Today marks the second anniversary of the killing of Dr. Refaat Alareer.
Refaat and members of his family were murdered on December 6, 2023, when Israeli occupation air forces carried out an airstrike on his sister’s home in northern Gaza.
He was a Palestinian academic, writer, and poet from the Gaza Strip, often described as a pioneer of English‑language Palestinian literature.
He taught literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza and co‑founded the “We Are Not Numbers” project, which sought to amplify the voices and suffering of Gazans in the aftermath of Israel’s genocide against Gaza.
Some of his words remain etched in memory:
“If I must die, then you must live to tell my story, to sell my belongings and buy a piece of cloth and some string, making it white with a long tail so that a child, somewhere in Gaza, seeing the kite, my kite, that you made fly high, may believe for a moment that it is an angel returning to him with love. If I am destined to die, let my death bring hope. Let my death become a tale.”