Thinking Out Loud - What Next?
Notes on Political and Social Activism and Public Discourse
“And I want everybody to be invested in it not only to avenge this attack … but to be invested in peace in this region, and we need help internationally … I don't think vengeance is a strategy.” — Yonaton Zeigen, son of slain peace activist Vivian Silver
this clip features Bel Trew from the Independent and Yonaton Zeigen via Jerusalem Press Club
Oh hai Canada, remember Vivian Silver?
You didn’t forget, did you?
Did you forget?
I admit that I forget for a while. It’s impossible to see one’s own reflection in boiling water, the effervescent fear and rage combined to create a new and powerful drug for my brain to swim, then nearly drown, in. I think as a collective we could have handled ourselves a lot better than we did. I think we lacked the leadership to be our best collective self as a nation.
What else do I think?
Humanise. Humanise. Humanise.
We must begin in earnest to show we care about humans, all human beings, no matter their tribal membership or political identity. Think about the Torah on One Foot. Do you want to engage people who place pejorative labels on you in an effort to diminish or discredit you or simply humiliate you? Probably not. Consider, then, that no one whom you label as settler racist coloniser genocider [insert prefix here]-phobe etc etc wants to listen to your perspective. Do you want to listen to, dialogue with, or engage with people who repeatedly and deliberately seek to delegitimise you? Probably not. Consider then, that no one whom you deliberately dismiss and chronically seek to delegitimise wants to listen to you or engage with you.
Consider also, the neurobiology of safety — humans cannot access the neural circuitry we need to think and empathise and make sound judgements when forced into threat states. We cannot engage in peaceful dialogue with human beings that send us danger cues. Humans send and receive danger and safety cues to one another below the level of awareness. We know this from Heart Rate Variability studies and the seminal work of Dr. Stephen Porges.
The Road to Peace is the Vagus Nerve, yours and mine and everyone’s.
Over the past nine months, I have watched the loudest voices for peace and ceasefire come from individuals making chaos and trying their very best to bring Canada to the brink of a national and societal fracture. Deliberately inflicting hardship via mass nation-wide disruption and widespread civil disturbances, intentionally thrusting Canadians into violent and hateful protests every week for 9 months, leaving no part of life in Canada sacred or untouched by this social devolution into hell, making Jews and Muslims in the Canadian diaspora responsible for the conflict in the Middle East—this has made us less effective in the peace process, not more effective. Working for peaceful coexistence will take a lot more that making a living hunting down things to get offended over so you can avoid taking responsibility for yourself and things you can do in the here and now.
Look, Canada is a special and amazing place and society, for fcuk’s sake, wake up and be your best self, Canada!! Where is my country? You are in there somewhere — snap out of it!! Come back to me, Canada. Here are 7 practical reminders I have crafted to guide myself and you and whomever feels like they need guidance once in a while during intense times.
We can use Curiosity to keep the conversation going.
We use Judgement to destroy the chances for dialogue.
We use Righteousness with the intent to sabotage the interaction.
We find Peacemaking difficult and painful because birthing fcuking hurts and unfolds in an uncertain manner.
We find War easy, it quenches our thirst for vengeance—war feels like the first 5 minutes of your first fabulous cocaine binge—you are forever seeking that feeling as you continue to wage war and you never retrieve it.
We each have a choice. You are not helpless as long as you have a choice. No one said you had to like the decision presented to you. Live. Choose wisely and choose life.
When we choose fear and vengeance, we choose Death.
Vivian Silver's son, Yonatan Zeigen, chose peace and not helplessness in the wake of this enormous personal tragedy. So, assholes—none of the rest of us get to play the lazy helplessness i give up let’s kill everyone card. When I look at the Canadian and American response to October 7th, I see the following—Jews mainline fear and Muslims mainline rage and Christians mainline guilt, the latter being the western mindset default. North Americans serve ourselves generous helpings of gratuitous despair and demoralisation, we squander our enormous collective power on ego masturbation horsesh1t, as we reach into our Tickle Trunk of ego defence mechanisms and grab whatever we find and launch it like a molotov cocktail at anything that moves intellectually into our righteousness. Meanwhile, the people who reside in the places called Israel and Gaza and the West Bank live a precariously and delicately balanced existence in a complex interconnected web of peoples that hangs from a fraying societal thread.
Why did you play the helpless card by using Vivian Silver’s murder to justify the punitive war against Palestinian people? Why did you decide to get lazy and give up and walk away from peace and toward cancel culture and Sinat Chinam, when Yonatan lost his mother, his children lost their granny, and he is still working hard for peace, in his mother's stead? Did you know that War never ever brought peace, only created more destruction and suffering? War did not eliminate Nazis. War will not eliminate Hamas. War will not eliminate any terrorist ideologies.
Killing humans does not kill ideas. Killing humans gives terrible ideas power.
Level up. No excuses.
The helplessness grift, the professionally offended, the chronically righteous, the living in your purulent wounds, the refusing to forgive, the refusing to help oneself, the racist anti non European immigrant mentality, the fear farming, the rage farming, the scapegoating, the herd mentality, the toxic positivity, the toxic negativity, the catastrophising, the minimising -- those are your bags and you can kindly carry them away and take care of them, like adults do, please and thanks.
Activism and politics are not collective group scream therapy, they are not The Purge, they are serious platforms for serious genuine good faith actors willing to embrace vulnerability and honesty and humility. They are vehicles for leaving human society better than we found it. Human suffering IS your measure of better, in case you needed that clue.
Human suffering IS NOT a resource you can exploit to gain clout or give the shareholders of military arms companies large dividends. Human suffering IS NOT currency for your career aspirations.
Below the line you’ll find an interview conducted by the Jerusalem Press Club and Vivian Silver’s son, Yonatan Zeigen. Please take the time to watch and listen to Yonatan’s words. I have provided a transcript for your convenience.
NB; The weekly podcast is being recorded Sunday morning this week and will publish Monday.
Transcript — Yonatan Zeigen with the Jerusalem Press Club 29.10.2024
(Yonatan’s responses are bolded)
Hey, good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining today's webinar with the Jerusalem Press Club in cooperation with the Forum for Families of the Missing Israelis Kidnapped on October 7. Today with us, we have Yonatan Zeigen, who is the son of Vivian Silver, herself kidnapped on that on that Saturday. She's both an Israeli and Canadian citizen and a peace activist, long history of trying to reconciliation with the Palestinian community. And we're here to hear Yonatan and what he has to say. And we'll take questions.
Sorry, I was muted.
First we'll take...Sorry, we're having some technical difficulties. If everybody can just mute themselves when they come on, that would be helpful. Thank you.
Before we open for questions, Yonatan, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your mother so we can get to know her from around the world.
Sorry, Jonathan, you're muted.
Hello. My mother, Vivian Silver, she was born and raised in Winnipeg, Canada. She joined the Habonim Dror youth movement. She was active in that growing up and after studying a year in in Israel when she was around 18. So she formed a group in New York and they came together 50 years ago, 73. And they established together a kibbutz, Kibbutz Gezer.
And after a while, that Kibbutz kind of lost its—the original group dismantled, so they moved, my father and my mother moved to Kibbutz Be’eri at 1990. That's where me and my brother grew up. Kibbutz Be’eri is right on the border with Gaza. And actually all, you know, up until then, but also before all of her adult life, she dedicated herself to social issues, gender equality, justice for poverty groups. And living in Be’eri, she started to be involved with peace organizations. Her career, her main career was, she was the the co-CEO of an organization called אג'יק - Ajeec Nisped. They worked a lot up until the second Intifada broke. They worked a lot in Gaza. They had projects there. When relations had to stop with Gaza after the second Intifada, they put an emphasis on the Bedouin community in Israel.
Aside from that, she was always a volunteer, a public speaker. She organized encounter groups. After she retired, she was very much involved in the organization Women Wage Peace. They had a big international event just before the war broke. She would also drive Palestinian patients from Gaza to Israeli hospitals for an organization called Road to Recovery. So she was a very busy woman and doing good. And she was also a wonderful mother and grandmother to four grandchildren, very active in the Kibbutz, committees and leadership roles.
Okay, thank you. She sounds like a wonderful woman. Jonathan, what do you know about that day in terms of, you know, where she was, how she was taken and were you able to speak to her at all?
Yes. I woke up in, I live in Tel Aviv, left the kibbutz a few years ago. I live in Tel Aviv and I woke up to the sound of the alarm at six 30 in the morning. I didn't pay it much attention because, we're kind of accustomed to, to it in Israel. And, but then we started understanding that, there's an incursion that that that's that was very unusual. Never happened. Just blood. and I started being in touch with her to understand what's going on. It was confusing because, you know, we understood that, that Hamas got in Israel, but we, we couldn't grasp the incapability of the Israeli army to defend the civilians. So we were, we were talking, we were still kind of joking around. We thought every minute, we thought the next minute is going to end. But it didn't. And at some point we understood that this isn't going in the right direction. And we started to say goodbye because we realized these are probably our last words to each other. She wrote me, at some point we stopped talking on the phone because she had to be quiet so she won't be found, but she was hiding in her house alone. And she wrote me that they're inside the house. And we wrote messages of love and parting and … She went silent.
And have you heard anything from the authorities about whether she's supposed to be among the captives? Have you heard anything from anybody?
After a while, the government seems like the government started to work after a week or so and I got approached by a representative of the Israeli headquarters, the Gal Hirsch headquarters. The only indication anybody has-
Sorry, Jonathan, go ahead.
The only indication anybody has is that her phone was geolocated in Gaza. No other information or indication, like in videos or anybody else that saw something.
And with maybe with all the contacts she's had over the years, particularly in her work with Palestinians, have you been able to make any contact with people there that might have some sort of information or otherwise?
These are discrete efforts we're making. It's not concrete. The fact that I'm talking as if she is being held there is because of those efforts. So it's not certain, but we have reason to believe.
Okay, you can keep it at that. Before I wrap up with our own questions, I will invite journalists to raise their hand if they can, if they want to ask specific questions or alternatively write them in the chat box. We're here to ask what we can. In the meantime, sorry, Bell has a question. Bell Trew from The Independent, I think. Please state your point, your outlet as well when you speak. Thank you.
Yes, it's Bell Trew, Independent. Thank you so much for talking to us, Jonathan. I'm so sorry. I can't imagine how difficult this time is for you. I just wanted to ask if, you know, you had any, in terms of the sort of hostage release negotiations, if you had any thoughts on what you would be comfortable with, and also if, you know, if you could speak a bit about your concerns about your mother, given the sort of heavy bombardment of Gaza and your thoughts on that.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about everything and you know, my basic belief is that, military actions don't, don't solve anything. So the minute, she, the minute I understood that, people are being held there, I thought that the right thing to do is to push immediately for diplomacy and to understand what, I mean, what, what the leverage they wanted when they took them and doing that, striking a deal. I think that can also be the first step in the road to an alternative reality. I mean, if we are able to negotiate and to make deals about the captives, I think it can be a milestone in a way to the future.
So I think everything should be on the table and that bringing them home should be the first priority. And when that happens, because I'm not sure that is the case, if they are the first priority, then I believe that that could happen. Now I'm afraid because it seems like the military option is more prevalent for government and I fear that it would...that it would harm the hostages, that it's not the moral thing to do, and that it won't bring us any closer to a better reality in the aftermath.
Thank you very much for answering my questions so eloquently. Thank you.
Thank you, Jonathan. In the meantime, I'll ask another question. Have you been able to work together with friends or MPs or even members of the Canadian government to try to work through this together, considering your mother's affiliation to Canada?
Yes. We organized, I guess it was on Sunday or Monday, we organized a work group of friends and colleagues. And we reached out very strongly to in North America and all over the world. And the reactions were, it's emotionally moving, but it's also it seems very, it's impressive and the amount of involvement and investment people have and the Canadian government as well. We have connections, official connections with the Foreign Ministry and everybody there is, you know, they are reassuring that they're doing everything they can. I don't know how much power Canada has, but they are—It seems like they're very much invested in doing everything they can.
Okay, we have another question from a journalist saying that the Israeli defense minister said last night that Israel needs to hit Hamas very hard in order to pressure them to make a deal, to be willing to negotiate. If you recall earlier on in the war, Hamas rejected all deals. Do you agree with this conclusion that in order to make them come to the negotiation table, they first need to be hit hard.
You know, I'm not a policymaker, I'm not a strategist, not a military guy. I think that that logic is what is, is, you know, that's the intuitive, like the intuitive logic of humanity using force. I don't think it's true. I think the creative ways to put pressure, I think international involvement, could create more solutions. I think Gaza has been hit very hard since this beginning of the war. I don't know that it could be that it can lead us to an effective solution. I mean, Qatar is involved, Egypt is involved. If the United States, there are enough leverages to use outside of more dead soldiers and more dead civilians. And that's my opinion.
And if your mother were here with you today on the other side of the fence watching what's unfolding, would she agree with what you're saying? Or do you think she would have a different approach? Or what do you think?
The mother I knew before October 7th, I'm sure she would agree and speak loudly about it. I don't know what's left of her, of that woman before October 7th, I, if she come back, I don't know what her opinions would be and how she would react to this unimaginable trauma. And, it's not only her, you know, she doesn't have a home to come back to, because it's burned to the ground and, her whole community is devastated. so much death. So I can't say.
That's a fair assessment. One journalist is requesting from the Washington Post if you can just spell the name of the organization she had worked in up until the second Intifada, not the current organization Woman Wage Peace, but the previous organization working in Gaza, if you can spell the name of the organization for her. I see Julia wrote it on the chat.
Perfect. Okay, so you're quicker than I am. Thank you. the negative Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development, NISPED. Another question from Canadian TV Global News. Okay, what went through your mind when you saw Yocheved Lifschitz’s testimony when she returned home to Israel?
First of all, I was happy for her and her family that she returned. She was my teacher in high school. And I was...I was a pretty hopeful after a testimony because it seemed like after the brutal kidnapping, she was, at least she felt she was being held in relatively good conditions. That's what I understood from her testimony. So I—it made me feel a little better. But the uncertainty is in every direction because you don't know who's holding who and it probably depends on your captor's character, how you're being held. And they're not, I don't think they were together.
Okay, I see that. I don't want to take too much of your time. I'm sure you're not sleeping a lot as it is. I'll just ask the last question in the chat box before wrapping it up. Do you believe that your mother is more at risk because of the escalation of the offense of this weekend or is the circumstance similar?
It's hard to say. I, I, I do feel that she's more at risk. because, also on the part of the IDF, you can't use, you can't be, you know, soldiers are not surgeons. They can't save one person from it. I don't think it works like that. War is chaotic. And also from the side of Hamas, that they took the prisoners as leverage. And if they lose that leverage, then they don't have use for them anymore. So it seems to me that she is more at risk.
Let's hope that she's not. I will ask one more question that somebody sent because I think it's a practical question for you. I took the time, you know, you can ask questions. Sure. OK. So someone is saying that she's in touch with team leaders from Women Wage Peace as well. And she's asking whether taking specific actions on behalf of your mother, do you think that will harm her or help her?
I think they're looking for guidance how much they should be interfering or intervening.
I don't want to be like a censor or a...I can't control the internet or she, she was a woman, you know, her own woman, not only my mother and, my, my studies, I, my, activities, I don't really talk in Israel to the Israeli press because I see a lot of, poison being directed at her, because of activities and I don't want to...be in that position where I defend my views because it's not relevant. I just want her back and because so that's my efforts, but you know, everybody who feels close to her can, what can I say? It's appreciated any effort being made.
Understood. And I hope that you're able to drown out any negative noise that comes your way. I think that's...Nobody, at least in our line of work, thinks that's a fair position to put you in.
One journalist from Paris is just saying...I don't know if she's a journalist, somebody online. Of course, there's a lot of supporters that came online in addition to the journalists, is saying that she met your mother four days...before October 4th, sorry, four days before October 7th and was very impressed by her admirable personalities and engagement for peace. And she's also in her thoughts and prayers. We have another question from Reuters, I believe, Emily.
Hi, it's not a question. I'm just from Winnipeg and I wanted to say that everyone in the community there, including myself, is just praying every day that she will come home safely and that's all. Thank you.
And we have a lot of nodding heads in the cubes online as well. So you can really see how much support you have. Another question, is there any communication to you suggesting that? I don't know if you can answer this. It is your decision whether to answer this. CBC is asking if there is any communication to suggest that negotiations are currently in play.
From the, I, you know, the formal negotiations I hear only from the press. I don't have any inside information about, about the efforts being made from the Israeli government or the international governments.
Okay, I think our final question will be really what message would you like to leave with the world given that we're three weeks in and you know the stakes at play and what is it that you want to communicate?
The attack on October 7th was...It was vicious, really brutal, but it happened in a certain context of this region of years and years of dehumanizing people from both sides. And we have been left alone, Israelis and Palestinians, to try to work this out for too long. And now we see that this is a global issue. This includes, you know, Iran and Russia and the United States and Europe. And I want everybody to be invested in it not only to avenge this attack, because it seems like this is what's happening now. And I don't think vengeance is a strategy, but to be invested in peace in this region, and we need help internationally.
I did promise to wrap up, but there is one last question from a journalist, a freelancer asking if you know of any other peace activists who were impacted by this attack, whether kidnapped or killed or larger family circles?
Yeah, of course, a lot.
Okay, we're happy to help with the contacts and resources after the call. I think we'll let Yonatan go now. Yonatan Zeigen, son of Vivian Silver, who was kidnapped on October 7th by Hamas inside of her home. Thank you specifically, Yonatan, for joining us. Again, our thoughts and prayers are with you and thank you to everyone who joined on the line. Thank you.