Welcome to Back in the USSR, I am Siegfried. And tonight I’m paying tribute to the martyred Palestinian poet and educator Refaat Alareer. Two years ago, on December 6 2023, the forces of the Zionist occupation murdered Refaat in an attempt to steal his voice. As if a missile could silence a poet and erase his words. Two years on, that voice is as strong as ever. Immortal. Me and my comrades at Guelph Spoken Word never let a month pass by over the course of the past two years without performing “If I Must Die, Let It Be A Tale”, perhaps his most famous poem.
But he was so much more than just one poem. He was a fighter. He resisted occupation through his pen. Refaat even told Ali Abunimah once that the toughest thing he had at home was an Expo marker but if Israeli troops knocked down his door to kill him and his family he would “use that marker to throw it at the Israeli soldiers, even if that is the last thing that I do.” It turns out they didn’t have the courage to try, which is why the cowardly occupation forces used missiles to assassinate this poet.
Refaat was a voice of resistance and he empowered others to use their voices to fight back. When I attended the Guelph People’s Conference on Palestine, which the cowardly trustees of the University of Guelph tried to shut down last minute, I was struck when visiting a book vendor – almost all the books were by Refaat’s former students at the University of Gaza or the man himself. Gaza Writes Back is a compilation of short fiction by his students that is now world famous. He used stories to break the blockade that Israel was trying to impose on the minds and souls of Palestinians as well as their bodies.
While I paid tribute to Refaat two years ago, tonight I want to give you a full picture of the man and his poetry. I’ll be reading an article he wrote years ago called “Narrating Palestine” and I’m also going to be performing some of his poems.
We stand against empire on this show and Refaat was a hero in the fight against imperialism. He stood for human dignity against all odds. That is why you do not have to be Palestinian to honor him. His spirit is international and people struggling against empire and exploitation all over the world understand his message: “Let’s first survive together and then build together.”
Refaat Alareer presente.
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