Renowned Palestinian writer Refaat Alareer was Reem Hamadaqa’s professor and close mentor. She writes of his posthumous book If I Must Die, “Alareer’s poems embody the essence of resistance, grief, steadfastness—sumud—and storytelling as survival.”
Out from under the rubble, I see my martyrs waving for me. They all stand again. They smile. They live. They go back home.
It has been ten months since I lost my mentor and dear friend, Refaat Alareer. If he were still living, he would be taking care of us. Because I am still living I need to tell his story.
The student uprisings against Israeli genocide are a stunning new force in U.S., representing a mass movement that demands that our politicians cease to sideline Palestinian human rights. “Edward Said once said, ‘thank God for the students.’ I just want to echo those words from this tortured place,” Susan Abulhawa said from Gaza.
I have finally realized that the lessons Dr. Refaat taught me and the power of his words keep him alive. As long as I breathe, I will tell his stories and the endless stories of my occupied and silenced city.
Egyptian border officials are charging Palestinians in Gaza thousands of dollars to escape death in Gaza. And even those who manage to raise the exorbitant price through GoFundMe campaigns have not been let through for months.
Students and faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center remember and honor Dr. Refaat Alareer.
The Jewish establishment has been consigned to the support of genocide, and it has accepted that role eagerly. The effect on Judaism of this moral collapse is unfathomable.
Refaat harbored a profound aspiration — to change his world through teaching poetry, literature, and writing. That writing is a responsibility to ourselves and the world, that Gaza “writes back” as much as it fights back.
The US press is finally making room for Palestinian voices, with a stunning op-ed by Refaat Alareer in the NYT about how it feels to be pounded by missiles in Gaza. And Rula Jebreal tells MSNBC that Palestinians inside Israel experience “Trumpism on steroids.” But Israel supporters fight back, with Bari Weiss saying that killing innocent children is the price of having a state.