12th war update – focus on Vivian Silver and Yael Noy

Women Wage Peace

Women Wage Peace is a grassroots movement, founded by Vivian Silver in November 2014 in the aftermath of the Gaza War. Their mission is to reach an honourable and bilaterally acceptable political agreement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and increase the active participation of women in all aspects of negotiation.

Sometimes truth comes from the mouths of babes.  This time it came from Vivian Silver’s two small sons.  They had made a friend of Nassar, a Palestinian labourer who worked at their kibbutz, and wondered why, after the second intifada (2000-2005), he wasn’t with them any more.  Vivian told them that he had no permit to come over now.  “Why not?” one son wondered.  “Because there is a big conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis” “What is it over?”  “Land”, she told him. 

In Hebrew the words for “earth” and “land” are the same.  So her son went off, fetched a bucket, filled it with earth, and returned.  “Here” he said.  “Give it to Nassar, so he can come back”.

Vivian Silver spent her entire adult life trying to make it that simple.  Knowing that if it were only a matter of talking, sharing and helping, the situation would be different.   For the next fifty years she didn’t stop.   Bringing the local Bedouins and Gazans to her home and working with Palestinians in any way she could, because that gave peace more of a chance.  Despite Hamas taking over Gaza in 2007, bombs falling around her whilst walking in the fields in 2009, war with Gaza in 2014 and kite-bombs destroying her beloved local nature reserve in 2018, Vivian carried on.  She founded a group called “Creating Peace” which encouraged cross-border links between traders and artisans. She organised training programmes for Gazans and ensured fair wages for construction workers.  In 1998 Vivian became executive director of the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development and in partnership with Palestinian, Amal Elsana Alh’jooj won an international award.   

2014 was a special year for Vivian.  She had turned 65, retired and became a grand-mother.  But still the seemingly eternal conflict between Israelis and Palestinians carried on.  What was the answer?  As her feminist mind suggested, it was to turn to the strength of women.  She would help build up a movement of Israeli and Palestinian women who would keep in the public eye by marching and appealing  (including every Monday outside the Knesset), for negotiated agreement rather than war.   So Women WagePeace – one of TalkMatters very first initiatives – was born with now around 45,000 Jewish and Arab-Israeli women.  On the 4th October several thousand women walked hand-in-hand to the Dead Sea shore. “We cannot go on without apolitical horizon,” Vivian told the rally.  “We call upon our sisters in Gaza: join us and call upon your leaders, enough.  Terror benefits no one.  You, too, deserve peace and security”. 

Three days later, Hamas broke into Vivian’s kibbutz.  For five weeks she was missing and thought to be a hostage.   Now we know on that first fateful day she was taken from her home and brutally killed.

Women Wage Peace is featured in our directory,  has their own website and joined us for our very first webinar in August 2020.  There are details of how you can donate to help support their work on this page of their website.  

Road to Recovery

Road to Recovery is an organisation of about 1900 volunteers donating time and the use of their own vehicles on a regular basis to transport Palestinian patients and their family guardians between checkpoints and hospitals all over Israel. They believe that the assistance, besides being motivated by compassion, will generate good will, deepen human connections and contribute to peace between the two Peoples.

This article is based on the BBC News article “We can’t stop – The Israeli woman still helping sick Palestinians” and Jenny Nemko’s telephone conversation with Yael. 

Yael Noy is their director and since the first days of the war Yael continues to drive sick Palestinian children and their guardians from the check-points in the West Bank to Israeli hospitals. ,

Yael Noy doesn’t wear military fatigues, but she describes herself as being in battle right now, after the Hamas assault on 7 October.

“I’m fighting to be good, I’m fighting to stay moral when both sides are in such terrible pain. I’m fighting to be the same person I was before, I’m fighting for my humanity, ” she tells me on the phone.

The 1,000 or so volunteers can no longer take patients from Gaza, which is governed by Hamas. And four of them are dead – murdered as Palestinian gunmen stormed through their kibbutzim in southern Israel.  Vivian Silver who was the founder of Women Wage Peace (see above), was murdered, as were Adi Dagan, who Yael describes as “funny” and always ready to step in and ferry patients at short notice in his big car; Tammy Suchman, a much-loved grandmother; and Eli Or-Gad, who loved talking about poetry.

Four other volunteers lost close family members on 7 October.

Yael is also desperately concerned for two Road to Recovery volunteers, Oded Lifschitz and Chaim Peri, who are still being held hostage by Hamas.

Yael Noy’s parents were in one of the kibbutzim attacked by Hamas on October 7 and are now displaced

In the immediate aftermath of 7 October, Yael says she was so shaken that she could barely breathe.

“Something was broken in my heart and I said that I would never talk to people in Gaza again,” she tells me.

But after a few days, she decided that she couldn’t allow the atrocities to change her.

She and most of the Road to Recovery volunteers have continued to drive Palestinians from the West Bank to hospitals in Israel for cancer treatment, organ transplants and kidney dialysis. As soon as she can, she says she’ll go and collect patients from Gaza again.

Yael refuses to dehumanise them, or equate them with Hamas, which is classed as a terrorist organisation in the UK and other countries.

“Like us they are victims of Hamas, so I think we should keep on helping them, because it’s not their fault.  We can’t refuse to help a child with cancer. Our neighbours need help, so we need to help them.”

She worries for the families she knows in Gaza, with winter approaching and so many bombed houses now uninhabitable.

The parent of a 6-year-old child, who’d had an organ transplant, texted one of the Road to Recovery volunteers saying simply: “We are okay. We are going to die here.

Emotionally, she feels like she’s being torn apart. She has uncles and cousins who are adamantly opposed to what she’s doing and accuse her of helping Hamas.

And it’s not just family members who disapprove.

“When I’m driving with Palestinians through checkpoints in the West Bank, soldiers have asked me how I can do what I’m doing.  Other people ask the same question.“

“It’s dangerous now to even talk about the suffering of the kids in Gaza – people look at me like I’m the enemy,” but I’m not doing it for the Palestinians, I’m doing it because I want to be proud to be Israeli. I believe that whether you’re an Israeli or a Palestinian, a Jew or an Arab, people are people.”

Some Palestinian families have reached out to find out how she is. But it’s harder than ever now for those few people swimming against the tide by trying to bridge the divide between Israelis and Palestinians.

“Even people on the left say that we should flatten Gaza. Both sides have become more and more radicalised,” Yael says.

“I really don’t know what will happen in the future. But I know that both of us will still live here, so we must find a solution.”

Since 7 October, some Road to Recovery volunteers have dropped out of driving altogether or decided to focus on taking medicines to displaced Israelis instead, while the war lasts.

But other volunteers have stepped in, to make sure that sick Palestinians from the West Bank still get to appointments that are saving their lives.

Yael says the charity will need support from the outside world to keep going because donations from within Israel have virtually stopped.

But she is sure that, when it becomes possible, Road to Recovery will be collecting child patients from Gaza again – hoping that they will all have survived.

“It may be hard. But we can’t stop,” she says. “It’s my mission and I have to do it.“

This article is based on the BBC News article “We can’t stop – The Israeli woman still helping sick Palestinians” and Jenny Nemko’s telephone conversation with Yael.  The Road to Recovery is featured in our directory has their own website  There are details on this page of their website which show how you can donate to help support their work.