The son of a Jewish woman originally from Winnipeg and believed to have been taken hostage by Hamas is calling on international governments to help put an end to the war in Gaza.
“We have been left alone, Israelis and Palestinians, to try to work this out for too long, and now we see that this is a global issue,” Yonatan Zeigen, the son of Vivian Silver, said in Tel Aviv during an online press conference Sunday morning hosted by the Jerusalem Press Club and the Missing Families Forum.
“We need help internationally.”
Zeigen says he last spoke to his mother, who was in Kibbutz Be’eri, on the Gaza border, the day Hamas militants launched a surprise attack in Israel. He was on the phone with Silver, 74, when he says people entered her home.
“At some point we stopped talking on the phone because she had to be quiet so she won’t be found, but she was hiding in her house alone,” Zeigen said Sunday. “We wrote messages of, you know, of love and parting, and she went silent.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel has begun the second phase of war against Hamas and aims to bring hostages home, according to The Association Press. More than 200 people are being held hostage in Gaza since Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says the death toll among Palestinians has passed 8,000, with even higher casualties expected on both sides as Israel presses its ground offensive.
Zeigen said the Canadian government has been reassuring him that it’s doing what it can. He thinks international involvement could create “more solutions.”
“My basic belief is that military actions don’t solve anything,” he said, adding that bringing hostages homes should be governments’ first priority.
“If they are the first priority, then I believe that that could happen. Now I’m afraid because it seems like the military option is more prevalent for government.”
Featured VideoA crowd of demonstrators waving Israeli and Canadian flags and holding placards with the names of Israelis taken hostage during Hamas’s deadly attacks on Oct. 7 gathered to call for their immediate release. Eta Yudin, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’s Quebec vice-president, says the province’s Jewish community has been ‘reeling’ since the attacks.
With Israel ramping up its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip over the weekend, Zeigen says he fears his mother could be more at risk.“War is chaotic and … they took the prisoners as leverage and if they lose that leverage then they don’t have use for them anymore,” he said.
‘I just want her back’
Silver was born and raised in Winnipeg, and has been an active member in a variety of humanitarian groups. She’s involved with an organization called Women Wage Peace, which advocates for an end to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its website says.
She also was the co-CEO of the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development, which describes itself as an Arab-Jewish organization dedicated to social change. Silver also volunteers with Road to Recovery and drove Palestinians to Israeli hospitals from Gaza until recently, Zeigen says.
“She was a very busy woman doing good, and she was also a wonderful mother and grandmother,” Zeigen said.
Zeigen says he felt somewhat hopeful after Hamas released two Israeli women taken hostage on Oct. 7 last week, Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, and Nurit Cooper, 79.
Featured VideoYonatan Zeigen was on the phone with his Canadian mother, Vivian Silver, when Hamas raided her kibbutz. Since then, he’s spent days worrying and wondering about what happened to her.
Hamas also released an American-Israeli mother and daughter recently.
“But the uncertainty is in every direction because you don’t know who’s holding who and it probably depends on your captor’s character,” Zeigen said. “I just want her back.”
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