Israel killed the 44-year-old professor in an air strike in northern Gaza, where he was a prominent professor at the Islamic University of Gaza. 

The war on Gaza has left Palestinians in a constant state of grief, especially the local population who have witnessed the killings of their loved ones since October 7, 2023.

A sense of collective grief ensued among Palestinians on December 6, 2023, upon receiving the tragic news of the killing of renowned Palestinian academic and activist Refaat Alareer in Gaza.

For Alareer’s former students, the loss was significant, even the equivalent of losing a family member.

Some took upon themselves the duty to continue sharing his legacy, including some of his former students who are currently pursuing their graduate studies in Qatar. 

Students at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), including Alareer’s former students, held an event on Sunday at Education City’s Minaretein as a tribute to the renowned academic. 

The students shared some of their best memories with Alareer, from his words of wisdom, outlook towards justice in Palestine, and even his love for memes and the comedy series ‘Friends’.

For Malak Zakout, a 25-year-old student at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Alareer was the one who encouraged her to continue her studies in Qatar and wrote her recommendation letter.

“Some part of me until now believes he’s not dead[…]and sometimes it just hurts me. Sometimes, hope hurts more than depression,” Zakout told Doha News.

Noor Alagha, an audiovisual translation major at HBKU and one of Alareer’s former students, also helped organise the event and bring some of the late academic’s books to the university’s library.

“Dr. Refaat has many [former students] in Doha, so I wanted to bring the students together to talk about him, cherish his memory, honour him and tell people about him,” Alagha told Doha News.

Israel killed the 44-year-old professor in an air strike in northern Gaza, where he was a prominent professor at the Islamic University of Gaza. 

He also co-founded the We Are Not Numbers project, which provides English writing workshops for young Palestinians in Gaza. He was also among the most vocal Palestinian activists sharing the cruel reality on the ground in Gaza since the beginning of the war.

Alareer’s most famous last words were in his poem “If I Must Die” which he shared on November 1, 2023. 

“If I must die, let it bring hope. Let it be a tale,” Alareer said in the poem.

Some of Alareer’s former students only learned about his killing weeks later due to the electricity and communications blackout in Gaza, Zakout recounted.

“As soon as my mom got reconnected, she was like ‘Malak, I’m sorry for your loss.’ She knows how dearly we love him. I was dead worried about my family [in Gaza] and they were dead worried about me because Dr. Refaat was killed,” Zakout said.

Remembering her former professor, Zakout could not help but talk about how hard Alareer tried “to make the world listen to him.” 

Echoing the thoughts of many others, Zakout and Alagha pointed to the killing of Alareer as a deliberate move given his position as one of the most vocal activists and academics in Gaza.

“He was deliberately murdered, they targeted him,” said Alagha, who last saw Alareer in the summer of 2023.

Academics, journalists and medics have been among Israel’s primary targets since it waged the genocidal war on Gaza. Israel has since killed at least 29,692 Palestinians while displacing more than 80% of the population after reducing the area to rubble.

Israel disrupted an entire academic year in Gaza, damaging at least 406 schools since the beginning of the war, according to the latest figures by Euro-Med. The remaining school buildings have since turned into shelters for displaced Palestinians.

Israel has killed more than 5,055 students and 246 educational staff, according to the United Nations’ flash update.

Students like Zakout and Alagha are working to carry Alareer’s educational mission and resist the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine.

“They [Israel] know that his words meant a lot to so many people who were reading them. It made some noise and I guess he succeeded in it. His legacy will go on. They killed one Rifaat, but thousands of Rifaats will rise after him,” Alagha said.