Only justice for Palestinians will honour Refaat Alareer
JVL Introduction
Just over a year after the murder of poet and teacher, husband and father Refaat Aleerer, this piece is one of many that reminds us of who he was and what he stood for. It is also a review of a collection of his poems and prose published posthumously. He believed in the importance and power of storytelling and throughout the years covered in this new anthology, he had hoped that telling the stories from Gaza, telling the truth about what was happening would help the horrors to end and yet he wondered whether Palestinian lives matter at all.
Fourteen months on from October 7th 2023 and one year after Aleerer’s murder his 2011 poem for his daughter, also killed some months later the reality is that his “If I must die” became: Refaat is dead, along with at least 45,000 others; and we must live.
LL
This article was originally published by The Guardian on Tue 10 Dec 2024. Read the original here.
‘How many dead Palestinians are enough?’ The unbearable prescience of the late poet Refaat Alareer
The author and academic was killed in an Israeli airstrike a year ago. A posthumous collection of his work, If I Must Die, tells the stories of Gaza in a plea for change
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I’m hardly surprised that there are no comments two days after this article was published. What is there left to say? Words fail. This beautiful soul will never die. Refaat, we promise to be your voice.