Women Waging Peace
Palestinian & Israeli Activism and Leadership
In honour of International Women’s Day, we hosted the inaugural winners of the Vivian Silver Impact Award, May Pundak and Dr Rula Hardal, co-directors of A Land for All. The event took place on Sunday, 9th March.
They were also joined by Vivian’s son, Yonatan Zeigen, and Shira Ben-Sasson Furstenberg, Associate Director of NIF in Israel.
Dr Rula Hardal and May Pundak spoke about their leadership at A Land for All, an organisation that is working towards one homeland, two states for Israelis and Palestinians in which they can live with freedom of movement and equal national rights side by side. A Land for All believes that only by working and living together in two independent states can there be true safety in Israel. As May stated:
‘What has ensured security is collaboration. Fragmentation, separation, and segregation will never ensure our security. Ever’.
Addressing IWD and NIF’s work towards gender equality, Shira Ben-Sasson Furstenberg spoke about how extreme conservative trends are influencing who is considered a ‘good woman’, and how the rise of nationalism and extremism are shaping feminism today in a pernicious way. Shira reminded supporters that ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’, and how NIF is investing and working hard to put women into meaningful positions of power on a local and national level.
Yonatan Zeigen spoke about his mother, Vivian Silver, and her legacy of activism. Vivian dedicated her life to political change and feminism in Israel, founded the Arab-Jewish leadership organisation AJEEC-NISPED, and worked across borders and boundaries to try to bring about peace in Israel and Palestine.
Yonatan reflected: ‘She had this duality. She was really fierce, while at the same time being so soft and caring and empathetic. On one hand being so small and fragile, and on the other hand, a spiritual giant.’
Yonatan went on to speak about his work as a peace activist after 7 October. ‘My mantra has become: peace is complicated because we don’t want it yet. It’s not about plausibility, it’s about will.’
As Vivian Silver once said, “social change always appears slowly, over time, like bulbs that have to mature in the soil before the plant can grow upward and start blooming.”
Dr Rula Hardal is a lecturer in political science at Palestinian universities as well as a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute for Israeli and Jewish Identity in Jerusalem. She is a fellow in the Forum for Regional Thinking. Originally from Peki’in, she currently lives in Ramallah.
May Pundak is a lawyer and a feminist activist. May deals with the seam between policy, education, and community activism. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Law. May is a graduate of the Mandel School for Educational Leadership, and lives with her family in Jerusalem.
A Land for All is a shared movement of Israelis and Palestinians who believe that the way towards peace, security, and stability for all is founded on two independent states, Israel and Palestine, within a joint framework allowing both peoples to live together and apart. Israeli-Jews and Arab-Palestinians are heavily intertwined on both sides of the Green Line and therefore building walls between them is neither realistic nor desirable. Recognizing that both Jews and Palestinians are part of the same shared homeland, and respecting their equal individual and national rights, A Land for All provides pragmatic and viable solutions to the obstacles that have stymied prior negotiations, moving us from a paradigm of separation towards a future based on power sharing, freedom of movement, democracy, and shared interests.
A Land for All is a grantee of NIF, forming one part of our strategic programme mobilising support for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. See here for more details on our vision for security and peace.
Shira Ben-Sasson Furstenberg is the Associate Director at the New Israel Fund in Israel and Director of the Development and International Relations Department. She previously served as NIF Chief of Staff and spent ten years working as a grants and programme officer at NIF and Shatil. She was the director of the Jewish Pluralism Watch (Mishmar Haknesset) which monitors policy regarding religious freedom, and worked at the Knesset’s Research and Information Center focusing on education and culture. Born and raised in a liberal Orthodox family in Jerusalem, Shira was an officer in the IDF and received her BA and MA in cultural anthropology from the Hebrew University.
Yonatan Zeigen is an Israeli peace activist. He has rededicated himself to peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians after losing his mother, peace activist Vivian Silver, in the October 7 attack and being heartbroken over the war in Gaza. Zeigen is also a social worker and trained mediator. A father of three based in Tel-Aviv Jaffa, he grew up in Kibbutz Be’eri, Israel. Zeigen holds a bachelor’s degree in law and a master’s degree in clinical social work. Read Yonatan’s words about his mother here.
About Vivian Silver
Vivian was a universally admired Israeli peace activist who advocated for Palestinian rights.
In the course of her 50+ years of activism and leadership, she worked with the New Israel Fund, B’tselem, and many other organizations to nurture civil society, advocate for human rights, end the Occupation, and achieve a negotiated peace agreement.
In 2000, Vivian and Amal Elsana Alh’jooj established AJEEC—NISPED, the Arab-Jewish Center for Equality Empowerment and Cooperation. Their partnership was embedded in the shared vision of a world in which Bedouin and Jewish women could cultivate genuine connection.
Over her final decades, she brought her leadership to and stood with Women Wage Peace, the interfaith grassroots organization created by Arab and Jewish Israeli women.
She was murdered by Hamas during the massacre of her kibbutz, Be’eri, on 7 October 2023.