She was labelled a traitor and fled Israel; now Yuli Novak wants to deconstruct Zionism

Yuli Novak headed Breaking the Silence, which sparked threats on her life, and she fled from Israel. On a return visit, she says the Left must take more radical directions

SOMETHING OR SOMEONE behind my back is stressing Yuli Novak out. She’s talking to me, but her eyes are constantly darting beyond me, and she’s not finishing completing her sentences. Turning around, I see a young guy standing at a distance of about a metre from me, seemingly immersed in his phone.

“I don’t like the looks of him,” murmurs Novak. At the far end of the square, not far from us, a line of people wait to enter the tent where COVID tests are being administered. Novak continues to stare at the guy with the phone and finally says hello to him. A brief conversation reveals that he’s waiting his turn to be tested.

The feeling of fear or paranoia strikes Novak whenever she returns to Habima Square in central Tel Aviv.

It was here that she first felt that her life was in danger. It was the summer of 2014, a Saturday evening, a few days after the start of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip.

The army shelled Gaza, and Novak, who was then the executive director of Breaking the Silence, and was attending a demonstration in the square calling for solidarity with both Gazans and the Israeli town of Sderot near the Gaza border.

The left-wing demonstrators were countered by protesters from the right; the two groups were separated by a few dozen police officers. At 9 o’clock an air-raid siren wailed, as Hamas fired rockets at Tel Aviv.

“All the police who were here evaporated in an instant,” Novak recalls. “They just disappeared. And then the masked people started to hit us with clubs.”

It was the first time her feeling of physical and social security was shaken.

FULL STORY Labelled a traitor, she fled Israel; now she wants to deconstruct Zionism (Haaretz)

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Photo: Yuli Novak (Daniel Tchetchik)