Dear friend,
This week I began my work as executive director of B’Tselem. I am overcome with a sense of responsibility and excitement, and I’m bit anxious, too, naturally. I want to share a bit about my decision and what led me to it.
In a few months, my partner Yaeli and I will become mothers. It’s hard for me to grasp, but a moment will come when one child in this world, one creature, will be ours, and we will have to raise and protect him. 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. The decision to bring a child into this place – into this world and this reality – was not a given for us. I think it is no coincidence that it came together with another decision: to conclude six years of researching, thinking and writing about our political situation, roll up my sleeves and get back to “the field” – in other words putting 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, a home healing from occupation and apartheid. And I can think of no group or organization better able to work towards advancing such a reality than B’Tselem.
The Israeli human rights community has been undergoing a transformational shift in recent years. A process in which I am happy to have played a modest role, largely behind the scenes. Our current understanding of reality is much deeper and more complex than it was in the past. The picture we now have is not any more comfortable or pleasant – but it is more accurate. We understand that we are operating under a hostile regime: a regime that is hostile to human rights and to freedom, to women and to the poor. But more than anything, it is a regime that is hostile to Palestinians (both its “subjects” and the ones it calls “citizens”). 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.
B’Tselem also understands this truth. In recent years, under the exemplary leadership of Hagai El-Ad, B’Tselem has taken bold, dramatic action to instill this understanding in both local and international communities. I am honored to join an organization that proudly raises the flag of human rights even under ever-deteriorating conditions, an organization that knows how to grow, how to ask tough questions and how to contend with a difficult and violent reality without wavering for even a moment.
I know that B’Tselem’s work is not easy for Israelis to digest. B’Tselem is an organization that insists on showing the public what is unpleasant to look at and, more so, requires that we come to understand parts of ourselves that are not easy to acknowledge. When those two things happen – seeing and understanding – we are forced to imagine a different future, too, free of oppression and supremacy. This is the future we have been taught to fear.
In recent years, I have put a lot of time into researching what apartheid is and how a regime like that operates. One of the things I learned is that apartheid distorts our perception of reality. It is a regime that makes those who live under it, especially those who belong to the group that benefits from superiority, feel that the existing political order is the only possible one. It makes us believe in a story that enables accepting oppression and violence as an unavoidable. It makes us see home demolitions, institutional discrimination, segregation, forcible transfer, and systematic, daily killings as fated. Apartheid makes us cruel.
Israeli apartheid is growing stronger and more entrenched. Values of violence, racism and supremacy increasingly hold sway in the Israeli public. Correspondingly, more Palestinian lives are destroyed, and more families lose what is dearest to them, and, also correspondingly, our ability to imagine a different future grows weaker by the day.
My hope for this place – and its future – lies in people like the wonderful, professional team at B’Tselem: people who wake up every day and do everything they can to bring to light the truth the Israeli regime is trying to hide, who insist on being part of an international community and who are determined to work for a different future - Israelis and Palestinians working together and resisting separation founded on lies and fear.
My hope also lies in you, in our circle of supporters and partners, who understand the need for a shared struggle to repair the damage and who yearn as we do for a future of justice and freedom. I believe that these circles of ours can expand further and further. I know that courage and hope are infectious.
I am grateful to B’Tselem’s board and its chair, Orly Noy, for the trust placed in me to lead the organization in the coming years.
May we move forward together towards the fall of apartheid and a future of freedom.
Yours,
Yuli Novak
B'Tselem Executive Director