Today I learned that Dr. Refaat Alareer, along with his brother, sister, and her four children, were targeted and murdered in an Israeli airstrike. Refaat was a translator, academic, and writer who also reported on life in Gaza. These last two months I got to “know” him on Twitter/X as he shared specific details of the violence and horrors inflicted upon Gazans. Despite the death and destruction, he was funny and hopeful. He struck me as a human being comfortable in his own skin.
At the end of October, I posted a glimpse into LIGHT IN GAZA, an anthology of Palestinian writers and artists sharing their lived experiences under military occupation. But it wasn’t until today that I made the connection that the Refaat from social media was the same man with an essay in LIGHT IN GAZA. Refaat wrote “Gaza Asks: When Shall This Pass?” (Note: You may download the anthology for free from Haymarket Books). I highly recommend reading the entire piece yourself in order to better understand the gift that Refaat was to this world.
In “Gaza Asks,” he shared memories of the random violence he experienced over the years, along with that of friends and family members, and how in each instance they comforted themselves with “It shall pass.” When Refaat was older, teaching world literature and creative writing at the Islamic University in Gaza (IUG), he told stories to his three children to distract them from the twenty-three-day onslaught by Israel’s military (Operation Cast Lead). He told stories as bombs and missiles exploded in the background. Refaat wrote “As a Palestinian, I have been brought up on stories and storytelling. It’s both selfish and treacherous to keep a story to yourself–stories are meant to be told and retold. If I kept a story to myself, I would be betraying my legacy, my mother, my grandmother, and my homeland.” He went on to say “Telling stories was my way of resisting. It was all I could do. And it was then I decided that if I lived, I would dedicate much of my life to telling the stories of Palestine, empowering Palestinian narratives, and nurturing younger voices.”
When that particular onslaught ended, Refaat returned to the classroom where he told his students “Writing is a testimony, a memory that outlives any human experience, and an obligation to communicate with ourselves and the world. We lived for a reason, to tell the tales of loss, of survival, and of hope.” He began assigning and training his students to write short stories based on their realities. Those stories were collected and edited by Refaat and published as GAZA WRITES BACK.
But that wasn’t all Refaat did in the classroom. As so succinctly expressed by his friend Dan Cohen, Refaat “used English-language literature and poetry to teach his students the difference between Judaism and Zionism, equipping them with the mental tools to resist Zionist propaganda that seeks to conflate the two.” You can read more about those classroom experiences in “Gaza Asks.”
Later in the essay, in regards to Israel later destroying the administration building at IUG, Refaat wrote “. . . to me, IUG’s only danger to the Israeli occupation and its apartheid regime is that it is the most important place in Gaza to develop students’ minds as indestructible weapons. Knowledge is Israel’s worst enemy. Awareness is Israel’s most hated and feared foe. That’s why Israel bombs a university: it wants to kill openness and determination to refuse living under injustice and racism.”
I’ll stop there because I can’t do justice to the eloquence of Refaat’s essay, and I hope you’ll forgive me for already revealing so much. It’s just that this entire essay touched my heart and I felt compelled to share.
I do want to highlight this poem that follows his essay in LIGHT IN GAZA. Refaat also posted the poem on his Instagram account one week ago:
I’ll end with this poem he’d pinned at the top of his Twitter/X account on November 1: “If I must die, let it be a tale.”
Rest in power and peace, Dr. Refaat Alareer.
Tracy Abell 