Luis Granena
What criteria did Hamas fighters choose to kill some and take others in the brutal attack on Israeli territory on October 7? Nobody knows. Perhaps it was just an inexplicable lottery that made Vivian Silver (74 years old) one of those who, according to almost all indications, were brought alive to the Gaza Strip. This Jew, who came to Israel half a century ago from Canada, her country of birth, has not stopped fighting for peace, women’s rights and equality between communities, in the middle of a powder keg in which hatred continues to penetrate to the very core. That is the paradox that emerges from the statements of those who know her and have worked with her in the numerous initiatives in which she tirelessly participates. Her colleagues still look in disbelief at the picture of her demonstrating for peace with her colleagues from Women Wage Peace on the streets of Jerusalem on October 4th, just three days before her capture.
At a time when persecution by the Israeli authorities looms over anyone who does not fully follow the ultra-doctrine of the government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, the value as a hinge in the conflict of characters like Silver becomes even more important. She told one of her children live through messages from the WhatsApp application what a hell she had experienced on October 7th. Several dozen jihadists attacked Kibbutz Beeri, where he had lived since 1990, mercilessly killing residents. Hundreds of thousands of residents of this community built near Gaza were murdered. In total, 1,400 Israelis were present that day, the vast majority civilians of all ages. According to the Hebrew state, another 200 have been taken hostage and between 100 and 200 remain officially missing.
When the macabre search for victims in Beeri came to the activist’s house, she was hidden in a closet. Between the shots and the ever-increasing shouts in Arabic, he still had time to send a few final messages to one of his two sons, Yonatan Zeigen. It was 10:54 a.m. on that unfortunate Saturday. “The gunmen are at home,” he wrote. Finally, some mutual words of affection with a touch of bitter farewell moments before they found her, as he himself says in a video published on the Facebook profile of the social network created to demand her release.
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Zeigen describes his mother as “a strong woman, even if she seems fragile and small.” Someone who has “devoted his life to promoting peace and justice.” She follows in her mother’s footsteps and, despite the enormous uncertainty in which the family lives, flees the path of revenge. She insists that security between the parties is the only way to live in peace. “Vivian raised her children according to her way of thinking and now shared her militancy with the joy of her grandchildren,” defends Arial Daloumi, director of the Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment, Equality and Cooperation (known by the acronym Ajeec-Nisped). , which Silver founded in 2000 and led for a decade. The foundation of this organization is joint working groups of Arabs and Jews, initiatives that Silver has always promoted and that seeks to ignore the walls that separate them, both physical, emotional and legal. “At heart, Vivian is a great person who believes in the goodness of people and in serving others,” summarizes Kher Elbás, a Bedouin activist who co-directed with Silver Ajeec-Nisped.
Part of Silver’s militancy is fighting to ensure that residents of the Gaza prison zone can move, work and enjoy human rights that Israel almost systematically denies them. After the Israeli authorities recently decided to seal off the Gaza Strip, the activist has promoted the transfer of sick Gazans for treatment in Israeli medical centers. Now she is the one who has been forcibly relocated to the interior of the same Gaza Strip that she visited as an activist, despite her country’s security forces allowing it.
The house of the kidnapped activist Vivian Silver in Kibbutz Beeri (Israel) after the Hamas attack on October 7th. LUIS DE VEGA
Those who, like Elbás, are waiting for his release do not even want to imagine what he is going through. However, they are aware that their captors cannot change their way of thinking. Some even try to get her the glasses she left behind, which she needs for her daily life. “If I could penetrate her mind, she would certainly be able to separate those who committed this atrocity against her and her Beeri community and other communities from the ordinary people of Gaza. Vivian is a hostage, just like the residents of Gaza, hostages of methods that we cannot but describe as war crimes and crimes against humanity,” describes Ariel Daloumi.
House 507, that of Vivian Silver, is razed and burned today after a brutal battle of about 12 hours in Kibbutz Beeri, which this special envoy was able to visit a week later amid the smell of death. “The only solution for our region is the solution of peace. “Surely she still supports the Palestinians and thinks that the methods used this Saturday are useless,” concludes Daloumi.
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