Zipporah was born in Petah Tikva on 21.4.1926 to Avraham and Gina Gafni-Weintal. Her father made aliyah in 1914 with his father, Rabbi Yaakov Hayim, a well-off Jew from Warsaw, who wanted to tour the Land of Israel and buy land there. Avraham refused to leave Jerusalem when his father departed. He studied engineering in Beirut, and when he returned, he joined a group of Dutch Jews who established the Ramatayim settlement, now part of Hod HaSharon.
The family home was secular and nationalist. In her youth, Zipporah witnessed the difficult clashes between the Histadrut and the veteran settlers, in order to establish its dominance in the region and control over all aspects of life. This made quite the impression upon her. She went to the Nahalal Agricultural School, and when she returned home three years later in 1944, Lehi’s struggle against the British was reaching a fever pitch. Her father became a sworn supporter of the underground. Lehi fugitives would find refuge in their home, and her father even arranged for escapees from prison to stay with their neighbors. Zipporah had to feed them, and she managed the communications between them and the other underground members.
At this stage, she decided to join the ranks of the underground as an active operative. She travelled to Jerusalem to study at the teachers’ seminary, but most of her time she dedicated to the underground. She let her studies slip, until she had to stop them totally in order to dedicate herself heart and soul to the underground. She was trained in firearms and maneuvers. She was involved in different activities, e.g. the attempted jailbreak at Jerusalem Central Prison, attacking the CID building in Jerusalem and laying mines on the roads.
She recruited supporters, until she became the supervisor of this department in the Sharon and Samaria.
Around the time of the establishment of the State, she married David Shomron (Eli), fellow member of the underground. They had two daughters, Eilat and Sheva. Once the State was established, they moved to Beersheba, where she was a teacher and a secretary at the Dead Sea Works. When her husband was sent abroad for the security services in 1955, she worked as the secretary for the scientific advisor in Pairs. After they returned in 1970, she worked as the secretary for the scientific advisor of the Minister of Defense. On an additional tour abroad, she worked as the secretary of the consulate in the Hague. In 1997, her story was told in Leah Giladi’s Aleihen Lo Katvu. This book told the story of fourteen young women who were Lehi members.
