When TIME reached out to the renowned Palestinian poet, academic, and activist Refaat Alareer to discuss how Palestinian society in Gaza was responding to the deadliest and most destructive war to hit the enclave in living memory, he had a lot to say. “This is something I really like to highlight,” he said in a WhatsApp voice note, noting that he’d been collecting anecdotes and encounters in order to write an essay on the very subject. “I think it’s necessary for people to understand what’s going on beyond the genocide, the bombs, and the massacres.”

But Alareer never got the chance. Sadly,44-year-old was killed in an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza alongside six members of his family.

Days before speaking with TIME, Alareer re-shared a 2011 poem anticipating that he might be killed, titled “If I Must Die.” In the days since his death, the poem has gone viral, spurring its translation into dozens of languages.

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 https://time.com/6344843/refaat-alareer-killed-poet-gaza-notes/