By Sue Surkes

A community space and kitchen in the Zomi displacement camp in the Gaza Strip have been named in honour of Vivian Silver, a Canadian-born Israeli peace activist who was murdered by Hamas terrorists in her home in Kibbutz Be’eri, near the Gaza border, on October 7, 2023. (Credit: Damour for Community Development)

A community space and kitchen in a camp for displaced people in the Gaza Strip have been named in honour of Vivian Silver, a 74-year-old Canadian-born peace activist who was murdered by Palestinian Hamas terrorists in her home in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7.

A sign bearing Silver’s photo and name was erected a month ago in the Zomi camp, located in the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone in the southern Gaza Strip. Zomi was created by the Palestinian NGO Damour for Community Development, which works closely with Israel’s Arava Institute for Environmental Studies.

Camp Zomi is named after Australian national Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom, one of seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) volunteers killed in April in an Israeli airstrike on an aid convoy in central Gaza’s Deir El-Balah. The military mistakenly identified a Hamas terrorist as a Hamas terrorist. As a result of the misunderstanding, two senior officers were dismissed and several others were formally reprimanded for their roles in the operation.

Tahani Abu Daqqa, a business owner and community and environmental activist who oversees the establishment of several tented camps with various facilities, said the idea to name the space “Silver” came from her daughter Seba.

Seba Abu Daqqa, who is based in Munich, founded the nonprofit Clean Shelter with Tom Kellner, an Israeli based in Berlin, which raises funds to improve sanitation and housing conditions in displacement camps in Gaza.

“I always choose women’s names,” Tahani Abu Daqqa told The Times of Israel from Cairo, Egypt, where she currently lives.

At first, she said, “I was told it wasn’t the right time [to commemorate Silver’s name]. But when we opened Zomi’s kitchen and community space, I decided to name it Vivian.”

Although she never met Silver in person, Abu Daqqa said she had “heard a lot about her. We were very sad to hear that she was murdered on October 7.” We knew she had been helping people in Gaza for years, sometimes by going to hospitals or finding doctors. She was a hard worker for peace.”

Asked if the women who use the community space, especially for educational activities for their children, had asked who Vivian Silver was, Abu Daqqa said she explained to the people who used it who she was. “They know that many Israelis and Jews have helped Palestinians. Not all Israelis are [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. People in Gaza know that.”

Missing for more than a month, Vivian Silver was believed to be among more than 250 people kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during their pogrom in southern Israel on October 7, in which they killed nearly 1,200 people in brutal acts of sexual violence.

But on November 14, his family confirmed that his remains had been identified through DNA.

His burned-out home was engulfed in flames, as was much of the kibbutz, where more than 100 people were massacred by Gaza terrorists, about 10 percent of the community’s population.

Silver was known for her peace activism, including her involvement with Women Wage Peace and The Road to Recovery, which involved driving sick Palestinians from Gaza to Israeli hospitals. Days before the brutal Hamas massacres, she hosted a meeting of international supporters of Women Wage Peace.

Al-Mawasi was designated a safe zone by the Israeli military when it called on Gazan civilians to evacuate their homes in many parts of the Gaza Strip, due to its operations to dismantle the Hamas terror group, which rules the coastal enclave and has vowed to destroy Israel.