Page 119 - ISRAEL'S CRADLE

The preparations for the hunger strike of the Yishuv leaders were short and complicated. Nearly everyone who had a public position in the Jewish Yishuv (about 600 thousand people) sought to join in. A special committee of the National Institutions chose only a limited group of men and women, and placed a difficult barrier before them: To present medical clearance that they were fit to engage in a lengthy hunger strike, which could continue for quite a few days.
Golda Meyerson appeared before her family doctor who outright disqualified her from participating in the strike, reminding her that she had recovered from a lengthy illness only a few weeks before. Golda did not give up, telling the physician: "There is nothing to debate about my not participating in the hunger strike. I will participate and you my dear doctor can choose: Whether to permit me to join my fellow strikers or that I will hunger strike on my own at home." Against such an argument, the doctor gave in and granted Golda the clearance she yearned for.
Another hunger strike candidate, the editor of the "Davar" Newspaper – Zalman Rubashov- Shazar (later, the Chairman of the Jewish Agency and the third President of the State of Israel) encountered a similar problem and failed to receive clearance. Eventually, he remembered that he had a friend in the colony of Rehovot, a gynecologist by specialty, and it was he who provided him with clearance. The request of the President of the Jewish National Council, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (later, the second president), to participate in the fast, was vehemently rejected by his physician, and all his efforts to get clearance from him failed.
Thus, on Friday April 12, 1946, the final list of the heads of the Jewish Yishuv who decided to hunger strike, until the immigrants on La Spezia were permitted to make Aliya, was formulated. It included members of the Executive of the Jewish National Council – Chairman David Remez, and members of the Zionist Executive Aharon Zisling, Ya’akov Riftin, Nahum Nir and Mordechai Shatner; Golda Meyerson, member of the Executive of the Jewish Agency; the President of the Sephardi Congregations David Abulafia; the representative of the Hebrew University, David Werner Senator; the representative of the Women’s Movement WIZO, Elisheva Vurman-Sanfer, a Holocaust survivor who had only been freed a year before from the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp; Nahum Lifshits represented the community of Jerusalem’s Jews and the Revisionist Movement; Zalman Aharonowitz (Aran) represented the Histadrut, and Yehudit Simhonit represented the Union of Women Workers. Closing off the list was the editor of the "Davar" Zalman Rubashov-Shazar. During Friday, 10 Nissan 5706 (four days before the Seder Night), April 12, 1946, the halls and offices of the National Institutions Building became a hive of teeming activity. Places were set where the fasters would stay during their meetings, and each was additionally allocated a separate room. Beds, sheets, blankets, towels and additional personal equipment were brought to these personal rooms from the "Hadassah" Hospital. In each room, there was a bed, a cupboard, a chair and a telephone extension – a rare commodity in those days.
The fast was set to commence on Friday at 1:00 PM. David Remez, Chairman of the Jewish National Council, read the names of the fasters and briefly announced "the rules of the fast": "No food, except water or tea." Afterwards Remez gave a short speech and defined the goals of this unique public fast:
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