If I Must Die: Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer's spirit and 'dignified resistance' celebrated in new book

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“If I must die / let it bring hope / let it be a tale,” Refaat Alareer wrote in his 2011 poem If I Must Die. The work was sadly a prescient piece of writing. Alareer was killed in an Israeli air strike in December last year along with his sister, brother, and four of his nephews and nieces.

His poetry and prose, however, resonate with a sombre and rousing timbre. His words have proliferated across the internet as an anthemic expression of the harrowing experiences that Gazans have been facing for decades.

Alareer’s works have now been released in a collection titled If I Must Die, on the anniversary of his death. The book has already sold out on most websites, and is available on back-order. It is crowning Amazon’s list of Middle Eastern literature, and recently made the bestseller list on USA Today, ranking at number 20.

If I Must Die includes essays and poetry that go back to 2010, as well as writing that following Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October 2023.

There are works of scathing satire that delineate the cruelty of the Israeli onslaught, taking cues from Jonathan Swift’s classic 18th century essay A Modest Proposal. Some pieces delve into tragic moments in Alareer’s life, such as the death of his brother, Mohammed, by an Israeli air strike. Others touch upon significant moments in Gazan history, such as the deaths of Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni and Mustafa Tamimi, a 28-year-old Palestinian taxi driver.

Published by Or Books, If I Must Die was compiled and edited by Yousef Aljamal, a friend and former student of Alareer. “I got permission from Refaat’s family to collect his works,” says Aljamal, who is the Gaza coordinator at the American Friends Service Committee. “I am familiar with his writings and his poetry prose, and I suggested the text to Or Books.”

Most of the writings in the collection had been published in blogs and magazines, including Electronic Intifada and In These Times. However, there are also several new works, including writings from October 2023 onwards. “There were three articles Refaat wrote during the genocide,” Aljamal says. “They were supposed to be published by a magazine, but for political reasons, they decided not to publish them. I was able to include them in the book.”

The articles can be viewed as Alareer’s diaries during the war, and include The Five Stages of Coping with War in Gaza. “He wrote about what he saw in Gaza, and how he worries about his children, securing food and water for his family,” Aljamal says. “He documents an important part of the genocide.”

Compiling the works was emotionally taxing for Aljamal. “They brought back memories,” he says. “It was a very difficult and emotional experience to write about Refaat as someone who existed in the past because, for everyone who knew him, Refaat represented life and positive energy. Creativity. It’s difficult to talk about him in the past.”

However, Aljamal says Alareer has achieved the same sort of legend as Malcolm X and Edward Said. . That legacy, he adds, extends beyond his writing to include his contributions as a teacher.

“Refaat did not write much in his life,” Aljamal says. “He started writing more towards the end of his life. He was more focused on teaching other young people in Gaza, and pushing them to write. He taught English for about 22 years, and during this time, he met thousands of students from all over the Gaza Strip. Many of his students became university professors, writers, poets and journalists. I think once he said that he created this base, he started to write more.”

If I Must Die includes “the vast majority” of Alareer’s works, Aljamal says, and he never doubted that the book would become a bestseller. “I know this first hand from the reaction people had when Refaat was killed,” Aljamal says. “And I thought that people would react the same way when his book comes out, especially that many people were waiting for Refaat to write during the genocide.”

Colin Robinson, co-founder of Or Books, says the publishing house felt a “great sense of responsibility” towards If I Must Die. “We're honouring someone very important with this book,” he says. “I’m proud of what we’ve done with it. It's a beautiful selection. I think we designed it rather beautifully. It looks serious, but it’s inviting. That's part of our job as publishers. To take the material and to try to present it in a way that can find the widest possible audience.”

Robinson attributes the book’s popularity to Alareer’s spirit. “He has become a symbol of dignified resistance,” he says. “That's the main thing that is getting people to go out and buy the book.”

Olivia Heffernan, publicity director at Or Books, says there were plenty of signs prior the book’s release that it would become popular. However, a surprise campaign by the independent news platform Drop Site helped. “Ryan Grim from Drop Site news reached out to us and said ‘I want to make this book a bestseller’. He launched this campaign separate from us,” she says. The campaign aimed to get the book on the New York Times bestseller list.

“It spread like wildfire,” Heffernan says. “We usually got 10 likes on a regular post and then we were getting thousands. It showed how much people care about this and how much they want to be involved.”

Heffernan says initially Or Books didn't want to be directly involved with the campaign, due to the financial incentive. “But as people became more and more excited – and of course, the royalties of the book are going to Refaat’s family – we decided to become a little bit more involved in it,” she says.

More than 20,000 copies of If I Must Die were sold in the two weeks since its release on December 10. While the sales numbers do reflect Alareer’s legacy, the effect his works have on people were evident during the launch event of If I Must Die in New York on December 6. More than 200 people attended and thousands more tuned in on the Or Books YouTube page. Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, and US actress Debra Winger read Alareer’s poetry during the event.

“The event was in honour of Refaat and in celebration of this book,” Heffernan says. “It was to encourage people to know that his voice has not been silenced. This is part of his legacy and the larger legacy of Palestinians.”