Sara Boboltz
Tue, November 14, 2023
A demonstrator holds a poster bearing the image of Israeli-Canadian Vivian Silver during a protest for her release in Jerusalem on Oct. 29.
Vivian Silver, the Canadian Israeli humanitarian believed to have been abducted by Hamas militants during their Oct. 7 attack, was confirmed dead Monday by Israeli authorities, according to her sons.
Silver, a 74-year-old retiree, had for years dedicated herself to the cause of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. She was at home in Kibbutz Be’eri near the Gaza Strip when militants stormed the community, prompting her to flee to a safe room where she was able to text loved ones until intruders set the house ablaze.
Her sons, Yonatan Zeigen and Chen Zeigen, told multipleoutlets that Silver’s remains were identified from the rubble of her home. While the safe room had been incinerated, no body was initially found.
For five weeks, her family and friends thought she was one of around 240 hostages that Israel says Hamas is hiding in the Gaza Strip.
Silver was a well-known activist figure who lobbied for a diplomatic solution to the regional conflict and volunteered to drive Palestinian children from Gaza into Israel for medical treatments. She fought against Israel’s blockade of Gaza and, in the aftermath of the country’s 2014 war with Hamas, she helped start the activist group Women Wage Peace, which posted a tribute to her on its website.
“We will not rest until we achieve the goal to which you dedicated your life’s work,” the group said.
A Palestinian friend, Samah Salaime, wrote that “nothing” prepared her for news of Silver’s death. She recalled, in a piece for +972 Magazine, Silver’s humor and determination to breathe fresh life into the peace movement last November after an election ushered in a new, far-right government.
Salaime recalled Silver saying, “Our camp has lost quite a few times; we’ve taken many hits on the jaw. And I’ve been through plenty in my own life as well. I’ve learned a lot, the hard way, about Arab-Jewish partnership, and I know that when it succeeds, it succeeds because every side understands that the justice it seeks depends heavily on the justice of the other side. Closing the gap comes from collaborative work, and not from struggling against one another.”
Silver’s sons gave repeated interviews to news outlets while they believed her to be a hostage. They shared how she grew up in Winnipeg, Canada, choosing to move to Israel in the 1970s to lobby for peace and help start a kibbutz, a type of collective community traditionally based in agriculture.
Yonatan and Chen Zeigen told The Washington Post they were sure that their mother would have opposed Israel’s retaliatory bombardment of Gaza.
More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed so far, according to the Palestinian health authority run by Hamas.
Silver carried a relentlessly optimistic attitude. Yonatan told the Post: “I would tell her, ‘Israel is dead. It’s hopeless,’ and she would say, ‘Peace could come tomorrow.’”
Renowned Canadian-born Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver is confirmed killed in Hamas attack
AMY TEIBEL
Updated Tue, November 14, 2023
A person holds a poster of Vivian Silver ,top center, as medical staff and health professionals attend a demonstration in front of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in London, Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023, calling for an immediate intervention in the case of the hostages kidnapped from Israel on Oct. 7. Vivian Silver, a Canadian-born Israeli activist who devoted her life to seeking peace with the Palestinians, was confirmed killed in Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Vivian Silver, a Canadian-born Israeli activist who devoted her life to seeking peace with the Palestinians, was confirmed killed in Hamas’ Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel.
For 38 days, Silver, who had moved to Israel in the 1970s and made her home in Kibbutz Be’eri, was believed to be among the nearly 240 hostages held in the Gaza Strip. But identification of some of the most badly burned remains has gone slowly, and her family was notified of her death on Monday.
Silver was a dominant figure in several groups that promoted peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as a prominent Israeli human rights group. She also volunteered with a group that drove Gaza cancer patients to Israeli hospitals for medical care.
“On the one hand, she was small and fragile. Very sensitive,” her son Yonatan Zeigen told Israel Radio on Tuesday. “On the other hand, she was a force of nature. She had a giant spirit. She was very assertive. She had very strong core beliefs about the world and life.”
Zeigen said he texted with his mother during the attack. The exchanges started out lighthearted, with Silver maintaining her sense of humor, he said. Suddenly, he said, there was a dramatic downturn when she understood the end had come, and militants stormed her house.
“Her heart would have been broken” by the events of Oct. 7 and its aftermath, Zeigen said. “She worked all her life, you know, to steer us off this course. And in the end, it blew up in her face.”
At least 1,200 people were killed in Hamas attacks on Israel while more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed so far in the Israeli war in Gaza, now in its 39th day.
“We went through three horrific wars in the space of six years,” Silver said in a 2017 interview with The Associated Press. “At the end of the third one, I said: 'No more. We each have to do whatever we can to stop the next war. And it’s possible. We must reach a diplomatic agreement.'”
Zeigen said he has now taken on his mother's baton.
“I feel like I’m in a relay race,” he said. “She has passed something on to me now. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but I think we can’t turn the clock back now. We have to create something new now, something in the direction of what she worked for.”
Israeli peace activist identified after being kidnapped, killed by Hamas terrorists
Stepheny Price
Mon, November 13, 2023
The Israeli peace activist and leader of Women Wage Peace, who was thought to be kidnapped by Hamas terrorists, has been identified five weeks after she was killed.
Forensic examiners have identified the remains as Vivian Silver, 74, confirming she was killed during the October 7 massacres in southern Israel by Hamas terrorists.
According to the Women Wage Peace page, early Saturday morning on October 7, Silver wrote to say that terrorists had infiltrated the kibbutz and entered her home.
The post stated she hid behind a cupboard door and since 11:07 a.m. and had not been heard from again. The page indicated that Silver had been most likely abducted by Hamas terrorists and taken into Gaza.
Vivian Silver, 74
The organization said Silver had been transporting ailing Gazans from the border checkpoint to Israeli hospitals for years and was a renowned peace activist in many other organizations.
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