Refaat Alareer (Arabic: رفعت العرعير, romanized: Rifaʿat al-ʿAriʿīr; 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 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.
In December 2024, his final collection of writing, the posthumously published If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose, named after his most famous poem – If I Must Die – became a bestseller.
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."
Alareer edited two volumes in English. One was a collection of Palestinian short stories, Gaza Writes Back (2014), the other, which he co-edited with Laila El-Haddad, was Gaza Unsilenced (2015), an anthology of mainly non-fiction accounts of, and reactions to, Israel's 2014 attack against Gaza. 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. This included engaging with Israeli poetry and depictions of Jews in English literature, with a focus on Shakespeare. He identified his ultimate teaching goal as highlighting parallel experiences of Palestinians and Jews. At the same time, he sought to show that Israel also used literature "as a tool of colonialism and oppression."
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 Gaza war, Alareer made media appearances on the BBC, Democracy Now!, and ABC News. Additionally, he served as a key contact for El País, offering updates about the situation in Gaza. In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attacks, 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 New York Times, wrote that Alareer's critical remarks about Israel drew accusations in Israel of being "virulently anti-Israeli and 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 Gaza Strip to study and teach abroad.
Alareer and his wife had six children. His brother, Mohammed, 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 Gaza 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."