Refaat Alareer
رفعت العرير
1979–2023
Gaza City, Gaza
Professor, editor, and poet of Gaza, Alareer taught a generation of young writers to write back — and left behind a poem asking to be remembered.
Refaat Alareer was born in 1979 in Gaza City’s Shuja’iyya neighborhood. A professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, he taught literature and creative writing and became a mentor to a generation of young Palestinian writers determined to tell their own stories in English. He edited Gaza Writes Back (2014), an anthology of short stories by young writers in Gaza, and co-edited Gaza Unsilenced (2015) with Laila El-Haddad.
Alareer was killed by an Israeli airstrike on 6 December 2023, in Shuja’iyya, along with members of his family. After his death, his poem “If I Must Die” — written in 2011 — was shared around the world and translated into dozens of languages, its closing plea repeated as a testament: “If I must die, / let it bring hope, / let it be a tale.”
Selected works
- “If I Must Die” (2011)
- Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza (editor, 2014)
- Gaza Unsilenced (co-editor with Laila El-Haddad, 2015)
Sources
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Explore selected poems, essays, and biographical material on the linked source.
Explore Refaat Alareer