Son of presumed Hamas hostage holding out hope she’s still alive – National | 24CA News
Chen Zeigen lately returned to Canada from Israel, the place he and his brother hung out supporting grieving households within the wake of the Oct. 7 assaults by Hamas. While he tried to supply consolation, he says he felt the position was usually reversed.
“I went to funerals. I made shiva calls. The grieving families often look at me and my brother as if we need to be comforted, because the sentiment is that they have closure and they can grieve. And we are being held up in the air and then we don’t know anything,” Zeigen advised host Mercedes Stephenson in an interview on The West Block.
Zeigen’s mom, Canadian Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver, is believed to have been taken hostage by Hamas in these assaults.
“I feel there is still hope that she is alive and well and that we will be able to see her back with us,” Zeigen stated.
About every week after the assaults, Zeigen says his household was contacted by the Israeli authorities, which stated it had geolocated Silver’s cellphone in Gaza.
This is the lone bit of data he says the household has obtained about what might have occurred to Silver after her house within the Be’eri kibbutz close to the Israel-Gaza border was burned within the assault.
The final textual content message she despatched was, “They’re inside the house,” her different son, Yonatan Zeigen advised Global News beforehand.
Silver was born in Winnipeg and moved to Israel within the Seventies, the place she shortly turned a fierce peace activist and based the group Women Wage Peace.
“She believed in reaching peaceful agreement, building peace from the bottom up. She devoted her life to garnering understanding between Israelis and Palestinians, organizing encounters. She constantly opposed any use of violence on either side,” Zeigen advised Stephenson.
But now, that peaceable resolution Silver spent her life advocating for has been pushed additional into doubt, Zeigen added.
“I know that one of the heartbreaking consequences of this attack is that many of her friends that survived the attack, many of the people in my community in Kibbutz Be’eri, who shared these views with her, who struggled for a peaceful solution, they have completely lost faith,” he stated.
“So I hope if we see her again soon, that she is still the hopeful, hopeful and strong woman that we know.”
‘No actual motion’ on hostages: Cotler
Zeigen was joined on The West Block by Irwin Cotler, Canada’s now-former particular envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism.
He’d completed his duties as the primary particular person in that position when the assaults occurred and was in Israel on the time.
“We were there to celebrate my son’s marriage and it ended up becoming, as it’s been said, the worst day in Jewish history since the Holocaust,” Cotler stated.
The Oct. 7 assaults noticed 1,400 folks killed, in line with Israeli authorities, and greater than 200 folks believed to be taken hostage.
Cotler is asking on a world coalition to work towards the unconditional return of hostages, saying their launch is a humanitarian, authorized and ethical crucial.
“At this point, there’s been no real movement on the matter of the hostages. And we say it’s a matter of urgency and it’s a matter of international responsibility,” he stated.
In the weeks because the assault, a handful of hostages have been launched.
There have been heated rallies world wide because the assault and amid Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes and floor actions on Gaza, which is run by Hamas. Hamas-run Gaza well being authorities say some 9,000 folks have been killed within the retaliatory strikes.
Amid this rigidity, Cotler says there may be the “most alarming” rise in antisemitism since formal monitoring started 50 years in the past.
“We’re seeing now an intensifying resurgent, metastasized global antisemitism,” Cotler stated, describing the expansion as “explosive.”
On Oct. 16, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau named Deborah Lyons as Colter’s successor as particular envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism.
Lyons is Canada’s former ambassador to Israel.
— with recordsdata from Global News’ Jeff Semple and Reuters.
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
