BY ADELAIDE JACOBSON
White Rock

The children and adults of Los Alamos will be celebrating our 30th annual Kite Festival this weekend. The following is a poem written by Refaat Alareer (1979-2023), an acclaimed Palestinian professor and poet who, in a targeted killing by the Israeli military, was killed in December 2023, along with his brother, sister, and four nephews.

IF I MUST DIE
By Refaat Alareer

Nov, 27, 2011

If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale

In 2011, more than 12,000 children at a beach on the Mediterranean in Gaza set a new world record of kites flying at the same time. According to Save the Children, from October 2023 to the time of the “ceasefire” at least 20,000 children were killed in Gaza. From the time of the October 2025 “ceasefire” to April 21, 2026, 784 children and adults have been killed and 2,214 have been wounded in Gaza. These numbers do not include Palestinians killed in the West Bank.

As we watch kites dance in the sky this weekend, my prayer is that all the children of the world and their parents, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, or unaffiliated, be spared the terror of war, the terror of drones, white phosphorous, thermal and thermobaric weapons, GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs, MK-84 ‘Hammer’ bombs, BLU-109 bunker busters, and all the other weaponry that the world has witnessed being used against the Palestinian people.