The Electronic Intifada Podcast 12 December 2023
Refaat was murdered by an Israeli airstrike on 6 December.
He was a father, a husband, a brother, a writer, a poet, a mentor and a friend. He was a professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza. He was, as he liked to say often, the son of Shujaiya, his hometown in Gaza City.
We invited a group of Refaat’s friends and former students on the broadcast to tell stories about him, read his poetry and talk about his universal and lasting impact.Many of our current contributors in Gaza are former students of Refaat Alareer, and a few of them sent video messages which we played during the livestream.
We also played clips from some of Refaat’s many lectures and from a TedX talk he gave in Shujaiya in 2015, on the power of storytelling.
An animation of Refaat’s poem “If I Must Die,” created by artist Maya Amer, was also highlighted in the broadcast.
That poem has now been translated into hundreds of languages around the world. Watch the entire broadcast above or listen via Soundcloud below.
