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My mother had a plan for peace for Israel and the Palestinians – but she was killed on 7 October

Renowned activist Vivian Silver died in the Hamas attack on 7 October. Now, six months after Israel’s ground offensive inside Gaza began, her son Yonatan Zeigen writes on their shared belief of what’s needed for both the Israeli and Palestinian people

Saturday 27 April 2024 13:25 BST
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Yonatan Zeigen (left) with his mother Vivian Silver
Yonatan Zeigen (left) with his mother Vivian Silver (Yonatan Zeigen)

I woke up on 7 October to the sound of a rocket siren. My mother, Vivian Silver, was alone in her house in the Be’eri kibbutz, right next to Gaza. We had just started messaging each other when she wrote: “They are inside the house.”

We both put down our phones to stop the intruders finding her. But when we realised that these would be our last words together, we wrote messages of love and parting. Then she stopped replying.

At first, I thought she had been captured by Hamas and taken as a hostage into Gaza. It was only later I found out she had been killed when her home was gutted and burned.

My mother was a renowned peace activist and a very special woman. She had worked for many human rights organisations, and had headed up countless NGOs. As co-chair of Ajeec-Nisped, she had worked with the renowned Bedouin activist Amal Elsana Alh’jooj to empower young Bedouin people, and to promote a vision of a shared society for the region.

Peace was her life and career.

Today, six months on from losing her, I have two emotions. There is despair, heartbreak and sadness – but, lately, there is also hope, urgency and even a sense of opportunity.

Since my mother’s death, I have only become stronger in my convictions, which I know she shared – that we need an end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, and an end to the pre-7 October “status quo”.

Right now in Israel, in Palestine, in fact across the world, people are still invested in that unsustainable status quo; they are stuck in “6 October” interests – so much so that Israel gets a lot of resources from the outside world to help it maintain how things used to be.

Every year, the US gives military aid to Israel, which it uses to procure weapons from US military contractors. Instead, we need to create a new map of interests in terms of alternatives to this: tourism, economic projects – and trade routes.

Six months after the Israeli offensive began, there is no question that this war has to end. And the end of this war needs to be the starting point for a new, peaceful reality.

We know what the solution is – it is very simple: the Palestinians need a state of their own, a continuous stretch of land, and sovereignty. It is not complicated.

If we don’t have anything to work towards, then it is easy to fall back in along a divided line. Already we see increased Palestinians support for Hamas, and Israelis backing Netanyahu’s war. No compassion – just complete dehumanisation of the other side.

But I believe that can change. I hold on to the hope that catastrophic events such as 7 October and the subsequent war create tectonic changes in the world. They burst the bubble of fantasy. They create momentum. Then it is up to us to steer that movement in the right direction – to build a world where we are not invested in distrust and dehumanising of the other, but where peace is a reality.

This vision of an alternative reality is what keeps me going. I invite everybody to see the simplicity – and to do the same.

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