Aviva was born  December 20, 1928 in Israel, in the city of Gaza, to Shaul and Leah, from Latvia. Her father was a member of the Zionist Committee in Perm (Ural) Russia. He immigrated to Israel 1921, settling in Beer-Sheba, and  later among the founders of the 18-family Jewish community in Gaza. A loyal Revisionist Party member.

Yaffa studied at ‘Herzliya’ High-School Tel-Aviv. As a sixth-grade student 1944, she was recruited to Lehi  recommended by her cousin Herzl Amikam – a Latrun escapee. She soon moved  to the Intelligence department  doing surveillance of police officers etc. She contacted journalists to receive confidential information. September 1947 she was transferred to Jerusalem and sent on high-risk missions, like transporting a briefcase of explosives from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. Already then, murderous Arab Riots upon Jews took place following the UN Partition Plan, and the Jerusalem/Tel-Aviv Road was heavily under fire by Arab gangs. The bus she boarded to Tel-Aviv, was attacked on its return trip to Jerusalem, entirely burnt down. Luckily, she had to stay in town, missing the bus. She worked  as radio operator and broadcaster at Lehi’s Lifta base, Jerusalem and took part in the Deir-Yassin operation. With the expulsion of the British from Jerusalem, she participated in the attempt to conquer the buildings they’d evacuated and the attempt to break through into the Old City, where Lehi fighters were killed on what was known as ‘The Wall of Death’. The camp was moved to Talbiyeh; she continued broadcasting to Tel-Aviv. After the assassination of Bernadotte and closure of the camp, she moved to Tel-Aviv serving as the contact person for Dr. Eldad. With establishment of the State, she was suspected of belonging to the ‘Kingdom of Israel’ (Malchut-Yisrael) clandestine group, arrested in 1952, sentenced to four years and released after a year and a half. She married Ze’ev Badian, whom she’d met in the underground. She assisted in the publication of ‘Sulam’. She worked at the Merchants Association and studied at the Open University and University of Tel-Aviv. On September 5, 1997, her husband died. The couple had two children, Orit and Yair plus four grandchildren.