A Legacy of Peace-Making

Yonatan Zeigen is the son of Vivian Silver, an Israeli Canadian peace activist killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on her kibbutz and other communities in southern Israel. (Lily Martin/CBC)

 Yesterday, on the solemn third anniversary of the attacks by the terrorist organization Hamas, I wrote about Vivian Silver, the Canadian/Israeli peace activist who was one of the people killed that day. Silver lived in an Israeli kibbutz not far from Gaza and worked for decades to build bridges of trust with Palestinians.

Last evening I saw a headline in a CBC news article which must be a radio interview as well. The headline quotes from an opinion piece written by one of Silver's sons in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper:

Don't use my mother's name to justify killing in Gaza, says son of peace activist killed Oct. 7 Yonatan Zeigen reflects on 3 years since his mother, Israeli Canadian Vivian Silver, was killed

He expresses his concern that the Israeli government is using his mother's name to justify the campaign of violence against Gazans Despite the tragic loss of his parent Zeigen is determined to carry on her legacy, even though there is resistance to the peace work he is engaged in. 

We know that despite the uneasy ceasefire between Israel and Hamas more than a thousand Gazans have died since it began. Recovery for the hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans is happening at a snail's pace and many are hungry and impoverished. The efforts to remove the rubble is hampered by a lack of equipment with additional machinery blocked from entering Gaza. 

 

I saw a photo of children walking to school through the destruction and thought of my own grandchildren getting on buses in the morning on their way to safe environments for learning. Most of the children in Gaza are being educated in tents because their school buildings were obliterated. They sit on the ground for their lessons because there are no desks or chairs. 

Yonatan Zeigen is carrying on his mother's  legacy of peace activism, working with Parents Circle – Families Forum, a coalition of Israelis and Palestinians who have lost loved ones to violence. Sadly, this organization is banned from Israeli schools.

We can pray for those who continue "waging peace" in Israel and the Occupied Territories in the midst of so much violence and mistrust. 

The CBC includes an interview with Yonatan and here is the final question he was asked:  

What would you like our listeners to know about your mother? 

I'm not sure that I want your listeners to know something specific. I know what she meant for me. 

She was a very dominant figure in my life, both as a mother, as a companion, as a grandmother to my kids, and both in shaping my perception of the world, my ability to feel comfortable with complexities in life, to express critical thinking.

I feel like she gave me a very sound infrastructure to [become] the person I am today. And I think she was meaningful, not only to me, but to a big variety of people all over the world that knew her directly or through her work.

Gaza now has the highest number of amputee children per capita in the world, according to data published by the NGO Aldeas Infantiles. Gazan photojournalist Saher Alghorra shows how the population of the Strip is trying to rebuild their lives