Refaat Alareer

Refaat Alareer (رفعت العرعير; 23 September 1979 – 6 December 2023) was a Palestinian writer, poet, professor, and activist from the Gaza Strip.

Alareer was born in Gaza City in 1979 during the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, which he said had negatively influenced every move and decision he made. Alareer earned a BA in English in 2001 from the Islamic University of Gaza and an MA from University College London in 2007. He earned a PhD in English Literature at the Universiti Putra Malaysia in 2017 with a dissertation on John Donne.

He taught literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza and co-founded the organization We Are Not Numbers, which matched experienced authors with young writers in Gaza, and promoted the power of storytelling as a means of Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation.

On 6 December 2023, Alareer was killed by an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza, along with his brother, sister, and four of his nephews, during the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. The Euro-Med Monitor released a statement saying that Alareer was apparently deliberately targeted, "surgically bombed out of the entire building", and came after weeks of "death threats that Refaat received online and by phone from Israeli accounts." On 26 April 2024, his eldest daughter and his newborn grandchild were killed by an Israeli airstrike on their Gaza City home.

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."

Alareer earned a BA in English in 2001 from the Islamic University of Gaza and an MA from University College London in 2007. He earned a Ph.D. in English Literature at the Universiti Putra Malaysia in 2017 with a dissertation entitled "Unframing John Donne's Transgressive Poetry in Light of Bakhtin's Dialogic Theories."

Career
Alareer edited two volumes of Palestinian short stories, Gaza Writes Back (2014) and Gaza Unsilenced (2015). In an interview, he stated: "Gaza Writes Back was an attempt to provide a testimony for future generations." In 2007, Alareer became a professor at Islamic University in Gaza, where he taught world literature and creative writing, with a focus on Shakespeare. This included the work of Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, which he called beautiful but dangerous. He co-founded the organization We Are Not Numbers, 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: On Tuesday, Linah asked her question again after my wife and I didn’t answer it the first time: Can they destroy our building if the power is out? I wanted to say: “Yes, little Linah, Israel can still destroy the beautiful al-Jawharah building, or any of our buildings, even in the darkness. Each of our homes is full of tales and stories that must be told. Our homes annoy the Israeli war machine, mock it, haunt it, even in the darkness. It can’t abide their existence. And, with American tax dollars and international immunity, Israel presumably will go on destroying our buildings until there is nothing left.”

But I can’t tell Linah any of this. So I lie: “No, sweetie. They can’t see us in the dark.”

During the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, Alareer made media appearances on the BBC, Democracy Now!, and ABC News. In the immediate aftermath of the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, 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 The New York Times, wrote that Alareer's critical remarks about Israel drew accusations in Israel as being potentially 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. This backlash included an online harassment campaign from Bari Weiss which led Alareer to tweet, "If I get killed by Israeli bombs or my family is harmed, I blame Bari Weiss and her likes." 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 Strip to study and teach abroad.

Personal life
Alareer and his wife had six children. His brother, Hamada, 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. In total, Israel killed more than 30 relatives of Alareer and his wife. During the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, Alareer wrote an op-ed in The New York Times describing the effects on his children. He was a Gaza Zoo volunteer, which he continued during the 2023 war.

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:

"I have a beautiful news for you, I wish I could convey it to you while you are in front of me, I present to you your first grandchild. Do you know, my father, that you have become a grandfather? This is your grandson Abd al-Rahman whom I have long imagined you carrying, but I never imagined that I would lose you early even before you see him."

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 2023 Israel–Hamas 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.

Euro-Med Monitor released a statement saying that it appeared that Alareer was deliberately targeted, saying that the apartment he was in with his family was "surgically bombed out of the entire building where it's located, according to corroborated eyewitness and family accounts. This came after weeks of death threats that Alareer received online and by phone from Israeli accounts." 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.

In his last interview before being killed, with the sound of Israeli bombs exploding in the background, Alareer said that Gazans felt helpless and that, while he had no weapons, he would defend himself if the Israeli army were to come to his house: I am an academic. Probably the toughest thing I have at home is an Expo marker. But if the Israelis invade, if they barge at us, charge at us open door-to-door to massacre us, I am going to use that marker to throw it at the Israeli soldiers, even if that is the last thing that I would be able to do. And this is the feeling of everybody. We are helpless. We have nothing to lose.

"If I must die"
Alareer's final poem, "If I must die", was widely circulated after his killing and was translated into more than 40 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 photos.

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." Najwan Darwish told The Guardian that Alareer had been "an influential voice," adding: "We didn't just lose Alareer, but we lost his poetry; it's all underneath the rubble, all the future poetry he would have written. And all these artists who have been killed … what's happened to their art?"

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".