The question wasn’t a difficult one, but it was thought-provoking for the group of 70 16-year-olds visiting from America. These teenagers had just spent 10 days in Israel, some on their first trip to their homeland. I asked them to process what they had seen by answering one complex question.
“What are you most proud of as a Zionist?”
I expected most of the answers I received: the hi-tech success, the strength of the IDF, the unity over the hostages, the amazing kosher food, etc.
The pursuit of peace
Nevertheless, one young woman surprised with her answer because it wasn’t based on something she experienced but rather a conclusion she drew from talking to Israelis. She responded, “I’m proud of Israel’s pursuit of peace, even during war. Everyone I talk to says they want the war to end and for there to be peace with our enemies.”
I wasn’t just impressed because her answer didn’t involve food or a good time but because she had intuitively picked up on a feeling in Israel that the world does not understand about Israelis. Israelis abhor war and only fight when forced to defend their nation. They have always desired, loved, and chased peace.
This attraction to peace is firmly rooted in Jewish tradition. Two thousand years ago, the sage Hillel taught, “Be among the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace.” Aaron, Moses’s brother and the high priest, would work hard to bring peace to the Jewish people.
From its very inception, the Jewish state has made efforts to make peace with its enemies. Some of these efforts, as in the cases of Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE, have borne fruit.
I felt that this student and her friends deserved more than the usual rundown of Israel’s efforts at peace and the Arab and Palestinian intransigence that Israel had been met with, so I told them the little-known story of events near my home on October 4, 2023.
The students immediately corrected me as I began and told me I must have meant October 7, 2023, the day of the Palestinian massacre of thousands of Jews. I explained that I meant what I said and that they should listen to the story of an important and unknown event.
Women Wage Peace is an Israeli organization that was founded in the aftermath of Operation Protective Edge in 2014. It claims to be non-partisan and does not support any one specific solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Instead, “It empowers women from diverse communities to build trust across divides, leading in turn to a unified demand for diplomatic negotiation, with full representation of women, to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Vivian Silver was a 73-year-old lifelong peace advocate who had immigrated from Canada to Israel. She was an award-winning activist who was involved and sat on the boards of pro-peace organizations such as B’Tselem, the Arab-Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment, and Cooperation, and the New Israel Fund.
In 1990, Silver moved to Kibbutz Be’eri, near the Gaza border. Part of her motivation for moving to Be’eri was its proximity to the Palestinians in Gaza, who she wanted to help, join as a partner, and create examples of peace. Following Silver’s retirement in 2014, Silver founded Women Wage Peace.
Looking for a peaceful future in a country at war
THREE DAYS before the Simchat Torah massacre on October 7, 2023, Vivian Silver watched a well-attended peace rally that she organized in Jerusalem and the Dead Sea bring together 1,500 Israeli and Arab participants.
Reem Hajajreh, an Arab participant at the rally, said, “More and more women join the movement, women who want to protect their children and prevent them from being the next victim... We started out as a movement with a few lone women, and now we are thousands from the West Bank and Gaza.”
Just three days after the peace rally, on October 7, 2023, the dreams of peace between Israelis and Arabs at the peace rally disintegrated. Palestinians, led by Hamas terrorists, crossed the Israel-Gaza border and massacred 1,200 Israelis, raped and maimed thousands of people, and kidnapped over 200 Jews into Gaza.
As Palestinians crossed into Israel, they raided Kibbutz Be’eri and murdered Vivian Silver. It took over five weeks to locate her remains. It was widely reported that Hamas used an attendee list from the peace rally that Silver put together to identify and locate Israelis to kill on October 7.
The students sat spellbound as I told them this story. Not one teacher, tour guide, or student had heard about the peace rally or how it was cynically perverted by Palestinian terrorists to be used as a basis for terrorism.
I felt that the lesson of this tragic episode had to be spelled out explicitly for the students. Israelis extended themselves for peace to the extent their peace efforts endangered their own safety.
The students raised their hands, and the need to express themselves was obvious on their faces. They brought up two ideas they felt were important to point out. While those interested in peace were rallying together to make the world a better place, Palestinian terrorists were using the peace activists’ efforts to kill them and bring more violence to an already violent area.
Second, the naïveté of the activists surprised the students. While they had the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, they couldn’t believe that anyone thought peace was possible when the enemy was capable of such vicious hate, savagery, and brutality.
Israel and her people have yet to enjoy a day of complete peace. Planning has already begun for Israel’s 77th Independence Day celebrations, but it’s a tragedy that Israel has yet to celebrate an Independence Day in complete peace from its enemies.
There are those who will accuse Vivian Silver and her friends of being naïve and worse. Their characterization won’t change a Jewish American 16-year-old student’s pride in Israel and the Jewish people’s long tradition of loving peace and chasing peace.
The writer is a Zionist educator at institutions around the world. He recently published his book Zionism Today.