Vivian Silver was born in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1949. In 1968, during her freshman year of college, she travelled to Israel for the first time, where she attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and took courses in psychology and English literature. During that time, Vivian was in charge of the Jewish Students Press Service, thus publishing several articles on Israeli-Palestinian relations. Her friend Gerry Serotta, also an author of the paper, recently stated that ‘even then Vivian was devoted to a view that Israeli Jews and Palestinians had to find a way to live together’. A belief that would accompany her throughout her life, despite the many difficulties she encountered, and the continuous wars fought between Israelis and Palestinians.
Between the 1960s and 1970s, Vivian actively participated in the student revolution, denouncing the problems related to the condition of women in Israel and the increasingly marked differences between the living standards of Arab and Jewish citizens. In 1973, together with the activist Shifra Bronznick, she organised the first National Conference of Jewish Women and in 1974 she was among the founders of Kibbutz Gezer, of which she became secretary - even today, Vivian is among the few women to have ever hold this position.
Until the 1990s, Vivian's activism focused mainly on women's rights and on denouncing the gender inequality in Israeli society. In 1981, Vivian established the United Kibbutz Department for the Promotion of Gender Equality and took part as a member in the Subcommittee of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, dedicated to gender equality and the advancement of women in work and economy. In 1990, she moved, along with her husband and children, to Kibbutz Be'eri, located a few kilometres from the Gaza Strip. There, Vivian had the opportunity to get to know closely the large local Bedouin community and the inhabitants of Gaza.
Vivian's commitment, until that time mainly concentrated on gender equality struggles, thus focused on dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians and on the search of a possible peace between two constantly struggling populations. Since 1998, Vivian served as the executive director of the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development, an NGO committed to building peace and sustainable development, for a just and egalitarian society in which Arabs and Jews could live in harmony. Vivian worked to organise support activities for the inhabitants of Gaza, such as professional courses, and within Kibbutz Be'eri, she advocated for Arab construction workers to receive equal compensation.
In 1999, she established - along with Amal Elsana Alh'jooj, an Arab woman - the Arab-Jewish Centre for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation, of which she was the director. Thanks to the charitable projects organized by the Centre in Israel, Gaza, and West Bank, in 2010 Vivian and Amal received the Victor J. Goldberg Prize, an award conferred to Arab and Israeli couples working together for dialogue and peace.
Before the closure of the border with Gaza in 2007, Vivian carried out, alongside residents of the Strip, several intercultural projects, and participated in the work of the NGO B'Tselem, committed to exposing human rights violations perpetrated by Israel in the occupied territories of the West Bank. After the war in Gaza in 2014, Vivian - by then retired - established Women Wage Peace, a feminist and peace movement that aims to put pressure on the government in Tel Aviv in order to achieve, through a fair and equitable bilateral agreement, a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At that stage, Vivian also started working as a volunteer with various organisations committed to dialogue and peace in the Middle East, such as ‘A Road to Recovery’ and ‘Project Rozana’, thus providing financial assistance to Palestinians and helping to transport the sick from the border to Israeli hospitals.
On 4 October 2023, Vivian organised a large peace rally in Jerusalem, which was attended by more than 1,500 people. Three days later, the fury of Hamas hit southern Israel, resulting in the death of more than 1,200 people and the kidnapping of more than 250 innocent civilians. Kibbutz Be'eri, where Vivian had been living for over 30 years, was among the areas most affected by the Hamas massacre. At the moment of the attack, the peace activist was at home alone. Through WhatsApp, Vivian warned her loved ones: ‘they are destroying the door of my house, I am hiding in the wardrobe’. A minute later another message, the last: ‘my battery is almost dead, don't call me’. From then on, total darkness.
Vivian's house was set on fire and destroyed. The activist's relatives at first believed, or at least hoped, that Vivian was being taken prisoner by Hamas and transported to Gaza with the other hostages. After several days, however, the discovery of traces of her DNA on some human remains disproved this hypothesis, officialising her death. Throughout her life, Vivian courageously fought against injustice, advocating for gender equality and Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. Even after her death, her undying message of peace and justice continues to inspire those who, in difficulty and danger, strive for peaceful coexistence in the Middle East. As of September 2024, Vivian Silver has been honoured as Righteous at the Garden of the Righteous of Warsaw.
Cover photo from the Facebook page ‘Missing Vivian Silver’.
