In a grim twist of irony, the life of Palestinian poet and teacher Refaat Alareer was cut short not for taking up arms, but for his words—and, according to explosive revelations, for a joke. An alleged Israeli directive, invoking the biblical call to destroy “Amalek,” transformed satire into a death sentence.
As detailed in the investigative exposé by Richard Silverstein published on December 8, 2023, Israel’s security cabinet sanctioned a lethal directive targeting six senior Hamas figures, members of the press, and a single individual—Refaat Alareer—a respected poet and teacher. The rationale? A jest that cast him as part of the mythical “Amalek,” a long-hated biblical foe of the Jewish people, marking him beyond redemption.
Refaat taught literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza and co-founded the organization We Are Not Numbers, which matched experienced authors with young writers in Gaza, and promoted the power of storytelling as a means of Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation.
Refaat Alareer was far from a militant. As a literature teacher and social media voice, his craft and advocacy made him a champion of justice—yet Israel’s covert directive purportedly branded him an existential threat. The assassination, conducted in Gaza’s al-Daraj district, resulted in the deaths of Refaat, his brother Salah, his sister Asmaa, and four of their children. Survivors included two children and the brother’s wife, who were seriously wounded.
A Tweet as a Death Sentence
Early in October 2023, Eli Be’er, head of Israel’s emergency services, traveled to Las Vegas to rally the Republican Jewish Coalition with harrowing accounts of Hamas attack. The atrocity propaganda was on full mode. Among the claims he presented, was the shocking assertion that Hamas had burned babies in an oven. He added another grotesque image: forty charred infants strung along a clothesline.
There is no denying that October 7 saw horrific crimes. But these particular stories—sensational and inflammatory—were later debunked. Be’er’s embellishments proved to be fabrications, only to gain sympathy for the carnage that was unleashed in the aftermath of that Saturday.
When Refaat first heard the story, he knew it was an absurd lie, that it was propaganda. He tweeted a joke asking if they’d been baked “with or without baking powder.” Not the most tasteful joke. But at the time, when the “oven” story was circulating and enraging Israelis further, Refaat’s tweet marked him for death.
Bari Weiss, a vile Islamophobic human being, brought attention to his tweet, and soon after, Refaat was beset by Israeli thugs wishing death and other horrible suffering upon him, including sexual degradation against his family. Surely they added to the lust for revenge against him.
Although Bari Weiss has wide social media reach, the Daily Mail has far more. Its chief reporter, Jen Smith, sealed Refaat’s death warrant with a hit piece: “Palestinian professor previously published by the New York Times makes sick joke about claim Hamas BAKED baby in an oven”. Jen Smith and the Daily Mail have a lot to answer for. They put a target on his back and got him killed. Silverstein has asked her for comment about the role she played in his murder. But she hasn’t responded.
Biblical Justifications for a 21st Century Assassination
Silverstein connects Israel’s invocation of “Amalek” to a gruesome biblical mandate: the Jewish obligation to obliterate a perpetual enemy, Amalek, into extinction. By invoking the ancient “Amalek” motif—a biblical command to eradicate a historical foe—Israel reportedly framed Alareer’s satirical commentary as existential, allowing religious dehumanization to justify modern assassination.
Silverstein also mentions that “An Israeli security source confirms my suspicion that the cabinet ordered Refaat’s execution“, because his joke marked him as being a member of the tribe of Amalek. An eternal enemy of the Jewish people. He was no such thing of course.
Euro Med Monitor offers this detailed account of the Shin Bet stalking him and its death threats; and the ways in which Refaat attempted to save himself:
“On Wednesday at around 18:00, Refaat al-Areer was killed in his sister’s home in al-Sidra neighborhood in al-Daraj area in Gaza city along with his brother Salah and one of his children (Mohammed); his sister Asmaa and three of her children (Alaa, Yahia, and Mohammed); and a neighbor. His brother’s wife, Alaa, and two other children, Rafik and Alma, were wounded in the assault.
The airstrike surgically targeted the apartment on the second floor where Rafaat was, in a 3-storey building, and not the entire building; indicating the apartment was the [specific] target…
Refaat was displaced multiple times during this war and ended up at his sister’s home along with his parents, wife and children. A few days ago, Refaat moved with his wife and children to an UNRWA school in al-Tufah neighborhood in Gaza according to his family.
However, a close friend of Refaat’s told Euro-Med Monitor that he had received an anonymous phone call from someone who identified himself as an Israeli officer and threatened Refaat that they knew precisely the school where he was located and were about to get to his location with the advancement of Israeli ground troops.
While the credibility of the threat itself is unclear, it contributed to prompting Refaat to move back to his sister’s apartment, believing it was more concealed than an open and overcrowded school where it would have been difficult to hide.
For weeks since the start of this war, Refaat has been receiving numerous death threats and hateful messages from Israeli accounts on social media after prominent public figures [Bari Weiss, among others] singled him out for harassment and incitement.
In 2014, Israel bombed Refaat’s home in Shejaiya and killed over 30 of his and his wife’s families.”
Every claim against Refaat Alareer was a lie. Not an anti-Semite. Not even a hater of Israelis. Just a hater of injustice, oppression, apartheid and genocide. In 2012, he wrote movingly and even empathically about the Israeli soldier attacking him, in a poem title ‘I Am You’:
I do not hate you.
I want to help you stop hating
And killing me.
I tell you:
The noise of your machine gun
Renders you deaf
The smell of the powder
Beats that of my blood.
The sparks disfigure
My facial expressions.
Would you stop shooting?
For a moment?
Would you?
All you have to do
Is close your eyes
(Seeing these days
Blinds our hearts.)
Close your eyes, tightly
So that you can see
In your mind’s eye.
Then look into the mirror.
One. Two.
I am you.
I am your past.
And killing me,
You kill you.
This sums up the full tragedy of Refaat’s execution: “and killing me, you kill you.”
After Refaat Alareer’s assassination in December 6, 2023, a book bearing the title of his final poem, If I Must Die, was published as both tribute and testament. The collection gathers his poetry, essays, and reflections—works that had circulated in classrooms, online forums, and solidarity movements, but which took on a new, urgent resonance after his death. In the words of one of his final poems, shared only weeks before his death, he imagined how he might be remembered: not as a soldier, but as a poet whose lines would live on “so you remember me.”
This book is that remembrance. This book is his resistance. Refaat Alareer is no longer here to teach, but his words remain. In them, he lives, and in them, he insists that Gaza, too, will endure.
Source: Richard Silverstein | Euro-Monitor
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