Refaat Alareer, a poet from Palestine who was leading a new wave of Gaza writers telling their stories in English, was slain in an Israeli attack overnight on Thursday, according to his friends.
“My heart is broken, my friend and colleague Refaat Alareer was killed with his family a few minutes ago,” his friend Mosab Abu Toha, a poet from Gaza, posted on Instagram.
“I’d prefer not to accept this. Together, we cherished picking strawberries.”
According to Hamas officials, Israel carried out further raids in the northern part of the Gaza Strip on Thursday night.
A few days after Israel launched its ground attack in October, Alareer declared that he would not abandon northern Gaza, which was the center of fighting at the time.
“It is awful, horrible, and disgusting that Refaat was assassinated. On X, his friend Ahmed Alnaouq remarked, “It is a huge loss.”
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Rest in peace, Refaat Alareer, was written by author and journalist Ramzy Baroud on X, and he was also honored by the Literary Hub website. Your knowledge will continue to guide us both now and forever.”
Alareer was one of the co-founders of the “We are not numbers” project, which pairs writers from Gaza with mentors abroad to help them write stories in English about their experiences. Alareer teaches English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he teaches Shakespeare among other things.
The project released “Gaza Unsilenced” and curated the book “Gaza Writes Back,” which has memoirs from young Palestinian writers about life in Gaza.
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Following an attack by Hamas on October 7, in which some 1,200 people were murdered, predominantly civilians, Israeli authorities began a massive military campaign in Gaza.
According to the health ministry administered by Hamas, over 17,100 people, largely civilians, have died as a result of Israel’s ceaseless shelling that has reached every corner of Palestinian land.
Tens of thousands of people shared a poem by Alareer titled “If I must die” on X that was released in November. “If I must die, let it bring hope, let it be a tale” is how it ends.
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