I wondered where Yonatan Zeigen found his strength; then I realised it comes from his dead mother. Vivian Silver was a Canadian-Israeli humanitarian and peace activist, who was murdered by Hamas gunmen at her home on Be’eri kibbutz, just a few kilometres from the Israel-Gaza border, on 7 October. On that day Hamas killed about 1,200 Israelis at multiple sites, with more than 100 perishing at the kibbutz. Visiting her burnt-out home a few weeks later, Yonatan told Canadian television that he’d managed to salvage a few of her personal belongings, but “everything was ashes there”, as the killers had torched the 74-year-old’s home.
Vivian was born and raised in Winnipeg. She moved to Israel in 1973, wanting to be part of a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was violently reignited the year she arrived in the Middle East by the Yom Kippur war. Her subsequent life was devoted to reconciliation.
