Vivian Silver

Silver was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.[3]

Silver first visited Israel in 1968, during her junior year of college.[4] She studied abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she studied psychology and English literature.[4] Silver was also heavily involved in the North American Jewish Students Network, where she was the administrator of the Jewish Student Press Service.[2] In this capacity, Silver began publishing articles about Israeli-Palestinian relations.[2] In her senior year of college, Silver co-founded the Student Zionist Alliance on her campus, and was subsequently invited to the Student Zionist Alliance national conference in Montreal that year.[4]

In 1973, Silver and Shifra Bronznick organized the first National Conference of Jewish Women.[2]

Silver made aliyah in 1974, and became a member of kibbutz Gezer as part of Habonim Dror.[3][2][5] At Gezer, she became the kibbutz's secretary, one of the few women to do so.[5] Silver's early activism focused on women's rights and gender disparities in Israeli society.[5] To this end, she founded the United Kibbutz Movement’s Department to Advance Gender Equality in 1981.[4][5] She also worked within the Knesset on the sub-committee for the Advancement of Women in Work and the Economy,[5] for the New Israel Fund, and on the Steering Committee of Shatil.[4]

She moved to Be’eri, a kibbutz near the Gaza border, in 1990, along with her husband and two sons.[3][2] During this time, she became better acquainted with the local Bedouin community and Gazans. She served as executive director for the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development (NISPED) beginning in 1998.[3][6] Silver worked within the kibbutz to organize programs to help Gazans, such as job trainings, and ensured that Gazan construction workers at the kibbutz were paid fairly.[3]

In 1999, Silver and Amal Elsana Alh'jooj co-founded the Arab-Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation, an off-shoot of NISPED.[2] Silver served as the center's director prior to the second intifada.[1][7][6] The center organized projects in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.[1][7] In 2010, Silver and Alh'jooj received the Victor J. Goldberg Prize for Peace in the Middle East, an annual prize given by the Institute of International Education to pairs of Arab and Israeli activists working towards peace.[5]

Before the closure of the Gaza border in 2007, Silver worked with Gazan residents in cross-cultural projects.[2][8] One group she founded, Creating Peace, focused on fostering business connections between Palestinian and Israeli artisans.[2]

Silver is a former board member of B’Tselem, a Jerusalem-based human rights organization.[6]

Silver officially retired in 2014.[2] Following her retirement, and the 2014 Gaza War, Silver co-founded Women Wage Peace, an interfaith grassroots organization.[1][7] Silver also began volunteering with Road to Recovery and Project Rozana to transport Gazan patients who were traveling to Jerusalem for treatment.[3][2][8]

On 4 October 2023, Silver helped to organize a peace rally in Jerusalem which attracted 1,500 Israeli and Palestinian women.[9]

On 7 October 2023, Irwin Cotler reported on Twitter that Silver had been abducted from her home in Be’eri in the midst of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war.[7][6][10] Silver's sister said that when she spoke to her sister on the phone on 7 October, Silver reported hearing Hamas militants outside her home.[3] Silver also messaged friends on WhatsApp with a similar message.[9] Her home was burned and gutted when Israeli responders arrived.[11]

As of 13 October, Silver's abduction was unverified, but her whereabouts remain unknown according to her family and colleagues; she had not been heard from since 7 October.[6] Her family and friends created a Facebook page, Missing Vivian Silver, to try and collect more information about her possible wherabouts.[2] They have also reached out to the Red Cross and the Canadian government to ask for assistance in finding Silver and securing her release.[2]

In 2011, Haaretz named Silver as one of the "10 Most Influential Anglo Immigrants" to Israel.[12]

Silver is Jewish.[10] She has two sons and four grandchildren.[3][4][2]