“If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story”
How do you tell the story of Refaat Alareer? For the friends of Refaat Alareer—husband, father of six, university professor, writer and mentor to hundreds, assassinated by Israel barely two months into the Gaza genocide—the answer was obvious: by publishing his work in book form. The outcome of those efforts was the Memorial Edition of an anthology of student writing that he edited ten years ago, Gaza Writes Back; and If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose, a collection of Alareer’s work since 2011. The latter instantly sold out, with the initial print run of 7,500 unable to match the more than 20,000 orders placed, an astonishing figure for a work of nonfiction.

Alareer wrote that the age of Gaza’s children could be measured by the wars they lived through. A child born in 2007, for example, was four wars old by age 14. Alareer’s age at the time of his assassination, 44, could be measured in terms of two multiyear intifadas, four wars, the Great March of Return, and the two-month opening salvos of genocide. For his first grandchild, born a few months after his assassination, life could be measured in terms of the days of genocide he experienced—about 60; he was killed with his parents in what Ali Abunimah, in the introduction to Gaza Writes Back, described as a deliberate attack on the family. The baby’s mother was the child tasked by Alareer to tell his story in the poem “If I Must Die,” written in 2011 and translated into more than three dozen languages after his death. The task now falls to others, his friends and students, who are determined to keep his legacy alive.
It is remarkable to consider how much Alareer accomplished in a relatively short time despite formidable obstacles. This son of Gaza City’s Shujaiyya neighborhood, an area famous for its resistance, was able to extend his voice beyond the Gaza Strip, which had been put under siege and blockade for most of his adult life. He did this in part through his own writing and in the stream of students he helped discover their own voices so they could tell their personal and collective stories. Award-winning novelist Susan Abulhawa said this in her introduction to If I Must Die: “His mind was unbreakable and beautiful and fine.”
THE POWER OF STORYTELLING
Alareer believed in the power of stories and the vital necessity of mastering language (specifically, English) sufficiently to tell those stories in an honest and compelling manner. He grew up on the stories of his mother and grandmother, and he in turn entertained his children at night with stories. (His TED Talk on the power of storytelling is worth listening to.) But following October 7, he was unable to continue this practice. In several essays collected in the anthology, he wrote poignantly about the ways in which living in the context of genocide charged his interactions with his children, as normal gestures or words of affection could suddenly be understood as final goodbyes and trigger alarm.
I saw Alareer on one of the Electronic Intifada streams soon after the genocide began. He looked completely despondent, and at the time, I wondered whether he sensed he might not survive this war. Later I learned that he told friends that if he should be killed, it would be because Bari Weiss, former New York Times writer, had sicced the Israelis on him. She took offense at his mocking of one of the October 7 atrocity stories—a really over the top story conjured by the sick minds of Israeli first responders. Her retweeting of his quip launched an avalanche of abuse on him by the goons who follow her. He received death threats online and by phone from Israeli accounts and threatening calls by the Israeli military telling him they knew where he was sheltering—so he might be right that Weiss drew attention to him and identified him for elimination. But then again, he might have been killed just because he was a professor at the Islamic University, as part of Israel’s destruction of the academic sector. Israel targets academics (at least 94 university professors have been killed since October 7), schools and universities with laser focus, just as it targets journalists, medical workers (including hospitals and ambulances)—and children. Always, unfailingly, children.
I think of the impact of anonymous threatening phone calls on a young man trying to protect his family, displaced from place to place in the phantom search for safety in a genocide zone. The unsettling call telling him Israel knew where he was. The last time this happened, he left his family and went in search of safety—or at least, of protecting his children and wife from whatever fate Israel would mete out to him. That gave them a temporary reprieve. But those in his last place of refuge, including his sister, brother and four nieces and nephews, were killed with him.
WRITING AS RESISTANCE
Alareer’s essays described life in the Gaza Strip. He wrote for a Western audience for whom Gaza might have been on another planet. He addressed the challenges of raising children where they are continually traumatized, of living with the loss of loved ones, of navigating life within the constraints placed by the occupier.
Refaat Alareer taught world literature and creative writing at Islamic University. By all accounts he was a fantastic professor. His students came to appreciate literature through his devotion to Shakespeare and the metaphysical poets. (His doctoral thesis, earned from Universiti Putra Malaysia in 2017, was on the poetry of John Donne.) From reading the tributes that poured in after his murder, it is clear he found his calling in the university classroom. He had a real gift for guiding his students to understand the multifaceted nature of characters and the moral dilemmas they faced and for mentoring young adults, for helping them believe in themselves and to find their voices to tell their stories and the stories of Gaza. Ali Abunimah wrote in the introduction to the 2024 edition of Gaza Writes Back: “He had a rare ability to make each and every person he spoke to feel that they were the only person in the world who mattered to him, and to encourage them to push themselves beyond their own boundaries.”
Alareer cofounded an organization, We Are Not Numbers, to help nurture their writing skills. Washington Report readers are the beneficiaries of that project, because the Gaza writers featured in this magazine, issue after issue, have been trained through the program. For as long as they are alive, these writers will help readers around the world see the magic that was the Gaza Strip of their youth, now obliterated by Israeli bombardment. I’ve never met a Palestinian who didn’t feel strongly about Palestine, but the love affair between Gazans and their long-suffering geography is in a different category altogether.
Alareer taught his students that Palestine was a story away, waiting to be told. Gaza Writes Back is a collection of short stories written by his students five years after the 2008-2009 war. It “provides conclusive evidence that telling stories is an act of life, that telling stories is resistance, and that telling stories shapes our memories.” The writers understand that “‘writing back’ to Israel’s long occupation, constant aggressiveness, and Operation Cast Lead is a moral obligation and a duty they are paying back to Palestine and to a bleeding, yet resilient, Gaza.…writing back is an act of resistance and an obligation to humanity.”
If I Must Die ends with voice messages from Alareer that were transcribed after his assassination under the title “On the Resilience of the Palestinian Community.” He talks about the strong sense of community and solidarity among people, their acts of self-sacrifice to help one another. His final message is worth heeding: “As Palestinians, no matter what comes of this, we haven’t failed. We did our best. And we didn’t lose our humanity.”
Ida Audeh is senior editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine.
This article was first published on the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs website on January 22, 2025.