We’re for us too,” I said. Unsatisfied, he swore and rode away. He returned a few minutes later, speeding along the sidewalk, bent down, grabbed one of the stuffed figures and rode away despite our protest.
A middle-aged white man came and stood in front of us with a Trump 2025 banner. We asked but he declined to move to another location along the sidewalk. “What about all the children killed by abortion?” he taunted. What about this, what about that. We ignored him, and he eventually left but not before taking some heat from passersby.
People, maybe as many as 20 people at one point—both men and women—came, sat, and stood together throughout the day. We were thanked and blessed by passersby; a few swore under their breath. “It’s Sunday,” said one woman, “have some respect.”
It was getting dark; three of us huddled on the sidewalk around a solar lantern, contemplating my commitment to stay overnight. I’d declared a 24-hour action out of my deep emotional desire to DO SOMETHING. Now, in light of the hassling, the reality of a cold night, alone on Main Street didn’t seem like a great idea. And anyway my comrades reminded me… today is Mother’s Day, tomorrow is “only” another Monday. So, we abandoned the vigil at 10:00 pm, heading home to our respective warm houses and beds.
I wanted you to know Refaat that although we have no kite, we do have a tale, and now we’ve told it. We promise more will come. As per your wishes we’re striving to live—hopefully a deeper and more reflective life, including a life of action against the genocide in Palestine. We’re grateful for your poems, for your tales, for your inspiration and advice.
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A Year Into Israel’s Genocide, the Fight for Life and Dignity in Gaza Continues
The compass remains: a commitment to stop this war through deeds, actions, and words, and then to work toward rebuilding Gaza and healing the wounds of our people.
Oct 08, 2024
When I saw the news of the October 7 events a year ago, I wasn’t surprised. I had spent the past decade writing about and advocating for an end to Gaza’s isolation. I was among the small number of people who consistently warned that if the policies and measures taken by Israel and its allies against Gaza were not addressed, an explosion would be inevitable. It wasn’t a question of if this explosion would happen, but rather a matter of scale, intensity, nature, and direction.
It is impossible to treat the events of the past year as “history” or something that we might reflect on, because the genocide in Gaza continues. Every day, Palestinians in Gaza bury dozens of their relatives and neighbors. Much of the Gaza Strip still lies in ruins. Most of Gaza’s population remains displaced, living in temporary shelters and encampments that continue to be bombed and attacked by Israel.
At the beginning of this war, I was somewhat hopeful that it would stop, that genocide on the scale and intensity we’ve witnessed wouldn’t unfold. I don’t know if this was wishful thinking, given Israel’s brutality and its deep-rooted dehumanization of Palestinians, especially in Gaza. I understood early on that this war, this battle, this confrontation, was bigger than Gaza. It would expand and extend not only beyond the geography of the Palestine question and its century-long conflict with Zionism, but it would also become a battlefield for a clash of values and visions concerning the fate, existence, and collective dignity of the people of the region as a whole.
Do you know what it took to build that hospital? That university? Do you know what it took for someone like Refaat Alareer to become who he was?
It is utterly painful to search for meaning amid such massive loss. I lost friends and mentors. I witnessed the annihilation of Gaza as a place and as a memory. Streets I walked, places where I studied and worked, restaurants and cafés where my friends and I sat, chatted, and claimed brief moments of joy amid years of blockade and repeated aggressions—all gone. As a student of history, I used to marvel at places in Gaza that stood as evidence of the continuation of human existence and civilization for thousands of years, representing the diversity, richness, and transformations of a country and its people. I saw these structures, with all the deep meanings they carried, destroyed, bombed, and flattened by Israel’s bombs.
The scale of our loss as Palestinians from Gaza is unfathomable, even for us who come from there. What is especially painful about this loss is that life in Gaza was itself a fight. These semblances of life weren’t easily built; they were fiercely fought for, wrested from the grip of hardship despite the relentless challenges of making life happen in an isolated, impoverished, and de-developed place like the Gaza Strip.
Do you know what it took to build that hospital? That university? Do you know what it took for someone like Refaat Alareer to become who he was? It wasn’t easy. Gaza was all about attempts—repeated attempts—in the face of recurring aggression, destruction, and the nuclear-state-sanctioned sadism of “mowing the lawn.” So, when we mourn Gaza, life in Gaza, and those who lived in Gaza, we also think about these attempts at establishing and maintaining life against impossible odds, which makes the loss all the more painful.
Pain was synonymous with life in Gaza, as it continues to be. Most people knew that an explosion on an apocalyptic scale was only a matter of time, because even though they lived day to day, they were always troubled and burdened by the future—not in the long run, but in the immediate term. Questions about water and food security, Gaza’s population density and growth, and of course, the major issues of political exclusion and erasure faced by Palestinians in Gaza. Most importantly, there were constant questions about the future of Gaza amid a larger Palestinian future that was already being destroyed before our eyes.
In a way, there were those in Gaza who “found their answers” and decided to direct that explosion toward Israel, to bring the clash back to its origin, and to put an end to decades of dancing around the truth. After all, the schemes of population and crisis management were never meant to resolve the fundamental clash between Palestinians and Zionism, but to postpone it.
How can one see meaning through piles of corpses and rubble? The search for hope becomes almost shameful. How can you speak of hope if you haven’t experienced sheltering in a school for a year or had to look your children in the eyes, unable to protect them as Israel’s bombs fell around you? How do you make sense of it all when you are consumed by survivor’s guilt, knowing that while you sleep in a bed under a roof, eat a hot meal, and take a warm shower, your friends, neighbors, relatives, and community are deprived of all these things?
The past year has been a daily struggle between all these thoughts and feelings, yet the compass remains: a commitment to stop this war through deeds, actions, and words, and then to work toward rebuilding Gaza and healing the wounds of our people.
I recently had the honor of meeting several genocide survivors—young people who were injured or accompanied their injured relatives outside Gaza. It was my first time meeting people who had experienced the genocide for months and then managed to evacuate. They had different opinions about what had unfolded and what they had experienced, and in their Gazan way, they made sure to share and share, in ways that made me feel like I was finally home—sitting at the barber shop or with my friends in one of the cafés in Gaza City, where people would loudly complain about politics, the economy, and everything else, making sure everyone could hear them.
Meeting these survivors filled me with enough inspiration and determination to work for Gaza for years to come. It was a reminder that the battle for Gaza is far from over. Despite the profound loss Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere are experiencing, they continue to fight for life and dignity. We must aid them in their fight, which began long before this genocide unfolded. It continues today in spite of the ongoing devastation.
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Israel Kills Daughter, Infant Grandson of Slain Palestinian Poet Refaat Alareer
"I have beautiful news for you. I wish I could tell you in person. Do you know you have just become a grandfather?" Shaima Alareer wrote to her slain father before she, her baby, and her husband were killed.
Apr 29, 2024
The daughter, infant grandson, and son-in-law of Refaat Alareer—the renowned Palestinian poet assassinated last year in an Israeli airstrike—were killed Friday in another Israel Defense Forces bombing, this one reportedly targeting a building hosting an international relief charity in Gaza City.
Shaima Alareer, her husband Muhammad Abd al-Aziz Siyam, and their 3-month-old son Abd al-Rahman were killed in the strike on a home where they were sheltering in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, Anadolu Agency reported.
Siyam was an engineer. Alareer was an accomplished illustrator and the eldest daughter of Refaat Alareer—one of Palestine's most famous poets and professors—who was slain in a December 6 Israeli strike on Shejaiya that also killed his brother, sister, and her four children.
A month before his killing, Alareer posted his now-famous poem, "If I Must Die," on social media. The poem was written for Shaima.
"I want my children to plan, rather than worry about, their future, and to draw beaches or fields or blue skies and a sun in the corner, not warships, pillars of smoke, warplanes, and guns," Refaat Alareer explained a decade ago.
After giving birth, Shaima Alareer wrote to her slain father: "I have beautiful news for you. I wish I could tell you in person. Do you know you have just become a grandfather? Yes, dad. This is your first grandchild. He's more than a month old now. This is your grandchild Abdul Rahman whom I always imagined you would carry. I never imagined I'd lose you so soon before you got to meet him."
The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor found that the strike that killed Refaat Alareer and his relatives was "apparently deliberate" and followed "weeks of death threats" that came after Alareer—co-founder of the Palestinian writers' group We Are Not Numbers—called the Hamas-led October 7 attacks on Israel "legitimate" and mocked uncorroborated reports that Hamas militants baked an Israeli infant in an oven.
Friday's strike came amid relentless Israel attacks on Gaza by air, land, and sea, including a bombing of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza that killed at least 15 people on Saturday. Monday airstrikes targeting three homes killed at least 20 people including numerous children in the southern city of Rafah—where around 1.5 million Palestinians, most of them refugees forced from other parts of Gaza, are bracing for an expected full-scale Israeli invasion.
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'If I Must Die, Let It Be a Tale': On the Martyrdom of Palestinian Poet Refaat Alareer
The state of Israel has killed our storytellers in Gaza with the hope that the stories will die with them. But they will not.
Dec 15, 2023
What is taking place in Gaza is meant for the history books: an epic tale of a small nation under a long, brutal siege for many years, facing one of the greatest military powers in the world. And yet, it refuses to be defeated.
Not even the legendary tenacity of Leo Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ characters can be compared to the heroism of Gazans, living over a tiny stretch of land while subsisting on the precipice of calamity, even long before the Israeli genocide.
But if Gaza has already been declared uninhabitable by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) as early as 2020, how is it able to cope with everything that took place since then, particularly the grueling and unprecedented Israeli war, starting on October 7?
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on October 9. In fact, Israel carried out far greater war crimes than the choking of 2.3 million people.
“No place is safe, not even hospitals and schools,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on X on November 11. Things have become far worse since that statement was made.
And, because Gazans refused to leave their homeland, the 365 sq kilometers—approx. 141 square miles—turned into a hunting ground of human beings, who were killed in every way imaginable. Those who did not die under the rubble of their homes or were gunned down by attack helicopters while attempting to escape from one region to another, are now dying from disease and hunger.
Not a single category of Palestinians has been spared this horrible fate: the children, the women, the educators, the doctors and medics, the rescuers, even the artists and the poets. Each one of these groups has an ever-growing list of names, updated daily.
Fully aware of the extent of its war crimes in Gaza, Israel has systematically targeted Gaza’s storytellers - its journalists and their families, the bloggers, the intellectuals and even the social media influencers.
While Palestinians insist that their collective pain—and resistance—must be televised, Israel is doing everything in its power to eliminate the storytellers.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said in a statement on December 6 that 75 Palestinian Journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel since the beginning of the war.
The above number does not include many citizen journalists and writers who do not necessarily operate in an official capacity. It also does not include members of their families, like the family of journalist Wael al-Dahdouh or the family of Moamen Al Sharafi.
Aware that their intellectuals are targets for Israel, Gazans have, for years, attempted to produce yet more storytellers. In 2015, a group of young journalists and students formed a group they called ‘We Are Not Numbers.’ “We Are Not Numbers tells the stories behind the numbers of Palestinians in the news and advocates for their human rights,” WANN described itself.
A co-founder of the group, Professor Refaat Alareer, is a beloved Palestinian educator from Gaza. A young intellectual, whose brilliance is only matched by his kindness, Alareer believed that the story of Palestine, Gaza in particular, should be told by the Palestinians themselves, whose relationship to the Palestinian discourse cannot be marginal.
“As Gaza keeps gasping for life, we struggle for it to pass, we have no choice but to fight back and tell her stories. For Palestine,” Alareer wrote in his contribution in the volume ‘Light in Gaza: Writing Born of Fire.’
He edited several books—including ‘Gaza Writes Back’ and ‘Gaza Unsilenced’—which also allowed him to take the message of other Palestinian intellectuals in Gaza to the rest of the world.
“Sometimes a homeland becomes a tale. We love the story because it is about our homeland and we love our homeland even more because of the story,” he wrote in ‘Gaza Writes Back.’
Alareer reportedly refused to leave northern Gaza, even after Israel had managed to isolate it from the rest of the Strip, subjecting it to countless massacres.
As if aware of the fate awaiting him, Alareer tweeted this line, along with a poem he had penned: “If I must die, let it be a tale.”
On December 7, the writers’ collective, We Are Not Numbers, declared that their beloved founder, Refaat Alareer, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza.
Alareer was not the only member of the collective who was killed by Israel. On October 14, Yousef Dawas and on November 24, Mohammed Zaher Hammo, were killed, with members of their families, in Israeli strikes on various parts of the Gaza Strip.
In one of the workshops I did with the group, prior to the war, Yousef Dawas stood out, and not only because of his unusually long hair, but because of his clever and pointed questions.
He wanted to tell the stories of ordinary Gazans, so that other ordinary people around the world can appreciate the everyday struggle of the Palestinian people, their righteous quest for justice and their hope for a better future.
These storytellers were all killed by Israel, with the hope that the stories will die with them. But Israel will fail because the collective story is bigger than all of us. A nation that has produced the likes of Ghassan Kanafani, Basil al-Araj, and Refaat Alareer will always produce great intellectuals, who will serve the historic role of telling the story of Palestine and her liberation.
This is the last poem shared by Alareer.
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up
above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.
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Israeli Forces Raid Freedom Theatre in West Bank and Arrest Artists
The attack on the internationally renowned cultural center came as Israeli occupation forces stepped up raids on the Jenin Refugee camp in recent days, killing a dozen Palestinians and abducting scores more.
Dec 14, 2023
In what critics are calling part of an effort to destroy Palestinian culture, Israeli forces on Wednesday raided the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp in the illegally occupied West Bank and subsequently kidnapped three of the renowned playhouse's staff members.
Freedom Theatre associate director Zoey Lafferty wrote for The New Arab that Israeli occupation forces ransacked the internationally renowned cultural center shortly after 9:00 a.m. local time Wednesday. Lafferty said Israeli troops tore apart the theater's office and knocked down a wall, firing weapons from inside the building.
Israeli troops then went to the homes of artistic director Ahmed Tobasi and producer Mustafa Sheta and blindfolded, handcuffed, and abducted them. Hours later, they also kidnapped and "severely beat" Jamal Abu Joas, a recently graduated acting student.
"For decades, Palestinian artists have been arbitrarily detained by Israel, sometimes for years, who also target and destroy cultural buildings, a war crime under international law."
Tobasi, who says he was also beaten by his captors, was later released.
"They treated us like animals," he said in a statement following his release. "They are trying to hurt us in any way they can, but it's important we stay strong."
Rasha Seta, Mustafa's wife, said that her husband "was handcuffed and taken in front of our children with no mercy or any consideration to our feelings."
"My children spent their night crying," she added. "We felt so scared without him being around with us. We feel very sad for him being away, especially since we don't know why he was arrested. We call for everyone who can help us to stand with my husband and release him from this occupation."
The raid and arrests follow Israeli forces' killing of three members of Freedom Theatre in recent weeks: 17-year-old Yamen Jarrar, 26-year-old Jehad Naghniyeh, and 30-year-old Mohammed Matahen. In June, occupation forces killed youth theater participants Sadeel Naghnaghia, age 15, and Mahmoud Al-Sadi, who was 17 years old.
"For decades, Palestinian artists have been arbitrarily detained by Israel, sometimes for years, who also target and destroy cultural buildings, a war crime under international law," Freedom Theatre said on Thursday. "In the last few weeks in Gaza, an unprecedented number of writers, poets, theatermakers, and journalists have been killed, including Dr. Refaat Alareer, who was deliberately targeted and murdered."
According to Gaza officials, nearly 19,000 Palestinians—most of them women and children—have been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets since October 7, when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel and killed over 1,100 Israelis and others while taking around 240 people hostage. Upward of 1.9 million Gazans—or nearly 90% of the besieged strip's population—have been forcibly displaced. Many critics around the world have accused Israel of perpetrating genocide in Gaza.
The Freedom Theatre stages professional theatre productions; holds theater workshops in the refugee camp, Jenin town, and nearby villages; offers training in acting, pedagogy, and photography; and publishes books, exhibitions, and short films.
"Since we opened our doors in 2006, we have made theater and visual art available to every young person in Jenin refugee camp," the theater's website explains. "Our work has made Jenin refugee camp known in Palestine and internationally for innovative, thought-provoking theater and media productions. We have created a generation of artists and leaders, who one day will be at the forefront of the Palestinian liberation movement."
The Israeli raid and arrests came as occupation forces killed at least a dozen Palestinians in the West Bank during three days of raids on the Jenin refugee camp, which was built in 1953 to house some of the more than 750,000 Arabs ethnically cleansed from other parts of Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel.
Today, around 15,000 Palestinians call the camp home. Jenin has been repeatedly invaded before and during Israel's current war on Gaza due to its residents' robust resistance to Israeli occupation, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and settler colonization. Last month, an Israeli attack on the camp killed two children—one of them just 8 or 9 years old.
This was already the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the Second Intifada, or general uprising, a generation ago. Since October 7, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed around 280 Palestinians in the territories, with thousands more wounded and close to 4,000 people kidnapped.
"As the genocide continues in Gaza and invasions in Jenin camp happen daily, it is hard to find the line between devastation and hope, loss and defiance, reality and optimism," Lafferty wrote. "What is clear is that Palestinians have managed to unite those around the world of different ages, backgrounds, cultures, and religions, to not only stand up for Palestinian rights and voices, but also our own."
"Through words and creativity, resilience and resistance, Palestinians have taught us how we can build a global Intifada," she added.
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'Huge Loss' as Gaza Luminary Refaat Alareer 'Assassinated' by Israel
"Refaat Alareer embraced everything good and pure about Gaza and Palestine," said one friend. "He will not be forgotten and his legacy will live on for many generations to come."
Dec 07, 2023
Human rights defenders around the world expressed anguish and outrage Thursday after Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian professor who was one of Gaza's most prominent writers and activists, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Shejaiya that also killed his brother, sister, and her four children.
Alareer, 44, was "a beloved professor of world literature, comparative literature, Shakespeare, and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he taught since 2007," Literary Hub noted.
According to the publication:
He was the co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced (2015) and the editor of Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine (2014). Dr. Alareer was also one of the founders of We Are Not Numbers, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating "a new generation of Palestinian writers and thinkers who can bring together a profound change to the Palestinian cause."
Through his popular Twitter account, " Refaat in Gaza," Dr. Alareer documented, and forcefully condemned, the ongoing atrocities committed against his people by Israeli forces, as well as the U.S. administrations that have enabled them.
Alareer's friend and We Are Not Numbers co-founder Ahmed Alnaouq wrote on social media: "[Refaat] authored many books and wrote tens of stories about Gaza. Refaat's assassination is tragic, painful, and outrageous. It is a huge loss."
A groundswell of tributes to Alareer flooded social media following the news of his killing.
Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha
said, "Breaking, my heart is broken, my friend and colleague Refaat Alareer was killed with his family minutes ago."
"I don't want to believe this," he added. "We both loved to pick strawberries together. I took this photo of him this summer."
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)—Quaker peace group whose Light In Gaza anthology featured Alareer's work—said in a statement that "Refaat was a friend, a mentor, and a father."
"He built up those around him, helping them envision a different future and encouraging them to speak up for their rights," AFSC added. "His impact will be felt for generations to come."
Palestinian journalist Hebh Jamal
wrote: "You killed my friend. Someone I kept praying would stay safe. Someone I messaged daily [because] his resilience gave me hope."
"He laughed in the face of the genocidal maniacs every day he stayed alive never allowing them to think he was afraid," she added. "You killed him. You killed Refaat Alareer."
Canadian author and activist Naomi Kleinsaid she is "absolutely sickened by this loss."
"I was just now on his site reading his beautiful poetry," she added. "I feel such shame."
The Chicago-based website
The Electronic Intifada said on social media it is "devastated by Israel's murder of our dear colleague, friend, and mentor."
"Throughout this genocide, Refaat never stopped writing, supporting his students, and bringing Gaza's voice to the world," the site added. "We will make sure it continues to be heard."
Journalist and filmmaker Dan Cohen
wrote that "I'm in tears and sick to my stomach as I write this."
"Refaat was a guiding light as I documented life and death for my documentary,
Killing Gaza," he continued. "He helped me gain access to elders in his neighborhood who provided testimony of shocking Israeli war crimes."
"Refaat Alareer embraced everything good and pure about Gaza and Palestine," Cohen added. "He will not be forgotten and his legacy will live on for many generations to come."
Some believe Alareer was targeted for assassination because of his social media posts supporting Palestinian resistance and mocking uncorroborated reports that Hamas militants baked an Israeli infant in an oven during the October 7 attacks.
"With or without baking powder?" he asked.
Last month, Alareer posted one of his poems, "If I Must Die," on social media:
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.
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