“We are grief-striken and enraged to hear that Israel has killed beloved Palestinian professor, writer, poet, and activist Refaat Alareer. Refaat’s constant, English-language updates kept many around the world informed about Israel’s ongoing, genocidal assault on Gaza. Today, Israel killed Refaat, bombing his sister’s home and killing him, his brother, his sister & her 4 children.
Refaat watched as Israel killed many of his students before they killed him – insisting, as his organization @we_are_not_numbers always does, that they were full human beings with dreams and words and whole inner lives, not just casualties of Israel’s brutal violence. Now, we insist the same for Refaat. He was not a number. His death is a shocking reminder of the urgency to the call for a permanent ceasefire – not one more Palestinian life should be taken”.
JVP – Jewish Voice for Peace
via @theimeu
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“I am an academic. Probably the toughest thing I have at home is an Expo marker. But if the Israelis invade, if they charge at us, open door to door to massacre us, I’m going to use that marker, throw it at the Israeli soldiers … we have nothing to lose,”
Palestinian poet, writer, professor and activist Refaat al-Areer said during a livestream on The Electronic Intifada on the third day of Al-Aqsa Flood.
Today, he was killed in an Israeli airstrike — along with his brother, sister and her four children.
The last three lines of his poem in his pinned tweet from 1 November reads,
“If I must die,
let it bring hope,
let it be a tale.”