A founding member of the Israeli-Palestinian Women Wage Peace movement with links to Australia, Vivian Silver, is feared to have been abducted by Hamas, who entered the small rural community of Kibbutz Be’eri on Saturday morning with tanks and vehicles, setting fire to buildings and smashing homes.
Silver, a seventy-four year old Israeli-Canadian peace activist, has not been heard from since the weekend, after Hamas took roughly 150 Israelis hostage.
Silver was a regular volunteer driver for an initiative funded by an Australian charity, Project Rozana, which transports critically ill Palestinian children to hospitals in Israel for treatment.
The hostages were seized from their homes in villages along Israel’s border with Gaza — including the small village of Kibbutz Nir Oz, military bases and Kibbutz Be’eri, where Silver was residing.
Son’s fears
Silver’s son, Yonatan Zeigen, said his last communication with his mother had been on early Saturday morning, after she notified her friends and family that she was hiding behind a closet in her safe room.
“First we spoke by phone, but then when we heard the gunshots getting closer, we decided it was best to move to text messaging,” Zeigen told Haaretz.
Speaking to ABC’s 7:30 last night, Zeigen said he doesn’t believe the militants abducted the civilians in order to kill them.
“They could have killed them there…they took them for leverage and to make deals, so it would be a shame if we couldn’t comply because of aggressive politics,” he told 7.30. “I just want them to come back alive.”
“We kept in touch until I heard over the phone a lot of gunshots outside a window where she was hiding in a safe room,” Zeigen added.
“And we corresponded through WhatsApp until she wrote to me that they were inside the house. And then communication stopped at around 11 on Saturday morning.”
Zeigen added that he has had no confirmation about his mother’s kidnapping. “That [she was kidnapped] is the indication we’re getting,” he said. “It’s not confirmed officially. Nobody from the authorities talked to me. But from all the bits of information … that’s our indication, and I hope that to be true because the alternative is worse.”
More than 1200 Israelis are now confirmed to have died in Saturday’s attack.
Israel has since launched airstrikes and a blockade of Gaza, with more than 1100 Palestinians killed over the past five days, while the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency says 250,000 people have been displaced.
Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, has only have enough fuel to cover the next three days, according to Doctors Without Borders. UN Secretary-General António Guterres as urged life-saving supplied to be allowed into Gaza, including fuel, food and water.
Family members of those believed to have been taken hostage spoke to the New York Times, detailing their fears for the safety of their loved ones. Many of them described later seeing their family members on videos being circulated on social media.
Gaza blockade
It’s now been days since Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant ordered a cut to all electricity, water, food and fuel supplies to Gaza — home to more than 2.3 million people, almost fifty per cent of them under the age of 18.
Since then, Gaza’s energy authority declared that power stations had run out of fuel.
With more than 1,100 Gazans have been killed by the airstrikes airstrikes, and up to 5000 injured, the Palestinian Civil Defence continue its search of people trapped under rubble of destroyed homes.
As Israel’s bombardment of Gaza enters its fifth day, hospital officials in the besieged territory have issued an international SOS.
One Doctors Without Borders official said that Al-Shifa, Gaza Strip’s largest hospital, has only enough fuel to keep power on for three days.
“[In one hospital] we consumed three weeks worth of emergency stock in three days, partly due to 50 patients coming in at once”, Matthias Kannes, Doctors Without Borders’ head of mission in Gaza said, adding that doctors were running out of surgical equipment, antibiotics, fuel and other supplies.
Leaders speak out
After its first meeting of Israel’s emergency government on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said every Hamas member was “a dead man” — vowing to “crush and destroy” Hamas.
US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that in his latest conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, he reiterated the importance that Israel, “… with all the anger and frustration – operated by the rules of war.”
“And there are rules of war,” Biden said. “I believe Israel is doing everything in its power, and we will do everything in our power.”
Biden gave a speech to Jewish leaders in the US, declaring the ongoing attacks as “ the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, one of the worst chapters in human history.”
“It reminds us all of that expression I learned from my dad early on. Silence is complicity.”
“I refuse to be silent and I know you refuse to be silent as well. There’s a lot we’re doing. I have not given up hope. I used to think you could defeat hate, but it only goes underground. It doesn’t go away.”
Prime minister Anthony Albanese addressed the Jewish community in Melbourne last night at St Kilda shule, empathising with many Australian Jewish people who will fear “a rise in antisemitism here at home”.
“I want to assure you, that kind of hateful prejudice has no place in Australia,” he said. “Our country is better than that – and our country is a better place because of you and your community.”
“And my government is committed to keeping the community safe. All Australians embrace you in this time of trauma. We hold you in our hearts.”
Status of Australians in Israel and Palestine
Earlier that day, the prime minister announced that at least two government-backed Qantas flights would help Australians leave Israel “starting Friday.”
This morning, foreign minister Penny Wong said that the third Australian flight out of Tel Aviv should depart next week.
“We’ll have further details of that via DFAT in the next 24 hours,” she told reporters in Melbourne.
“The prime minister yesterday announced [free] flights Friday and Sunday… Qantas flights out of Tel Aviv. I can indicate to Australians either in Israel, or who have family and friends in Israel, [that] we are seeking to arrange a further flight.”
Leader of the Greens Adam Bandt said that in the push to end the occupation of Palestine, there was no place for antisemitism or Islamophobia in Australia.
“Amid reports of civilian deaths in Israel and Palestine, there must be an immediate ceasefire between the State of Israel and Hamas and an end to the occupation to ensure a lasting peace,” he said in a statement.
“The premeditated targeting of civilians by Hamas is a war crime, as is the bombing of Palestinian civilians by the State of Israel. All perpetrators of war crimes in this conflict must be held to account for their actions in accordance with international law. The Greens condemn the attacks and we condemn the occupation.”
Sydney rally supporting Palestine
A pro-Palestinian rally is planned for this coming weekend in Sydney — the second, after Monday night’s march, for which NSW premier, Chris Minns, has publicly apologised for.
“I really want to make it clear to the Jewish community that I want to apologise to them specifically, on behalf of the government and myself as the premier of NSW,” Minns said on Wednesday morning.
New South Wales Police Acting Commissioner David Hudson has already said that the upcoming rally on Sunday will be “unauthorised” — adding he has set up a task force that will “capture all intelligence available to us in relation to community sentiment, potential protest activity and potential demonstrations that might take place in the future.”
Urging people not to attend the protest rally planned in Sydney on Sunday, Hudson said that the event was “not submitted to us in the appropriate timeframe.”
“Organisers might decide to move it and if that is the case, there will be considerations,” he said.
The Human Rights Law Centre expressed their dismay at the Commissioner’s comments, saying on X, “We condemn the NSW Police Minister and NSW Police for refusing to allow a planned protest to go ahead by members of the Palestinian community and their supporters.”
Arab-Australian poet and activist Omar Sakr is using his platform on X to highlight the bias of media in the West.
“It’s just unbelievable how year after year Palestinian children are murdered by the Israeli state—hundreds of them, in assaults like this one—and their slaughter has never once led to Western governments demanding an end to the occupation let alone “eradicating” those responsible,” he wrote.
“It isn’t that I, or anyone else, cannot sympathise or grieve for Israeli children killed—their humanity is assured, the media’s condemnation equally so, grief and rage for them and their families are encouraged, but it is never so for Arab children. It is shattering.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai has also taken to X to express her thoughts about the conflict in Gaza.
“As I have processed the tragic news of the past days, I think of the Palestinian and Israeli children caught in the middle,” she wrote.
“War never spares children – not those kidnapped from their homes in Israel, not those hiding from airstrikes or without food and water in Gaza. Today, I am grieving for all the children and people longing for peace and justice in the Holy Land.”