In August 2024, the text of a speech against anti-Semitism that Croatian actress Mirjam Novak allegedly gave at the UN circulated on social networks. We decided to check the reliability of such publications.
How report users of social networks, Novak spoke at the emergency UN General Assembly in New York, held at the request of the leaders of the European Union and the New Arab Bloc. The Croatian actress, who is named in publications as a representative of Israel, begins her speech with a reminder of the Holocaust. She goes on to criticize world leaders, noting that the lessons of history have taught them nothing: “Now that we are again being robbed, beaten and killed in all your countries, and your courts set murderers free, are you telling us that we have no right to defense?” Novak also draws attention to the fact that, despite centuries of persecution, the Jewish people gave the world many outstanding scientists, innovators, musicians and actors. “Every nation must give to humanity what it does best. The French are cooks and perfumers. The British and Russians are writers and poets. Italians are artists and musicians. The Germans are soldiers and philosophers. And we Jews are geniuses,” the speaker concludes.
The speech was most widely circulated on Facebook, where transcripts were collected tens and even hundreds reposts. Text also shared X users Published it in English too.
Miriam Novak is a German actress with Croatian roots who appears in both German and American films. “Verified” was unable to find information that she ever spoke at the UN. In mid-October 2023, on his Instagram page, Novak spoke out about the Hamas invasion of Israel and the subsequent war in the Gaza Strip, more subdued than in the viral speech: “We must choose humanity - we, the Germans, the Americans, the Lebanese, the Egyptians, the Israelis and the Palestinians. And then the relationship will be different!”
Posts with a speech attributed to the actress are often accompanied by a photo of a woman in a blue suit on the podium UN General Assembly. However, Google reverse image search results show that the photo has nothing to do with Novak - it shows Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez during her speeches at the 74th session of the General Assembly on 27 September 2019. A badge in the form of a Venezuelan flag is attached to the lapel of the politician's jacket.
Searching for an excerpt from the text of the speech helped find it original source — it turned out to be Eduard Topol’s novel “The Appearance of the Prophet,” published in 2021. This is a political thriller, the action of which takes place simultaneously in two time layers: in the late 1970s and in 2024. True, in viral publications the text is slightly changed. So, in Topol, a heroine named Miriam Novak is the Prime Minister of Israel, and her speech does not begin, but continues with the words: “As you can see, 80 years ago, Europe, led by Germany, carried out an ethnic cleansing.” In the novel, the Assembly participants are shown scenes of the Holocaust, “reconstructed by our creators of holographic reality.” “All the events of 2024 were invented by the author and perhaps will not happen in the future, and all the events of the last century have gone down in history - perhaps forever,” it says in the novel's summary. It is noteworthy that Topol himself has been living in Israel in recent years - he moved there from the USA, where he emigrated back in 1978.
Until 2023 this passage if and published on the Internet, then exactly as a quote from Topol’s book. The earliest publication we found where the text is presented as an actual speech at the UN was posted on December 30, 2023 on an anonymous English-language blog Dus iz Nies!! Rare view... on the Blogspot platform. No later than February 6, 2024, a similar post first appeared in Russian - on that day the speech was published in Facebook group “All the most interesting things about Jews: news, humor, history, poems, songs, inventions” (more than 173,000 participants). Obviously, in the process of reverse translation, “Miriam” turned into “Miryam”, and the actress appeared in the text only because her first and last names were almost identical.
Thus, the viral text is not a real speech by the Croatian actress and Israeli representative to the UN, but a slightly edited excerpt from a 2021 novel.
Cover photo: UN Photo
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