The tributes have been proliferating everywhere to the memory and legacy of our friend Dr. Refaat Alareer, murdered by Israel on December 7 in Gaza, along with six of his family members. One of the most potent forms of tribute we have seen has been the production and distribution in scores of world languages of translations of “If I Must Die”, the iconic poem in English that on November 1, Refaat pinned to the top of his Twitter (X) account:
(Beneath it there is the last tweet he ever posted, dated December 4. It feels apt for us to keep it there.)
The potent imagery that Refaat conjured up in “If I Must Die” has flown around the world, like an unfettered kite. We have thus far collected 37 translations of the poem into different world languages. In this blog post, we’ll present the first 6 of these, alphabetically by language name. Click on any of them to read it bigger. You can access all the other translations we’ve collected, in both PDF and JPG formats, via that link.
We invite you to spread this powerful poem ever further around the world. (And if you know of translations into other languages not on our list, please send them to us, in PDF or JPG format.)
Let it bring hope!
