The Markaz Review:

On December 6, Palestinian poet, storyteller and professor Refaat Alareer was assassinated in Gaza by a “surgical” strike aimed precisely at the floor of the small building where he and his sister’s family had taken refuge. Seven other people, including four children, were also killed in the bombing, and three others wounded. In tribute to this leading intellectual figure from Gaza, we publish a text by one of his former students. Refaat’s spirit and his love for words continues to live on…

Refaat said for Palestinians to keep their memory and cause alive, they have to carry on telling their side of the story.

Yousef M. Al Jamal

It is hard to write about Refaat Alareer, the person who instilled in me and so many other young people in Gaza a love of the written word.

Now that I find myself writing this farewell article for him, I am lost for words. Oddly, I don’t feel he’s gone. It’s hard to believe that he’s just a memory now, hard to accept that he’ll never again show up in his classroom, share his wit and the humor for which he was famous.

Among those of us who came to know him over the years, Refaat is immortal — he’s an idea, and ideas don’t die. Refaat is a word and a story, Refaat is a pen and a pun. Refaat is our poet, storyteller and mentor.

Born in 1979, the son of Al Shujaiya neighborhood in Gaza city — he loved to introduce himself in this way — Refaat has been an inspiration to a whole generation of Palestinians who came of age under siege in Gaza, youth he guided and supported to become storytellers.

Go to link