A well-known Palestinian poet and literary scholar, Refaat Alareer, is one of more than 17,000 people said to have been killed in Israel's retalitory attacks on Gaza since the October 7 atrocities by Hamas, in which around 1,200 people died. He was killed in an air strike in Gaza City last Wednesday, the BBC reported. 

Alareer's father-in-law said he had died along with his brother and sister and four of her children. He taught English literature at Gaza's Islamic University. "My heart is broken, my friend and colleague Refaat Alareer was killed with his family," Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha wrote on social media.

Alareer had declined to leave northern Gaza following the start of Israeli operations in the area. Two days before he died he posted video to social media in which a number of explosions could be heard. "The building is shaking. The debris and shrapnel are hitting the walls and flying in the streets," he wrote.

In an interview with the BBC in the hours after Hamas's 7 October attack on Israel, Alareer caused widespread offence by calling it "legitimate and moral". He said it was "exactly like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising". The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was a revolt that took place in German-occupied Poland in 1943 and saw Jews use weapons smuggled into the ghetto to try to resist Nazi efforts to transport people to the extermination camps.

In a poem posted on X, formerly Twitter, on 1 November, Alareer wrote: "If I must die, let it bring hope, let it be a tale". The post has been shared tens of thousands of times.

Israel destroyed the Islamic University at which Alareer taught on 11 October, saying it was an "important Hamas operational, political and military centre in Gaza". Following the outcry over Alareer's interview in October, a BBC spokesperson said: "We reported the Hamas attacks and the response by Israel in line with the BBC's editorial guidelines. While an interviewee who made comments on the Warsaw Ghetto was robustly challenged on air, we agree his comments were offensive and we don't intend to use him again."

In the 7 October attack, Hamas killed around 1,200 people and took 240 hostages, some of whom were released during a short-lived truce at the end of November. Hamas officials in Gaza say Israel has killed more than 17,177 people in its retaliatory campaign, including about 7,000 children.

PHOTOGRAPH: BBC