Refaat Alareer, Gaza’s chronicler

Eight-year-old Linah was sitting in front of the television screen in the family’s living room alongside her parents and five siblings. Together, they watched the live broadcast of the Israeli army demolishing the al-Jawharah tower in Gaza during Israel’s offensive on the coastal enclave on May 12, 2021.

The little girl hesitantly asked if “they can destroy our building if the power was out?”

Her father 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 he couldn’t tell her any of this, so he lied. “No, sweetie. They can’t see us in the dark.”

This seemingly ordinary scene unfolded in a typical Gaza family, yet the storyteller behind it was anything but ordinary.

These words were written by Refaat Alareer in the pages of The New York Times on May 13, 2021.

He was a father, poet, and an English literature professor.

Two years later, Israel broke Alareer’s pen.

He was killed in the early evening of Dec. 6 in an “apparently deliberate” Israeli strike, according to the NGO Euro-Med Monitor. The attack targeted the second floor of a building, which housed the flat of his sister — his refuge after facing threats.

Alareer allegedly received an anonymous phone call from an individual claiming to be an Israeli officer. The caller said that he knew which school Akareer was staying in, and that he would be visiting him there.

Tragically, Alareer’s brother, sister, and four nephews were also killed in the attack on the building where he was staying.

Despite the destruction of his own apartment on Oct. 22 and the persisting conflict, the Palestinian poet remained resolute, refusing to evacuate northern Gaza. His determination was rooted in the commitment to bear witness to the ongoing tragedy at any personal cost.

“There’s no way out, there’s no water, what are we supposed to do? Drown? Commit mass suicide, is that what Israel wants?” Alareer said tearfully during a video conference with the American pro-Palestinian online media Electronic Intifada.

Since the announcement of his death last week, tributes and readings of his writings made the rounds on social networks and in the streets of Ramallah, London, New York and Chicago.

In addition to his own family, the “Gaza storyteller” leaves behind hundreds of current and former students, colleagues and friends, orphaned in the enclave and around the world.

In a premonitory poem published on Nov. 1 via X, which has since gone viral and been translated into a dozen languages, Alareer wrote: “If I must die, you must live, to tell my story (...) If I must die, let it bring hope, let it be a tale.”

‘Brought up on storytelling’

Alareer’s life was marred by tragedies, of which he spoke little, but which he recounted in short stories and poems.

His tragic destiny is no exception in Gaza.

“My wife and I are an average Palestinian couple. Between us, we have lost more than 30 relatives,”Alareer would often say with a hint of sarcasm.

He was born in 1979 in Shujaiyya, in the Gaza Strip.

At the age of six, he first experienced the inherent violence of being a Palestinian living in Gaza. While traveling to Nahal Oz, a kibbutz near the coastal enclave, his father was wounded by Israeli gunfire.

“Every action and decision I have taken has been influenced (generally negatively) by the occupation,” Alareer told the Kurdish media outlet ANFnews in a 2018 interview.

The years that followed were similar, marked by episodes of stone-throwing at Israeli soldiers’ jeeps, with only kites and a handful of books as distractions from the ongoing violence.

However, more significantly, these were years filled with the captivating stories of his grandmother, Kamla, to whom he devoutly listened. They were also years marked by humiliation, beatings, and rubber bullets fired at his childhood frame.

The trajectory of his life took a poignant turn with the death of his brother, Mohammad, an actor who was killed in an Israeli shell in 2014.

These profound tragedies became defining moments, shaping his journey toward the realm of English literature.

Alareer’s purpose was to narrate the sufferings of his compatriots to as many people as possible.

“As a Palestinian, I have been brought up on history and storytelling,” he wrote in his book, “Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire.” “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.”

Alareer delved wholeheartedly into his academic pursuits. He attended the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG), earning a BA in English in 2001. Subsequently, he pursued an MA at University College London in 2007.

Upon his return to Gaza following his time in Britain, Alareer reengaged with the IUG, this time as an educator.

“He was an extremely bright and lively person,” said Youssef al-Jamal, a former student of Alareer. “He did everything to awaken our consciences and make us love literature, while at the same time giving us a political conscience.”

Under his guidance, his young students discovered Shakespeare — whom he revered — and Edgard Allan Poe, as well as John Dunn and Malcolm X. He introduced them to Edward Said and poet Tamim Barghouti. He made it a point of honor to pay tribute to Palestinian women intellectuals, and some of his pupils say that they discovered feminism through him.

‘I am you’

Confronted daily with an Israeli narrative that dehumanizes Palestinians, Alareer was not content to resist with his own stories but decided to “nourish the voices of the youngest,” by encouraging his students to write down their traumas, their life under occupation, the only inextinguishable traces of their existence.

These collaborations gave rise to two books: Gaza Writes Back (2013), which includes 23 stories by young adults, most of whom have never crossed the enclave’s walls, and Gaza Unsilenced (2015) following the 2014 war.

In 2015, Alareer established “We Are Not Numbers,” a mentoring program that connects writers from Gaza with foreign authors.

When he finally secured the required authorization to leave the territory, after several refusals, he carried with him the stories of Gaza, which he presented to British and American audiences.

Jamal, who also contributed to Gaza Writes Back and accompanied him to the US in 2014, recalled the journey with amusement: “I remember him saying that it was the first time he had met a Jew who wasn’t pointing a gun at him.”

Through his mentor, Jamal discovered Jewish authors at university, notably the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai.

“He wanted us to distinguish human characters from those we are not far removed from, but also to understand the psyche of the Zionists,”Jamal said. “Since his passing, his poem “I am you,” addressed to Israeli soldiers, has been recited around the world: ‘I am you. I am your past. And by killing me, you kill you.’”

Since his death, pro-Israeli internet users have been uncovering some of his tweets and statements, which they deem “problematic.” For instance, in an interview with BBC after the Oct.7 Hamas attack, Alareer characterized it as “legitimate and moral,” drawing a comparison to the “Warsaw Ghetto uprising.”

“In one of our last exchanges, I told him that, in my time in Gaza, I felt as though I were documenting the Warsaw Ghetto before its liquidation by Nazis,” wrote American journalist and filmmaker Dan Cohen, who met Alareer in Gaza in 2015, in a tribute on Dec. 8 via X.

On Oct. 29, an Israeli journalist quoted Eli Beer, founder and director of United Hatzalah of Israel, an emergency relief organization, that an Israeli baby’s body was found in an oven, cooked to death by Hamas terrorists. In response, Alareer quipped, “With or without baking powder?” This led to a barrage of insults and death threats, with some internet users urging the Israeli army to “take action.”

“He has always used black humor,” said Jamal. “It was his way of dismantling a piece of Israeli propaganda and fake news.”

“If I have to die, you have to live to tell my story.” Duly noted.

This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour. Translation by Sahar Goussoub.