Wrapped in a pink blanket,Yaffa smiled serenely,as if she was being taken for a pleasant drive in the countryside rather than being paraded like a trophy by kidnappers. Many who watched it thought she must have been confused,perhaps she had dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
Not at all,according to those who knew her best. “She’s sharp-minded,” Adva told me and photographer Kate Geraghty last month in a park in central Tel Aviv. It was a gorgeous,sunny day and Adva’s voice was trembling.
“She gets everything but she’s the kind of person that will sit there and she will look them in the eyes,” Adva said of Yaffa,the oldest of the 240 people taken hostage in the terror attack.
“And she will let them see that she’s a person and they can kidnap her,but they won’t take her pride and they won’t humiliate her and she won’t let them see her suffer or be afraid.”
Adva was telling her grandmother’s story to anyone from the media who would listen in a bid to increase pressure on the Israeli government and Hamas to strike a hostage release deal.
She wanted the world to know that Yaffa was a lover of good food and wine who delighted in using Facebook and sending GIFs on WhatsApp. That she was a “very special person”,not just another name on a list of captives.