[I know you will be greeted up above by your Palestinian and
Israeli partners in activism, and the thousands of other victims of
this pointless war. ]
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A TRIBUTE TO VIVIAN
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Samah Salaime
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_ I know you will be greeted up above by your Palestinian and Israeli
partners in activism, and the thousands of other victims of this
pointless war. _
Vivian Silver. (Courtesy of B8 of Hope),
The last time I saw Vivian was in Washington, D.C., at an ad-hoc
meeting of Palestinian and Israeli activists on the fringes of a
conference. We met for a brainstorming session on the difficult
question of how to revive our camp — the liberal-left-democratic
camp, comprising both Jews and Palestinians — following the
catastrophic Israeli election of November 2022 that brought to power
the most far-right government
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country’s history. We laughed, jested, and joked, making fun of our
situation, but there was great sadness in that room when Vivian said:
“I’m too old to establish and build another political body; I have
to join what already exists.
“What’s nice about being an old and sarcastic retiree is that I
can say aloud what I think, and I have nothing to lose,” she
continued. “Our camp has lost quite a few times; we’ve taken many
hits on the jaw. And I’ve been through plenty in my own life as
well. I’ve learned a lot, the hard way, about Arab-Jewish
partnership [[link removed]],
and I know that when it succeeds, it succeeds because every side
understands that the justice it seeks depends heavily on the justice
of the other side. Closing the gap comes from collaborative work, and
not from struggling against one another.”
Nothing prepared me for yesterday’s bitter news
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Vivian’s tragic end. I felt deep despair, like a bottomless
sink-hole had opened under the foundations of humanity, where
thousands are already buried – men, women, children, innocent
Palestinians and Israelis. People who had wished for peace, and did
not live to see that wish fulfilled.
Already 39 days have passed since that terrible Saturday
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October 7. I have read the messages that Vivian and her son sent one
another while she was hiding in a closet from the Palestinian
militants who raided Kibbutz Be’eri. It was as though I could feel
her heart beating, louder than the tramps of the murderers in her
living room.
I tried, a thousand times, to imagine her being taken in their cars
into Gaza. “What did she feel during those moments?” I wondered.
I thought she might have looked with compassionate tears in her eyes
at the dozens of ragged Palestinian children standing on the Gaza
roadsides, and she might have prayed for them in her heart. Vivian
knew what their lives looked like under Israel’s siege, and she
would have known what was about to befall them when the Israeli army
began its unprecedented assault on the Strip.
The destruction caused by Hamas militants in Kibbutz Be’eri, near
Gaza, in southern Israel, October 14, 2023. (Omer Fichman/Flash90)
“Did you hear those bombs falling where you were?” I thought to
myself. Those bombs you hated, because you knew, better than anyone,
that they would not bring any sort of solution
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security to any of us.
I had convinced myself you were someplace safe, trying to communicate
in mangled Arabic with those around you, and trying to explain who you
were and what you stood for: a born activist with no reservations. I
imagined you comforting the children taken hostage with you, keeping
them busy and calming the other women held underground while the earth
shook from Israeli airstrikes. The images I had in my mind and the
headline I kept imagining — “Peace Activist Released” — will
never reach the media. Instead, last night we read: “Body of Peace
Activist from Be’eri Identified.”
Until that moment, I did not believe for a minute that you were no
longer with us. I was sure you would survive this evil, and would
live to tell us about it, even entertain us with stories of the
jalabiya you were given to wear — one made for a woman much larger
than your tiny frame. Vivian, my dear, we will never have this
moment.
An “Iron Sword” can only kill
Vivian Silver was born in Winnipeg, Canada in 1949, and immigrated to
Israel in 1974. For dozens of years, she was a social activist
involved in projects promoting women’s rights and advocating for
peace. As the co-director of the Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment,
Equality, and Cooperation – Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace
and Economic Development (AJEEC-NISPED), she worked to improve the
lives of the Bedouin community in the Naqab/Negev, helping to advance
a shared society. She was active in the organization Women Wage Peace,
a board member of the human rights group B’Tselem, and a volunteer
with The Road to Recovery, which helps transport cancer patients from
Gaza to Israeli hospitals.
One of the things she used to say often, which I think sums up her
life’s philosophy, is: “If the only tool you have is a hammer,
then every problem looks like a nail.” I told her once: “You know
the Palestinian people are not a piece of wood, not even a piece of
metal. We are made of hard rock, so it will be difficult for a hammer
in the hands of an idiot to crush us.”
Israeli tanks seen at sunset near Gaza in southern Israel, October 11,
2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
Vivian believed in the power of women, and the power of compassion and
love — in the completely naïve, simple meaning of these words. She
knew, like many of us Palestinians and Israeli peace activists, that
the army cannot bring peace, and that an “Iron Sword” — the name
the Israeli army has given to its “operation” in Gaza — can only
kill. The hammer crushes everything in its path. Even those of us,
Palestinians and Israelis, who survive this war will emerge from it
crushed by grief.
We’ll erect a mourning tent out of misery and regret over the
mountain of victims and the destruction that remains. And no “Al
Aqsa Flood” — as Hamas named its own October 7 “operation” —
will return the thousands of children who lost their lives in Gaza and
the south; no flag of victory will fly over Gaza’s shores as they
are pounded by the bloody waves of Israel’s assault.
There above, Vivian, I know you are meeting your friends — among
them Eiman, Tofaha, and Maha, Palestinian partners in activism from
Gaza. You will be greeted by thousands of other victims, including
women who never stopped waging peace, and Palestinians who were
murdered by the Israeli military and buried under the rubble while
still holding their children
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we prayed for their safety.
I, along with thousands of Palestinian and Israeli women, will
accompany you on your final journey some day — a walk I cannot make
behind the corpses of my own friends from Gaza. Their stories, their
hopes, and their dreams are faintly heard, somewhere in this world. In
accompanying you, Vivian, we, the women of peace, will walk and cry
together, and we will hug and mourn this deep loss. And each will
remember, in your honor, the loved ones and friends, Palestinians and
Israelis, who lost their lives in this pointless war, in this region
we all loved.
I promise you I will continue on that path. Our destination will not
be another cemetery; it will be a place of dreams, somewhere over the
house of eternal peace.
_A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local
Call. Read it here
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Samah Salaime is a feminist Palestinian activist and writer.
* Gaza
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* women waging peace
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* Arab-Jewish partnership
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