Refaat al-Areer dedicated his life to writing about Gaza. He was killed in an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza on 7 December, along with his brother, sister, and four of her children. Al-Areer is not an individual case, more than 21,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war on Gaza. Like many, he was faced with two predicaments: stay at home in northern Gaza and risk being killed or try to flee without protection. Like many, al-Areer and his family declined to leave, because they “have nowhere else to go.” “It’s an archetypal Palestinian image of a discussion, a debate on should we stay in one room, so if we die, we die together, or should we stay in separate rooms, so at least somebody can live,” he had told CNN in October. Born in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza city, Al-Areer received his MA in Comparative Literature from University College London (UCL) in 2007 and went on to become a professor of Comparative Literature at the Islamic University of Gaza. At Gaza’s oldest university, he taught Shakesepare and John Donne’s poetry, among other subjects. He also introduced his…
