CANADIAN PEACE ACTIVIST
Revered peace activist is missing after sending harrowing text message during Hamas assault

Rich Schapiro and Marissa Parra
Tue, October 10, 2023 a

As soon as she heard that Hamas militants were launching attacks in Israel, Avital Brown sent a WhatsApp message to her friend Vivian Silver, a Canadian-born peace activist who lived near the Gaza Strip.

In less than a minute, Silver, 74, responded from her home in Kibbutz Be’eri.

“It’s absolute chaos here,” she wrote in Hebrew at 7:54 a.m. Saturday, according to text messages shared with NBC News. “Terrorists have infiltrated Be’eri. There is shooting and screaming.”

Brown replied immediately but never heard back.

Silver is among those feared to have been killed on the spot or abducted by the militants and taken to Gaza, a place she knows well.

For nearly 50 years, Silver has worked to improve the plight of Palestinians and create a shared society between Jews and Arabs, having gone so far as to meet cancer-stricken Gaza residents at the border crossing and drive them to Jerusalem for treatment.

The silver-haired grandmother is regarded on both sides of the border as an irrepressible force, according to those who know and work with her.

“I’ve talked to Palestinians who feel completely devastated, like it was a family member who was taken,” said Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian American who operates MEJDI Tours, which offers trips to Israel led by guides from both sides of the conflict.

“I hope that the people who took her realize who she is and what a beautiful person she is,” Abu Sarah added.

While Abu Sarah and other friends and family members don’t know what exactly happened to Silver, the lack of news leads them to believe she is among the Israeli captives in Gaza.

“No one told us if Israeli soldiers got to her house yet,” her son Yonatan Zeigen told Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper. “So there is the possibility that’s she dead there, inside. But from what we gather she’s in Gaza.”

Zeigen told NBC News Tuesday morning that the authorities were still clearing the kibbutz of explosives and he had yet to hear any news about his mother.

Gershon Baskin, an activist who helped negotiate the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier Hamas took captive in 2006 and set free five years later, has known Silver for more than 30 years.

“She has lots of friends in Gaza and in the Bedouin community in Israel who, I am sure, want her to be returned safely to her family,” he said in a message to NBC News. “This is a great tragedy for her family and for all of us. I am sure that she will be there to help the other more than 100 hostages, and I have no doubt that her captors will have great respect for her.”

Silver, who was born and raised in Winnipeg, moved to Israel in 1974.

She first worked for a nonprofit organization devoted to social justice and gender equality. Years later, in 1998, she became the executive director of the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development, where she launched an initiative to train and empower the local Arab Bedouin community.

She and her Arab partner in the effort, Amal Elsana Alh'jooj, were awarded the 2011 Victor J. Goldberg Peace Prize from the New York-based Institute for International Education. Judges praised their "efforts to promote peace and development within society."

In early 2014, she retired, became a grandmother and found herself in a period of soul-searching.

"I had to acknowledge that after 40 years of peace activism, the Left, of which I was a proud member, had not succeeded in achieving its goal of ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," she wrote in a 2018 blog post. "I decided that I would no longer do more of the same thing, that I must find another way."

She became a leader of Women Wage Peace, a grassroots organization made up of thousands of Arab and Jewish women seeking a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“I spent much time in Gaza until the outbreak of the second intifada. We continued working with organizations in the West Bank,” Silver wrote in the post. “That’s why it especially infuriates me when people claim: ‘We have no partner on the other side!’ I personally know so many Palestinians who yearn for peace no less than we do.”

Back home, longtime friends in Canada see Silver as a paragon of activism and moral clarity.

"She is somebody who has always, always worked for what she believes in, and she believes in peace and a shared society in Israel," said Lynne Mitchell, who met Silver at a B'nai B'rith Youth Organization event when they were 15. "She went there for that purpose when she was very young and has remained true to that her whole life."

Silver is a widow with two adult sons. Her American husband died four years ago, friends said.

Silver’s activism went beyond leading marches and rallies.

In addition to ferrying Gaza residents to Israeli hospitals for cancer treatments, her friends said, she also traveled to the border to make sure Arab laborers who worked at her kibbutz got paid during periods when they were barred from entering Israel.

Others who work to promote peace in Israel see Silver as a "titan in our space," said John Lyndon, the executive director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace, a network of more than 160 Israeli-Palestinian organizations engaged in grassroots peace building.

"Its easy to be left-wing and pro-peace if you live in north Tel Aviv. She lives at the Gaza border, right in the most difficult place for Israelis, where you can't escape the reality of the conflict,” he said. “And it's not just about where she lives; it's what she does every hour of every day. She's walking the walk.”

An unknown number of Israeli soldiers and civilians were taken hostage by Hamas fighters who poured into Israel by land, sea and air Saturday to launch a surprise attack staggering in scope. More than 100 people have been discovered dead at Silver's kibbutz, according to the Israeli volunteer rescue organization ZAKA.

On Monday, a spokesperson for the military wing of Hamas said militants will kill one civilian hostage every time Israel targets civilians in their homes in Gaza “without warning."

Three days before the Hamas assault, Silver led a rally in Jerusalem where thousands of women — Jews and Arabs, secular and religious — marched shoulder to shoulder. Dignitaries from Israel, Finland and Ireland also attended, according to Women Wage Peace.

Brown, the woman who received the text from Silver as the attack was unfolding, said she gave her fellow Women Wage Peace member a warm embrace before they bade each other farewell.

Silver told her to come visit her kibbutz. It’s so quiet there, she said, according to Brown, who lives in Tel Aviv.

“I’m glad that I hugged her on Wednesday,” Brown said. “And I’m definitely hoping that it’s not the last time I get to hug her.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com




Israeli Humanitarian Who Fought To End Occupation Feared To Be Among Hamas Captives

Sanjana Karanth
Tue, October 10, 2023 at 11:26 AM MDT·4 min read

A Canada-born Jewish humanitarian who dedicated most of her life to helping Palestinians has gone missing after Hamas fighters attacked Israel over the weekend.

Vivian Silver lives near the Gaza Strip in southern Israel’s Be’eri kibbutz. After Hamas fighters launched a surprise attack on Israel on Saturday, the 74-year-old hid at home and communicated with her son over the phone, he told CBC News. She texted him that the militants were in her house.

“She has a really great sense of humor, so we joked up until that point,” Yonatan Zeigen, who is based in Tel Aviv, told CBC News’ Adrienne Arsenault. “We were joking and then we said, ‘OK, it’s time to stop joking,’ and just expressed love for each other, and that was it.”

The attacks by Hamas, the armed group that rules over the millions of Palestinians in Gaza, have resulted in over 900 people killed in Israel, according to the nation’s military. Palestinian officials say that more than 700 people have been killed in sealed-off Gaza and the occupied West Bank since Israel launched massive retaliatory attacks with the support of Western nations.

Many civilians are still considered missing as the death toll continues to climb. Hamas has claimed that it took roughly 100 people captive, and recently threatened to kill one Israeli civilian hostage any time Israel targets civilians in their homes in Gaza “without prior warning.”

Zeigen told CBC that he does not believe his mother is missing, but instead either dead in her house or among the hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas. Authorities were still reportedly clearing the kibbutz of explosives and have not been able to provide an update on Silver’s whereabouts.

Loved ones of Silver have told media outlets that the Winnipeg-born woman dedicated her life to ending the Israeli occupation and is highly regarded by both Israelis and Palestinians as a force who fought for lasting, permanent peace.

“She’s a woman of small stature, but in spirit she’s a giant,” Zeigen said on CBC News. “She dedicated her life to peace work. She came to Israel 50 years ago and just after the [1973 Arab-Israeli War], which is kind of ironic, and since then she was just involved in activities to end the occupation and to solve the conflict.”

Silver was the executive director of the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development, an organization that describes itself as promoting a society where Arabs and Jews can cohabitate while preserving their respective identity and culture. She and activist Amal Elsana Alh’jooj earned the 2011 Victor J. Goldberg Peace Prize from the New York-based Institute for International Education for launching a program to train and empower the local Bedouin community.

“I had to acknowledge that after 40 years of peace activism, the Left, of which I was a proud member, had not succeeded in achieving its goal of ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Silver wrote in a 2018 blog post. “I decided that I would no longer do more of the same thing, that I must find another way.”

Silver leads the group Women Wage Peace, an organization of thousands of Arab and Jewish women seeking to end the Israeli occupation and create lasting peace in the region. She also volunteers with Road to Recovery, where she drives sick Palestinians from Gaza ― what human rights activists call an open-air prison with close to no access to medical help ― to Israeli hospitals.

“I spent much time in Gaza until the outbreak of the second intifada. We continued working with organizations in the West Bank,” Silver wrote in her post. “That’s why it especially infuriates me when people claim: ‘We have no partner on the other side!’ I personally know so many Palestinians who yearn for peace no less than we do.”

Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian American who runs a tour company that offers trips to the region, told NBC News that the lack of news on Silver’s whereabouts could be a sign that she is among the captives.

“I’ve talked to Palestinians who feel completely devastated, like it was a family member who was taken,” Abu Sarah told the outlet. “I hope that the people who took her realize who she is and what a beautiful person she is.”

What is a kibbutz? Israel's farming communes were among hardest hit in Hamas attack

More than 100 bodies were recovered in Be’eri Kibbutz alone.

Dylan Stableford
·Senior Writer
Updated Wed, October 11, 2023 at 11:51 AM MDT·3 min read
2.4k



An Israeli soldier walks by a house destroyed by Hamas militants in Kibbutz Be'eri on Wednesday. (Baz Ratner/AP)


During their surprise attack on Israel that left more than 1,200 people dead, Hamas militants targeted several communal settlements known as kibbutzim near the border with Gaza.

What is a kibbutz?

Named for the Hebrew word for “gathering,” a kibbutz is typically an agrarian settlement in Israel. The first kibbutz, a farming commune known as Degania just south of the sea of Galilee, was founded in 1910. It’s now a museum. Today, there are roughly 270 kibbutzim — the plural form of kibbutz — in Israel. Most are now private but rooted in the socialist philosophy of communal and cooperative living.
What was the idea behind them?

“Jewish settlers behind the movement envisioned the kibbutzim as a place where Zionism met Marxism,” the Washington Post explains. “Kibbutzim and kibbutz culture were originally dominated by Ashkenazi Jews, or Jews of Eastern European descent, and were seen as less inclusive of those of Middle Eastern descent. These communities ranged from 50 residents to 2,000 and cropped up in places such as the border with Lebanon, the Jordan River and around the Gaza Strip, and many were originally built on what was then Palestinian land.”
Which kibbutzim were targeted?

Israeli soldiers remove a body in Kibbutz Be'eri on Wednesday. 

(Baz Ratner/AP) 


Reuters reporters who visited Kfar Aza, an Israeli commune just three miles east of Gaza, witnessed a horrific scene:

A baby's crushed crib lying outside a burnt-out home. Corpses strewn on streets. Body bags lined up on an outdoor basketball court. The stench of death everywhere.

Just a few days ago this was the sleepy, scenic kibbutz of Kfar Aza, an Israeli farming community of about 750 people, many of them families with young children. Now it's become a charnel house after Hamas gunmen burst out of the Gaza Strip on Saturday and laid waste to the village.

"Mothers, fathers, babies, young families killed in their beds, in the protection room, in the dining room, in their garden," Israeli Major General Itai Veruv said on Tuesday, the seasoned soldier visibly shaken as troops went door-to-door to collect the bodies of residents killed in their homes.

"It's not a war, it's not a battlefield. It's a massacre," Veruv said. Some victims were decapitated, he added. "I've never seen anything like this, and I've served for 40 years."

An Israeli soldier holds a dog in kibbutz Kfar Azza on Tuesday. 

(Ohad Zwigenberg/AP) 

Reuters: How an Israeli kibbutz 'paradise' turned into hell in Hamas attack

IDF DISINFORMATION/MISINFORMATION/RUMOURMONGERING

CNN: Children found ‘butchered’ in Israeli kibbutz, IDF says

GMA: The 'horrendous' toll on children caught in the Israel-Gaza conflict

Similar horrors were seen in Be’eri, a kibbutz of about 1,000 residents located in the northwestern Negev desert along the Gaza strip.

CNN reported that at least 107 bodies were found there Monday.

“Heavily armed militants arrived in Be’eri on motorbikes around 7 a.m., just half an hour after they breached the typically high-tech, tightly guarded border fence between Gaza and Israel,” CNN said, citing surveillance video showing armed militants taking civilians, including women and children, hostage before killing them.

The attack on Be’eri came around the same time as Hamas militants descended upon the nearby Nova music festival, where more than 260 bodies were later found.

Burned out cars are seen at the site of the rave where at least 260 were killed in a surprise attack on Saturday. (Ohad Zwigenberg/AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)