In memory of John Lennon and Refaat Alareer
Both had the power to scare governments through their words and both were cut down in the prime of their lives
Two events in the past few days have shown the incredible power of the artist in society, and the incalculable loss to all of us when they are taken away too soon.
Those two events are the release of the documentary John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial, and the deliberate murder of Palestinian poet and storyteller Refaat Alareer through a targeted airstrike by the IDF three days ago.
I will talk about both men below, but first I want to say that, if there’s anything you get from this post, let it be this:
as John and Refaat show, the pen can, indeed, be mightier than the rapid-fire machine gun, the ear-splitting tank, or the AI-directed missile—and, indeed, than the paranoid and brutal leaders of the most powerful countries in the world
the words of artists—whether writers, poets, or musicians—are often remembered, honored, and treasured down through the generations, and those words can affect minds, hearts, and souls and change the course of history in profound and lasting ways
we all—not just artists—have the gift of words at our disposal, and can also use our voices to move the world towards love, peace, and understanding.
If you wish to honor and celebrate the lives of John and Refaat and keep their flames alive, as I do, here are some ways to do that:
watch Refaat’s TED talk called “Stories make us,” like it, and recommend it to others
read Gaza Writes Back, an anthology of short stories from fifteen young writers in Gaza, which was co-edited by Refaat
read Refaat’s homage to his brother, Mohammed, a TV personality and father of two pre-schoolers, who was also killed by an Israeli airstrike
read Refaat’s poem below and make a kite of love and hope in his memory
tell young music composers you know about the annual John Lennon Award, “an annual competition open to student songwriters and composers of contemporary musical genres including alternative, pop, rock, indie, electronica, R&B, and experimental” (aged 17-24)
get involved with or donate to Julian Lennon’s White Feather Foundation
explore John’s legacy here—I don’t know who runs this site, but it’s a treasure trove of his work, including his extraordinary music and his humorous pre-Beatles writings.
In memory of Refaat
You may not know Refaat Alareer. Perhaps it is best to know him through his poetry. Here is one of his poems written one month ago, presaging his death.
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.
—Refaat Alareer, November 2023
Immediately following his death, this poem was translated into many languages on X/twitter here. It made me cry—to see his words shared in so many languages, languages I didn’t even know existed, by people all over the world who are not going to allow his words to be forgotten.
Refaat believed not just in telling his own stories, but in helping others to tell theirs. He taught Creative Writing and World Literature at the Islamic University in Gaza from 2007, after getting an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University College of London. He was working towards a Ph.D. in English literature at the Universiti Putra Malaysia.
As his TED talk shows, he believed that women use storytelling in everyday life as a way to pass on their wisdom and understanding and to exercise power and overcome the dominance of men. He asserted that "We are what stories have been told to us," and said he had been profoundly shaped by the stories of his mother and grandmother.
Following the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza, he took the courageous decision to encourage young Palestinian writers to tell their stories, and collected and co-edited these as well as his own and others’ contributions for inclusion in two books: Gaza Writes Back (2014) and Gaza Unsilenced (2015).
To do this, to defy the Israeli war machine using words, was dangerous. There was, no doubt, a target on his back. Celia Farber gives background on his deliberate murder by the IDF. As his life shows, words have incredible power.
On November 2nd, with explosions hitting nearby, Refaat tweeted to the director of electricintifada.net, Ali Abunimah, that the Israelis had brought down his entire building and that he and his family had lost everything, including the thousands of books he had collected over 30 years. Even in the midst of that horror, Refaat showed how much he cared about nurturing the storytelling of the younger generations. “All those pieces you publish for my students keep me going,” he managed to write.
A month later, Refaat was murdered, but, unlike those who killed him, his life will live on in the story we tell of him, and of the hope and love he spread to others.
In memory of John
Another artist who spread a message of love and peace was, of course, John Lennon. Most people on the planet know John through his work as a member of the Beatles and as a solo artist. Despite disbanding in 1970, the Beatles are just as popular today, more than 50 years later, as they were in the 1960s. That is downright gobsmacking.
Every successive generation seems to discover the Beatles not only in terms of their music, but also in terms of their entire creative oeuvre—their wildly innovative album covers and posters, their evolving haircuts and ‘threads’ through the sixties, their fascinating relationships with women, swamis, managers, and one another, and their unrelenting curiosity and wit, even, or especially, in the face of an aggressive press mob.
Everyone also seems to have a favorite Beatle, but if you’ve watched as many documentaries about the Beatles as I have, you know that the witty one was John (although Ringo is a close second). Before he picked up a guitar and began making music, John wrote humorous stories and drawings. You can read a sample here.
John also shows his signature wit and love of wordplay on the Dick Cavett Show when explaining why the Beatles disbanded:
John never stopped making music, plunging into the making of his solo albums Plastic Ono Band (1970) and Imagine (1971) immediately after the Beatles broke up. In 1999, the footage from the making of the Imagine album was released as a fly-on-the-wall documentary called Gimme Some Truth: The Making of John Lennon’s “Imagine” Album.
Most fascinating and a bit alarming in this video was John inviting a clearly disturbed young fan who showed up at his home (where they were recording) to come inside and then spending time talking to the guy. It almost seems to presage his death nine years later by another deranged young fan, Mark David Chapman, who allowed Yoko Ono to walk by and then emptied five shots into the completely unguarded John in front of the Dakota building in New York where they lived. Yoko was never able to get her head around why Chapman did it.
The just-released documentary John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial suggests that Chapman may have been a mind control asset of the CIA’s Project MK Ultra, a project in which people were brainwashed to make them into Manchurian candidates who could be programmed to assassinate specific people. No evidence was provided that Chapman was such an asset, but what was emphasized in this documentary and in The U.S. vs John Lennon is that John Lennon was being spied on by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and pursued for deportation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
It was John’s anti-war activities—his promotion of peace—that made him immensely unpopular with the Nixon Administration and led to the creation of an almost 300-page FBI dossier on him. His words in the songs “Imagine,” “Give Peace a Chance,” and “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” put him at direct odds with the American war machine. It didn’t help that, when he and Yoko guest hosted The Mike Douglas Show in 1972, they invited anti-war leader Jerry Rubin and Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale to be guests.
John’s words had, and continue to have, immense power. His Imagine album was double-platinum in the US and the song “Imagine” was one of the most performed songs of the 20th century and has been covered or performed to date by over 200 artists. His song “Give Peace a Chance” became an anthem of the anti-war movement in the early 70s. “Happy Xmas,” a protest song against the Vietnam War, has become a Christmas standard played every year since 1972 and recorded by other popular artists, including Celine Dion, Miley Cyrus and Mark Ronson, Maroon 5, and John Legend.
The words of peacemakers like John and Refaat can clearly have extraordinary and even supernatural power, both during their lifetimes and after they die. We cannot afford to forget their profound words about love, hope, and peace, nor their shining examples of standing for what they believed in, as we navigate this challenging era in world history. We too have the power of our words.
My thanks to Laura K and Celia Farber, whose posts about Refaat here and here inspired this one.