For Yuli Novak, the crisis facing Israel and the Palestinians cannot be reduced to one government, one prime minister or even the events of the past few years. The director of the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem argues that the violence and displacement experienced by Palestinians are rooted in a political system that long predates Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government.
In an interview with El País, Novak described a country she believes has become increasingly authoritarian and a society deeply affected by fear, trauma and a political culture she says has normalised the supremacy of one group over another. Her remarks come as B’Tselem publishes a report examining what it calls Israel’s “elimination project” in the West Bank, while the organisation continues to describe the situation in Gaza as genocide.
B’Tselem takes its name from the biblical Book of Genesis, from the verse describing the creation of human beings in God’s image. For Novak, that principle — the belief that every human life has equal value — has become central to her political and professional journey. She grew up on Israel’s Zionist left, a political identity she says no longer describes her. Between 2012 and 2017, she headed Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organisation of former soldiers documenting abuses committed by Israeli forces. She eventually left the organisation exhausted and facing threats after what the source describes as a hostile campaign by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
In 2023, after a period in South Africa that she described in her autobiography, Novak took over B’Tselem, one of Israel’s most prominent human rights organisations. The organisation has also become deeply unpopular among significant sections of Israeli society. Its Tel Aviv headquarters has few visible signs identifying the building, a precaution that reflects the hostility surrounding its work.
For Novak, Netanyahu remains an important part of the current political problem, but not its origin. “The problem is not Netanyahu, although Netanyahu is a problem,” she told El País. She argued that the present government’s hard-right ideology has pushed the system further in an extremist direction, but that the scale of current violence cannot be understood as something that emerged during the past four years or even the past two decades.
She traces what she describes as an “elimination” logic back much further, arguing that the political project that developed in Israel sought to remove Palestinians from the political and social order in order to establish sovereignty based on Jewish supremacy. In her interpretation, that history runs from the mass displacement of Palestinians during the Nakba in 1948 to what she describes as the most extreme manifestation of the process in Gaza.
The distinction B’Tselem makes between Gaza and the West Bank is important to Novak’s argument. In Gaza, the organisation uses the term genocide. In the West Bank, it describes what it calls an “elimination project”, which it characterises as systematic but more gradual. Novak argues that the violence and displacement in the West Bank have developed over a longer period and do not display the same level of lethality as Gaza.
She rejects the idea that violent settlers operate independently of the Israeli state. According to her account, these groups are equipped and trained by the state, act under state direction and enjoy what she describes as near-total impunity when attacking Palestinians. She characterises them as performing functions of the state without wearing state uniforms.
Language itself has become another part of the dispute. Novak argues that political and public discourse in Israel has increasingly adopted terms such as “total victory” and language associated with the removal or destruction of Palestinians. She believes this reflects a broader zero-sum mentality in which Israeli security is understood as requiring the elimination of the other side.
The resulting contradiction is at the heart of Novak’s analysis: how can a society participate in large-scale violence while many of its members continue to believe that they are acting correctly?
Her answer is fear. She argues that generations of Israelis have been taught to understand the conflict through an “us or them” framework, reinforced by perceptions of existential danger and the dehumanisation of Palestinians. The trauma of the 7 October attack, she says, intensified that process.
Novak stresses that this is painful for her to acknowledge because Israel is her society and includes her family. Yet she argues that Israeli society has become deeply mobilised behind the continuation of the war in Gaza. She does not regard this as a uniquely Israeli phenomenon. “No people that has committed a genocide was aware in real time of what it was doing,” she told El País, arguing that societies often require decades, if they ever achieve it, to confront the meaning of atrocities committed in their name.
Her argument is also directed at the international community. Novak says that years of impunity have helped sustain the system. In her view, allowing Israel to continue its actions in Gaza while treating its political system as legitimate sends a message that serious violations can occur without fundamentally altering Israel’s international status.
She argues that the problem is not simply the current government. Elections, therefore, cannot by themselves resolve what she sees as the deeper structure. Novak is particularly sceptical of the prospect that a future government led by figures from the current opposition would fundamentally transform the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians.
She argues that even within the Zionist left there is limited discussion of Palestinian collective rights or subjects such as the evacuation of settlements. Her concern is that a change of government could reduce the openly extreme character of official rhetoric without fundamentally changing the system itself.
That position extends to international expectations surrounding Israel’s next election. Novak says B’Tselem regularly speaks with diplomats and governments that appear to be waiting for an electoral change before reassessing their policies. She believes that approach risks confusing a change in political style with a change in the underlying system.
At the same time, she points to recent international measures concerning Israeli settlements as evidence of a potentially broader understanding. She welcomed the announcement by the United Kingdom, France and Canada that they would prohibit trade with settlements, saying it could indicate recognition that the issue involves more than individual violent settlers. But she argued that such steps remain insufficient.
“If human rights are not universal, they mean nothing,” she said.
Novak also fears that B’Tselem itself could face increasing pressure as Israel becomes more authoritarian. She pointed to the 2021 designation of six Palestinian human rights and civil society organisations as terrorist organisations by an Israeli government that included Benny Gantz, now an opposition politician. Her argument is that registration inside Israel may not permanently protect organisations such as B’Tselem from similar measures.
Her own political transformation was shaped by 7 October. She describes that day as the most frightening she had experienced, particularly the fear of losing control and being unable to protect her family. Yet she says the experience did not lead her back towards the political assumptions she once held.
“I no longer see myself there,” she said. “I see myself as someone who lives here between the river [Jordan] and the sea [Mediterranean]. And I do not see myself as superior to anyone because of my nationality, religion or ethnicity.”
She acknowledges the deaths of friends and acquaintances during the 7 October attack and the suffering of families whose relatives were abducted. But she says the same day also brought fear about what Israel’s response would mean for Palestinians in Gaza, including colleagues with whom she had worked.
That position has cost her friendships but, she says, has also altered her sense of political identity. Within Israeli Jewish society, she regards herself as part of a minority. Looking at the wider population of roughly 15 million people, however, she describes herself differently.
The distinction captures the broader argument running through her interview: the future of Israel and Palestine cannot, in her view, be understood only through the personalities currently occupying political office. It involves competing definitions of security, citizenship, equality and historical responsibility.
For Novak, the central question is whether the political system can eventually be transformed into one based on equal rights rather than hierarchy between groups. She believes such a transformation will come because, in her view, political systems of this kind eventually fall.
Until then, she remains in the uncomfortable position she has occupied for years: an Israeli critic of Israeli policy, leading a human rights organisation whose offices require discretion, arguing that the country’s deepest political problems extend far beyond any single government.
“The family is the family and we carry on, even though we see things very differently,” she said. “But with friends, yes.”
Her final response is less a prediction than an expression of long-term conviction. The political system she criticises, she argues, cannot continue indefinitely. The unresolved question is how much suffering and political pressure will accumulate before its underlying assumptions are seriously confronted.
