Novak, the former head of Breaking the Silence, takes over from Hagai El-Ad after nine years at the helm and promises 'to do everything I can to turn this place into the home I wish for my child'
One of Israel’s leading human rights organizations B’Tselem announced a change of guard on Monday, with the former head of Breaking the Silence Yuli Novack replacing Hagai El-Ad as the executive director.
Novak served as the director of the anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence from 2012 to 2017, and has since penned a part-biography, part-meditation on the Israeli left and Zionism, “Who Do You Think You Are?”, and spent time abroad, notably in South Africa.
In her introductory message, Novak explained that her decision to go back into the field was partly motivated by the fact that she and her partner will soon become mothers.
“Sadly, I know that my child will be born into a painful and cruel reality. My child will be born to live under apartheid, to be an occupier,” explaining that the decision spurred her to put “everything I have into doing the best I can to turn this place into the home I wish for my child and for all the children who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea: a home of justice and morality, values and freedom, a home free of oppression and discrimination,” she wrote.
“Our struggle is a struggle against the Israeli regime with the goal of changing it, transforming it into a democracy and instilling in it values of dignity, equality and justice. These values are incompatible with policies of occupation and apartheid. There is no democracy under occupation. There is no democracy under apartheid, not in Hebron, not in Gaza, not in Lod/Lydda and not in Tel Aviv,” she added.
She also praised the “exemplary leadership” of Hagai El-Ad, which has pushed B’Tselem to take “bold, dramatic action to instill this understanding in both local and international communities.”
In 2021, El-Ad led B’Tselem to become the first Israeli rights group to assert that the country is committing the crime of apartheid across all the territory that it controls.
A year earlier, Yesh Din had made the same case for the occupied West Bank, while Palestinian groups have long argued that the contested paradigm applies to the whole country.
Since then, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – the world’s two largest human rights groups – have followed suit.
While the term recalls racial segregation in South Africa, the International Criminal Court defines apartheid as an “institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group.
“One of my first eye-openers when I joined B’Tselem was that there is not a single place between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, in the entire territory Israel controls, where our entire team can meet,” El-Ad wrote in his departure message in April.
“As Jews and Palestinians we stand together – not in sham coexistence, but in jointly rejecting a regime based on Jewish supremacy. We say no to separating people and no to Jewish supremacy over Palestinians. Yes to the values we share, led by a demand for full realization of human rights – both individual and collective – for all the people in Israel/Palestine,” he added.
Along with the Palestinian group Al-Haq, B’Tselem won the Carter-Menil Human Rights Prize in 1989, and the highest human rights award from France in 2018.
Israel has long presented itself as a thriving democracy in which Palestinian citizens, who make up about 20 percent of its population of 9.2 million, have equal rights.
Israel seized east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 war — lands that are home to nearly 5 million Palestinians and which the Palestinians want for a future state.
Israel withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005 but imposed a blockade after the militant Hamas group seized power there two years later. It considers the West Bank “disputed” territory whose fate should be determined in peace talks. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in 1967 in a move not recognized internationally and considers the entire city its unified capital. Most Palestinians in east Jerusalem are Israeli “residents,” but not citizens with voting rights.
B’Tselem argued that by dividing up the territories and using different means of control, Israel masks the underlying reality — that roughly 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians live under a single system with vastly unequal rights.
Israel adamantly rejects the charge, saying the restrictions it imposes in Gaza and the West Bank are temporary measures needed for security. Most Palestinians in the West Bank live in areas governed by the Palestinian Authority, but those areas are surrounded by Israeli checkpoints and Israeli soldiers can enter at any time. Israel has full control over 60 percent of the West Bank.
Itay Milner, a spokesman for Israel’s consulate general in New York, dismissed the B’Tselem report at the time as “another tool for them to promote their political agenda,” which he said was based on a “distorted ideological view.” He pointed out that Arab citizens of Israel are represented across the government, including the diplomatic corps.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.