Vivian Silver, a Canadian-Israeli peace activist who has been missing since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack has been confirmed dead.Supplied
Vivian Silver, a Canadian-Israeli peace activist and humanitarian who had been missing since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, has been confirmed dead.
In a statement posted to X, formerly Twitter, Idit Shamir, Toronto’s Israeli Consul-General, said on Monday the 74-year-old had been killed by the militant Islamist group in Kibbutz Be’eri, where she lived, only a few kilometres from the Gaza border. Until now, it had been thought she had been taken hostage into Gaza.
“Our hearts go out to her family and friends,” Ms. Shamir said. “May her memory be a blessing.”
Silver’s son Chen Zeigen said Israeli authorities told him her remains had earlier been found in the kibbutz but were only identified now.
It is believed Ms. Silver is the eighth person with Canadian connections killed in Israel. On Oct. 26, Global Affairs Canada announced seven others, accounting then for six Canadian citizens and one person with “deep connections to Canada.”
Judih Weinstein Haggai, a Canadian citizen in her early 70s with roots in Toronto, remains missing.
In a statement released on X, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly mourned the loss of Ms. Silver, a “lifelong advocate for peace.” “I met her son in Tel Aviv, and he described her as kind, generous, and selfless. Canada mourns her loss with him and her loved ones,” Ms. Joly said.
Ms. Silver was born in Winnipeg and has lived in Israel since 1974. She co-founded a group called Women Wage Peace, which seeks to bring about a political agreement in the Middle East with the full participation of women. She has also volunteered with an organization that drives sick Palestinians from Gaza to Israeli hospitals. She had attended a peace march in Jerusalem just three days before the attack.
Women Wage Peace said in a post to social media that its beloved friend had been killed in her home, and that their hearts are shattered.
In a 2018 posting to the organization’s website, Ms. Silver wrote that she had spent much time in Gaza until the second intifada, which started in 2000, after which she continued working with organizations in the West Bank.
“That’s why it especially infuriates me when people claim: ‘We have no partner on the other side!’” she wrote. “I personally know so many Palestinians who yearn for peace no less than we do.”
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She continued that living near the Gaza border was compelling to her.
“I am driven by the intense desire for security and a life of mutual respect and freedom for both our peoples,” she said. “The thought of yet another war drives me mad. Like the last three, it will not resolve the conflict. It will only bring more dead and wounded.”
Ms. Silver was a widow and grandmother of four, with relatives across Canada.
The last time that friends and family heard from her was on Oct. 7 at around 11 a.m. local time, when she sent text messages about rockets and gunfire outside of her home.
Yonatan Zeigen, Ms. Silver’s youngest son, was speaking with his mother by phone when he quickly realized the violence was intensifying on the streets outside her home.
“I heard shots right outside the window. So we decided it’s better not to speak, so they don’t know she’s there,” said Mr. Zeigen, who lives in Tel Aviv with his family, in an interview with The Globe and Mail last month. Ms. Silver hid in her safe room and corresponded through a messaging app, describing in harrowing detail as militants entered her home.
“We wrote messages up to the point she told me they were inside the house. And that was it.”
On Friday, Israel’s Foreign Ministry revised its death toll from the Oct. 7 attacks to about 1,200, down from an initial estimate of 1,400, but noted this was not a final number. Gaza’s Hamas-run health authority says Israel’s retaliation has killed more than 11,000 people in the enclave, two-thirds of them women and minors.
- With a report from The Canadian Press
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