If I Must Die
2011 poem by Refaat Alareer
"If I Must Die" is a fatalistic 91-word poem by Palestinian poet and scholar Refaat Alareer, written for his daughter. The poem became famous following the killing of its author, along with six members of his family, in an Israeli airstrike.
The poem has been recognized as a testament to the resilience, resistance, and humanity of the Palestinian people during the Gaza genocide. It has been analyzed in academic, journalistic, and cultural contexts for its evocative imagery and its symbolic challenge to narratives of occupation and marginalization.
It has been described as one of the most widely known poems of the 21st century. It has been translated in over 40 languages. Professor Nazmi al-Masri wrote that the poem “travelled across the world because it expresses something very simple but very powerful: the fear of disappearing without being remembered”.
The closing words of the poem were inscribed on Alareer’s tombstone: “If I must die; Let it bring hope; Let it be a tale”.
Background and authorship
Refaat Alareer was a professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza and co-founder of the We Are Not Numbers project, which amplified the voices of young Palestinian writers. Alareer began writing poetry in English in response to the Gaza War (2008–2009), seeking to directly address an international audience without the barrier of translation; Alareer believed Palestinians must "speak for themselves" in the language of global discourse to counteract dominant narratives about their struggle.
“If I Must Die” enters the record as 2011 poem by Refaat Alareer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Must, poem and Refaat can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“If I Must Die” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Must, poem and Refaat provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q135037598. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2008 and 2009.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “If I Must Die” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.