A community space and kitchen in a displaced people’s camp in the Gaza Strip has been named for Vivian Silver, a 74-year-old Canadian-born peace activist killed by Hamas terrorists in her home in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7.
A sign carrying Silver’s photograph and name was put up a month ago in the Zomi camp in the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone in southern Gaza. Zomi was created by the Palestinian NGO Damour for Community Development, which works closely with Israel’s Arava Institute for Environmental Studies.
The Zomi camp is named after Australian citizen Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom, who was among seven World Central Kitchen volunteers killed in April in an Israeli airstrike on an aid convoy in central Gaza’s Deir El-Balah, when troops mistakenly identified a Hamas gunman in one of the vehicles. Two senior officers were dismissed and several others were formally censured for their role in overseeing the incident.
Entrepreneur and community and environmental activist Tahani Abu Daqqa, who is overseeing the establishment of several tent camps with various facilities, said her daughter Seba had the idea of naming the space for Silver.
Seba Abu Daqqa, based in Munich, teamed up with a Berlin-based Israeli woman, Tom Kellner, to establish Clean Shelter, which raises funds to improve sanitary and shelter conditions in displaced people’s camps in Gaza.
“I always name things for women,” Tahani Abu Daqqa told The Times of Israel from her current base in Cairo, the Egyptian capital.
Initially, she said, “I was told it was not the right time [to memorialize Silver’s name]. But when we opened the kitchen and community space in Zomi, I made the decision to call it after Vivian.”
While she had not met Silver personally, Abu Daqqa said, “I heard a lot about her. We were very sad when we heard that she was killed on October 7. We knew she’d been helping Gazan people for years, sometimes to go to hospitals or find doctors. She worked very hard for peace.”
Asked whether women using the community space, including for educational activities for their children, had inquired who Vivian Silver was, Abu Daqqa replied, “We tell people who she was. They know there are a lot of Israelis and Jewish people who helped the Palestinians. Not all Israelis are [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. People in Gaza know that.”
Vivian Silver was declared missing for more than a month, believed to be have been one of the some 250 people abducted by Hamas-led terrorists in their murderous rampage across southern Israel on October 7, when they killed 1,200 people amid acts of brutality and sexual violence.
But on November 14, her family confirmed that her remains had been identified via DNA.
Her house was badly burned, as was much of the kibbutz, where over 100 people were slaughtered by the Gazan invaders — some 10% of the community’s population.
Silver was known for her peace activism, including her involvement in the organization Women Wage Peace, as well as The Road to Recovery, driving sick Palestinians from Gaza to Israeli hospitals. She held a meeting of international supporters of Women Wage Peace just a few days before the Hamas onslaught.
Al-Mawasi was designated as a safe zone by the Israeli army when it began urging Gazan civilians to evacuate their homes in many parts of the Strip amid its operations to dismantle the Hamas terror group, which rules the coastal enclave and is sworn to Israel’s destruction.