Refaat Alareer

Refaat Alareer (1979–2023) was a professor of world literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza and the editor of Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine (2013). A native of Gaza City's Shijaieh neighborhood, he received his M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University College of London (U.K.) and earned his Ph.D. in English Literature at the Universiti Putra Malaysia with a dissertation on John Donne. He was killed by an IDF airstrike on December 6, 2023, along with his brother, nephew, his sister, and three of her children. His poem, "If I Must Die," has been translated into more than 40 languages. Source