About this site

This site was built as a voluntary initiative to preserve the memory -- and the global outpouring of grief and solidarity -- of Dr Refaat Alareer, who was murdered by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on December 6, 2023.

As of now, there are 71 translations of Dr Alareer's English poem 'If I must die' on this site, copied from posts by users on social media -- mostly from this thread on X (aka Twitter) -- and more translations are being added daily.

We are unrelated to Refaat Alareer or his family and have not taken permission from Dr Areer's family for reproducing his poem. Nor have we sought permission from the translators for reproducing their translations, but we believe that neither they nor Refaat would have any objection.

We have credited the translators and linked to their original posts beneath every translation. If you are a translator and would like us to remove your translation from this site for any reason, please contact us.

The translations have not been edited in any way, however in many cases where the translations were only shared as image files, we used text recognition software to extract the text, so it is possible some inaccuracies were introduced in the process.

The accuracy of the translations have not been verified either, beyond using Google Translate to confirm that the translations are not completely different from the original poem.

Please contact us us to let us know of any errors in the reproductions of the translations, or in the attributions, or any other feedback.

The photo of Dr Alareer on the home page is from the Kuala Lumpur book launch of the anthology Gaza Writes Back in January 2014. The photo was taken from the Gaza Writes Back Facebook page.