Israeli-Canadian Peace Activist’s Remains Identified, Weeks After Believed Kidnapped

Vivian Silver was a renowned pacifist who spent her adult life decrying Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and advocating for peace. For weeks, her family thought she had been taken hostage by Hamas and were doing everything they could to bring her back home. Now, her family confirms that she died in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.

The Israeli-Canadian activist’s remains were found some time ago, but only identified on Monday, five weeks after the attacks, one of her sons told CBC News and CTV News.

“We never stopped hoping that she was kidnapped, that she’s alive, that she’s with other people, that she would come back to us,” Yael Braudo-Bahat, a co-director of Women Wage Peace and Silver’s mentee, told the New York Times. Braudo-Bahat said she will continue her work, following in Silver’s path. “I’m going to apply all of the things I learned from her so that there will be peace here.”

Her sons Yonatan and Chen Zeigen told the Washington Post that Silver had been appalled by Israel’s rightward shift and the proliferation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. She had been a vocal opponent of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken the government’s judicial branch and protested against Israeli military operations that killed Palestinian civilians.

“It’s very overwhelming but not completely surprising,” Yonatan told the BBC in an interview about the attack and the aftermath. “It’s not sustainable to live in a state of war for so long and now it bursts. It bursts.”

Silver’s family and friends told media outlets that she would not have supported Israel’s response to Hamas’ attacks, which has taken the form of relentless bombardment of Gaza. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, according to local health authorities.

Silver regularly drove sick Palestinians, usually children, from Gaza into Israel for medical treatment as part of the Road to Recovery organization.

“I am sure she would not want the violence to continue, certainly not in her name or in the name of saving her and the other hostages,” Ariella Giniger, a friend and activist who lives in Israel, told Time Magazine before Silver’s remains were identified.

In response to the war in Gaza in 2014 that killed 2,251 Palestinians, Silver helped found the grassroots peace advocacy group Women Wage Peace, which boasts 44,000 members committed to promoting diplomatic solutions, according to its website. 

Just days before her death, Silver helped organize “The Mother’s Call,” an annual rally calling for a peaceful future for Israel and Palestine, in coordination with WWP’s Palestinian sister movement, Women of the Sun.

“Our hearts are shattered,” WWP wrote on social media when the news of her death broke.

Silver was also passionate about building bridges between Jewish and Arab communities, putting together initiatives to build one-on-one relationships. In 2000, she helped found the Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation, known locally as AJEEC-NISPED.

“She embodies true morality and belief in human equality, not as slogans but in the way she lives her everyday life,” her former AJEEC-NISPED co-director Kher Albaz said. 

Silver moved from Winnipeg, Canada to Israel in the early 1970s. In the 1990s, she moved close to the Gaza border in order to be nearer to her humanitarian work. The leftist commune where she lived, kibbutz Be’eri, was devastated during the Oct. 7 attacks, with “entire families wiped out,” according to a woman who survived the attack.

John Lyndon, executive director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace, shared a photo of himself with Silver at the border between Gaza and Israel. 

“Overlooking a Gaza she wanted to be free, & at peace,” he wrote on social media. “Rest in power, Vivian.”