Noa Avishag Schnall, an Arab Jew of Yemeni descent who sailed aboard a vessel called The Conscience to break the siege on Gaza in October 2025, was in India last month to speak at the Jaipur Literature Festival held from January 15-19. The journalist, photographer, human rights activist and author was born and raised in Los Angeles, and is currently based in Paris.In a video dispatch recorded after her release from Israeli detention, she put on record how she had to endure beatings, rape threats and suffocation. “I was hung from the metal shackles on my wrists and ankles and beaten on my stomach, back, face, ear and skull by a group of men and women guards, one of whom sat on my neck and face, blocking my airways,” she said.Having renounced the Israeli citizenship that was passed down to her through her mother, she is fiercely critical of her Zionist upbringing. In this interview conducted at the Jaipur Literature Festival, she speaks about being part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, her time in prison, her mixed-race heritage, anti-Semitism as a European construct, and the power and joy in resistance.How does it feel to be in India for the Jaipur Literature Festival at a time when the country’s official position vis-a-vis the Middle East is changing, with India moving closer to Israel, and marking a visible shift from its traditional solidarity with Palestine?Well, going by my experience, the people of India are still quite committed in their solidarity with Palestine. I am not a politician, so I cannot speak directly to the leadership, but I know that the majority of people all over the world believe in protecting human rights, and they stand in solidarity with the Palestinians. And we, together, will break the siege and free Palestine.What was it like to be on the Wijdan (The Conscience), a vessel that was part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, one of several aid convoys determined to break the blockade on Gaza? What led you to join it, and how do you assess its impact?A genocide is going on. Countries and government actors have not been fulfilling their duties, or upholding the Geneva Conventions that spell out principles of international humanitarian law. That is why civilians had to act in their place. I was on the medics and journalists’ boat, responding to our siblings’ call. They were being targeted for assassination, so it was a call that needed to be answered urgently. Our fear was overridden by a moral obligation.In terms of impact, well, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition wasn’t set up as a team of saviours. We believe that the Palestinians are going to be the ones to liberate themselves. We just followed their lead in terms of what needed to be done to help progress the goals that they want to achieve.When your life was under threat, what kept you sane?I was detained in Ktzi’ot and Givon prisons in occupied Palestine for about five days. Did they treat us badly? Did they abuse us? Did they terrorise us? Yes, but I knew that there would be an expiration point. You have to keep that in perspective when you know that Palestinians are there for an undetermined amount of time even if there are no charges against them. They never know when they will be released. They are tortured. Many of them are killed.Sanity wasn’t really an issue because I realised that this is what Palestinians endure every day. Having renounced my Israeli citizenship, I had the advantage of understanding the mentality we were walking into and would be surrounded by. I was less afraid because of that. I knew we were going to be terrorised. I am very familiar with that society, so I had an inkling of what to expect.Conversations about outcomes usually tend to focus on hard gains that can be quantified or at least articulated in precise terms. What are the intangibles that emerge from this kind of activist work? Tell us about the friendships that were forged onboard. I am sure that I am not the first person to say this but there is tremendous power and joy in resistance. And one of those joys is expanding your community. I definitely did that on The Conscience. I am not sure how visible these people want to be, but I will give you one example because the person is already quite well-known. It was an honour to be on The Conscience with Huwaida Arraf. She is a Palestinian-American human rights lawyer, who was on the Free Gaza boats back in 2008, so there was much to learn from her in 2025. She is fantastic!When did you grow into your political consciousness?Well, I am not sure when exactly, but I can say with certainty that I became more politically conscious the farther I got from the United States. I grew up in a Zionist community in Los Angeles. Like in the European colony known as Israel, I was growing up in a bubble. I was fed all these Zionist ideals, and the farther away I got from it, the clearer I was able to think.What would you attribute that shift to? Was it the reading you did and the company you kept, or did growing older just made you see things differently?Well, I would say that I started out ill at ease with Zionist thinking. But, as a child, I did not have the vocabulary to call it out. You see, I grew up in a mixed-race household, with my mom being Yemeni and very dark-skinned, and my dad being Polish Jew and obviously white. The way that my mom was treated within the Los Angeles Jewish community was racist, plain and simple. I already knew whatever this was that I don’t have a name for is something that doesn’t sit right with me. And the older I got, the more I began to see and realise that there was a hierarchy determined by social class and colourism with the Jewish community I was part of.I wanted nothing to do with it. Later, I figured out that the difference between Zionism and Judaism is quite huge. There are many beautiful things in Judaism that I love to identify with. But that early experience of seeing my mom encounter discrimination set me on a course for trying to understand the unease I was feeling. I was able to dissect it better the farther I got from the community. I live in Paris now. I cannot claim that there isn’t a Zionist community in Paris. There is! But, given my specific experience, I needed to leave the US and get some distance.The US is often viewed as a country that offered refuge and safety to Jewish people escaping persecution under the Nazis. Would it be accurate to say that the experience of anti-Semitism in Europe has been different from that in America? No, this is a false narrative. The United States turned away several Jews after World War II. A lot of Jews who escaped persecution did end up in the US but it would be incorrect to say that all Jews were welcomed. My father is an American of Ashkenazi Polish descent. My paternal lineage experienced pogroms and anti-Semitism. My maternal lineage, which comes from Yemen, had a different experience. Jews existed in Yemen for over 2,000 years, and they did not experience anti-Semitism because anti-Semitism is a European construct. Sure, there was discrimination against Jews sometimes. But anti-Semitism as we know it did not exist. To put it bluntly, anti-Semitism did not originate in the Arab and Muslim world. It was exported there.A lot of Jewish people who are speaking out against the genocide in Palestine are looking for vocabulary and practices within Judaism to onboard more people to the anti-Zionist cause. What are your thoughts on that? What is your relationship with faith?Well, I believe that there are beautiful elements in all faiths, and that includes Judaism, but I would also say that Judaism should not be centred when a genocide is going on and we are fighting for the lives of Palestinians who are being brutally killed by the Israeli state.You identify yourself as an Arab Jew. Could you help unpack this term for people who tend to assume that ‘Arab’ and ‘Jew’ are oppositional identities?Sure! When I am speaking with fellow Arabs, I identify myself as Yemeni. But, in other contexts, I describe myself as an Arab Jew. There is a false polarity when people say, “Oh, Arabs and Jews, they don’t get along.” I want to tell these people, “Hello! You are looking at an Arab Jew. I contain both identities.” The other problem is that many people don’t realise that not all Jews are European. It is Zionist indoctrination that has demonised the word ‘Arab’, and it doesn’t let Arab Jews use the word to identify themselves. My family, for example, is extremely Zionist. They refuse to identify as Arab even though they are Yemeni. ‘Arab’ is a geographical and cultural term. As an anti-Zionist, I am proudly taking it back to resist indoctrination.How does the anti-Zionist movement align with or speak to other movements, say, for instance, the feminist movement and the queer rights movement?That’s a great question. I have seen that, in most liberatory movements, brown queer people are sort of at the bottom of the pile in terms of rights, so they are often on the frontlines in terms of fighting to get those rights back. It is important to remember that no one is free until we are all free. I do believe that. The genocide in Gaza is the test of our time, right? It is revealing the true faces of so many people. We must also turn our attention to the genocide happening in Sudan, what’s happening in other places like the Congo, Ukraine and Kashmir. Liberation is for everybody, and that includes women, queer people, non-binary people, all people in the world.Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist, educator, and literary critic. His work has appeared in various anthologies, including Borderlines: Volume 1 (2015), Clear Hold Build (2019), Fearless Love (2019) and Bent Book (2020). He can be reached @chintanwriting on Instagram and X.