The death of a 74-year-old Canadian-Israeli activist, Vivian Silver, who was missing after the Hamas attack on Gaza on October 7, has been confirmed, an Israeli diplomat in Toronto said yesterday, Monday.

“Tragic news: Vivian Silver, the Canadian-Israeli peace activist previously believed to be a hostage, has been confirmed dead, murdered by Hamas in Kibbutz Beri,” Israel’s Consul General Idid Shamir announced on social network X (formerly Twitter).

“Canada mourns her loss,” Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Jolie also wrote on X, calling Vivian Silver “a proud Canadian-Israeli who campaigned her whole life for peace.”

Silver’s son, Yonatan Zeigen, 35, who lives in Tel Aviv, said days after the attack that he was on the phone with her during the kibbutz attack.

On Saturday October 7th around 11:00 am. local time “we were talking on the phone and he wrote to me: ‘He’s in the house,'” he told AFP at the time. “Since then nothing.”

“She fights for justice, she’s a fantastic mother and grandmother.”

Vivian Silver had set up aid programs for the people of Gaza and helped them seek treatment in Israel.

She had won several awards for her commitment to peace and in 2014 was involved in the creation of an Israeli feminist and peace movement, Women Wage Peace, which has more than 45,000 members.

According to the latest information shared by Israeli authorities, about 240 people were kidnapped and taken to Gaza as hostages during the Hamas offensive that left about 1,200 dead, most of them Israeli civilians.

According to the Hamas Health Ministry, Israeli shelling of Gaza killed 11,240 people, mostly civilians, including 4,630 children.