Israel's "war singer" Yaffa Yarkoni passed away on Sunday, one week after her 86th birthday. Yarkoni's songs became national cultural treasures during her lifetime, and have served as our national soundtrack since the founding of the state. Yarkoni was an Israel Prize laureate and has been an Israeli musical icon since the establishment of the state. She died at the Reuth Medical Center in Tel Aviv after a decade-long battle with Alzheimer's disease. She leaves behind three daughters, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Her funeral will take place on Tuesday at 2 p.m. at the Kiryat Shaul cemetery in north Tel Aviv, where she will be buried next to her late husband Shaike Yarkoni. Born in Tel Aviv in 1925 to a family of Israeli immigrants from the Caucasus, Yarkoni, nee Abramov, was drawn to the stage from a young age. At the age of 10 she began studying ballet, performing with her siblings in their family cafe in Givat Rambam (now a neighborhood of Givatayim). In the 1940s, Yarkoni enlisted in the Haganah [the pre-1948 Palestinian Jewish defense force that later evolved into the IDF] serving as a radio operator in the Givati Brigade. During lulls in the fighting she would sing to the soldiers over the radio connection. When her brigade launched the Hishtron entertainment troupe, Yarkoni underwent her baptism by fire as a singer. Serving alongside her in the troupe was Tuli Raviv, who wrote her first hits: "Please don't say goodbye." In 1944, she married Yossi Gustin, a sergeant in the Jewish brigade, which fought with the British Army during World War II. He was killed in battle just two weeks after their wedding. In 1948 she married her second husband, Shaike Yarkoni, a fighter in the Haganah. He died in 1983. Initially in her career, Yarkoni specialized in parlor music, but thanks to her many stirring appearances before soldiers, she soon earned her nickname "war singer," a title she did not love despite the fact that it stuck throughout her career. The first song she recorded during a lull in the battles of the War of Independence was "Green Eyes," considered by many to be Israel's first pop hit. That song paved the way for her storied career. She first sang her hit "Believe me the day will come" to Haganah soldiers accompanying the supply convoys on their way to break the siege on Jerusalem as part of Operation Nachshon. When soldiers returning from the operation met with Yarkoni, she noticed the words "Believe me, the day will come, Yaffa," written on one of the armored vehicles. Yarkoni continued performing for soldiers throughout all of Israel's wars, on a strictly volunteer basis, singing to both combatants and wounded fighters. After the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, she was signed to the Hed Arzi record company, with whom she stayed for the rest of her life. In her first performance out of uniform in 1949, she sang "Bab el-Wad," the moving song with lyrics by poet Haim Gouri and melody by composer Shmuel Fershko. The song has been covered by many other singers and became one of Yarkoni's signature songs along with "Friends, history repeats itself," "The Finjan," "Yes, it is possible," and others. By the 1950s she had evolved into a versatile popular singer whose repertoire included "national" songs like "In the Negev Wilderness" and "Grandmother in the Negev" as well as parlor songs, waltzes and tangos. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Yarkoni performed at venues around the world, and her popularity continued to soar. She continued to appear, clad in khaki, at Israeli army bases to entertained soldiers, and many of her now-classic songs still resonate with Israelis and are performed at remembrance day ceremonies. In 1998, she received the prestigious Israel Prize for Hebrew song, for, among other things, her courage in singing to soldiers on the front lines. In the summer of 2000 she recorded her last song, "Years have passed, and it's hard to remember." Like the other famous rivalry between singers Ofra Haza and Yardena Arazi in the 1980s, Yarkoni was famously pitted against the late singer Shoshana Damari in a kind of "battle of the divas" between Israel's "war singer" and Israel's "national singer." The two always denied rumors of any rivalry between them and even sang together in the late 1980s. Over the past decade, Yarkoni began suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. In an interview not long before she died, her daughter said that Yarkoni could no longer recognize her family and her situation had deteriorated to the point that she required round-the-clock care. "She was a perfect mother and grandmother," her oldest daughter Orit Shochat said on Sunday. In 2002, after receiving her diagnosis, she also made a series of controversial comments about Israel's current military operations. "We are a nation that went through the Holocaust. How can we do things like this to another nation-" she told Israel's Army Radio. In an interview she gave to The Associated Press following those remarks, Yarkoni said she was tired of war, of dead young men and heartbroken mothers. "I am tired. For 51 years I have been singing about Israel all over the world, telling stories about how it was before the first war, the second war, every war. War, war, war. They call me the singer of wars. I don't like this name. I want to be the singer of Israel," she said. On Sunday, following Yarkoni's death, Shochat clarified her mother's comments. "It's important to me to correct the error of 2002 where they quoted my mother on the radio and claimed she had compared IDF soldiers to Nazis," said Shochat, "I have the transcript and that never happened. She said that she had seen on television how soldiers were writing numbers on the arms of Palestinian detainees and this reminded her of horrible things. She never compared IDF soldiers to Nazis. She performed for soldiers her entire life." Yarkoni faded from the public stage over the past decade, and in the end, it was the echo of her powerful songs, not her political statements, that lingered. At Yarkoni's request, she will not be eulogized at her funeral by politicians. "She will be eulogized by Haim Gouri as well as a reserve soldier during the Yom Kippur War who remembers hearing her voice over the radio and how it restored his sanity after he lost 16 friends in battle," Shochat said. Many of Israel's top artists were in mourning on Sunday. "It's a little banal to repeat this, but Yaffa was truly a fixture of Israeli life," said Israeli music superstar Arik Einstein. "As a child I lived in the building next door to her but didn't know her personally. Later we recorded music together and at one of the song festivals we sang 'Autumn night' together." "I grew up on Yarkoni's songs, I was born into them," said Israel actress and television host Rivka Michaeli. "She was more than a colleague, she was a friend. I feel like we have lost our national soundtrack. I hope we continue to broadcast her music because a clear voice likes hers only comes along once every few generations." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also commented on the loss of one of Israel's most iconic voices. "Yaffa was one of Israel's greatest singers and an Israel Prize laureate for Hebrew song," Netanyahu said on Sunday. "Yaffa Yarkoni's songs were the soundtrack of Israel, from its pre-state days, through the establishment of the state and up until now. We will all miss her special voice and today, in keeping with her song, 'Don't say goodbye to me,' we take our leave from her, but not from the musical and cultural heritage that she has left behind." Israeli President Shimon Peres said, "While the IDF captured enemy positions, she captured the hearts of soldiers. She was the nightingale of the IDF and of the entire nation."
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