'With or without baking powder': Gaza academic who made fun of baby stuffed in oven by Hamas killed in Israel strike

Days after he reacted to the tragic death of a baby who was found in an oven, “baked to death by Hamas terrorists”, saying, that if the baby was “baked with or without baking powder,” Dr Refaat Alareer, a key figure in Gaza, was killed in an Israeli air strike on Thursday. Alareer was known for vehemently denouncing the attack against Gazans by Israeli forces. According to reports, he had devoted his life to raising awareness about the region’s situation globally. Earlier this week, he posted on X that he wished he was a freedom fighter “so I die fighting back those invading Israeli genocidal maniacs invading my neighborhood and city.”

We could die this dawn.

I wish I were a freedom fighter so I die fighting back those invading Israeli genocidal maniacs invading my neighborhood and city. https://t.co/liYqMN6Fw7 pic.twitter.com/E2ZWCLGBQ8

— Refaat in Gaza 🇵🇸 (@itranslate123) December 4, 2023

Alareer was a prominent writer, poet, and activist from Gaza. He was also a professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he taught Shakespeare among other subjects. Alareer lost his life in an Israeli air strike on his sister’s home. His brother, sister and her four children were also killed in the attack. According to Hamas authorities, Israel, on Thursday evening, conducted further raids in the north of the Gaza Strip. A few days after Israel began its ground offensive in October and asked Palestinians to leave northern Gaza, the epicenter of the fighting at the time, Alareer refused. He was the co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced (2015) and the editor of Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza. He was also one of the founders of ‘We Are Not Numbers’, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating “a new generation of Palestinian writers and thinkers who can bring together a profound change to the Palestinian cause.” In an interview in October this year, he had said: “There is no way out of Gaza. What should we do… drown? Commit mass suicide? Is this what Israel wants? And we’re not going to do that..” “I am an academic, Probably the toughest thing I have at home is an Expo Marker. But if the Israelis invade us, if they barge at us, open door-to-door to massacre us, I am going to use that Marker, throw it at the Israeli soldiers, even if that is the last thing that I will be able to do. And this is the feeling of everybody in Palestine. We are helpless and we have nothing to lose,” he had said. With inputs from agencies