fighting alongside our brothers.” 130 As Fefer would later describe the May days of 1948, “we were under siege. Dozens of people would come every day.” And as G. M. Kheifets (Fefer’s deputy in the JAFC, the committee’s principal secret informer, and formerly the head of Soviet espionage on the West Coast of the United States) reported to the Central Committee of the Party, most visitors wanted to go to Palestine as volunteers. The majority of the petitioners speak not just for themselves, but on behalf of their colleagues and schoolmates. The largest number of requests are from students of Moscow institutions of higher learning: the Law Institute, the Chemistry Institute, the Foreign Language School, the Institute of Chemical Machine-Building, and others. There are also petitions from Soviet employees—engineers from the Steel Research Center and the Ministry of Armaments—as well as Soviet Army officers. As their motive, the petitioners cite their desire to help the Jewish people in their struggle against English aggression, on behalf of the Jewish state. 131 Indeed, some went so far as to make “unheard-of, shocking” statements (as one JAFC presidium member described them) to the effect that Palestine was their homeland. But what was even more unheard-of and shocking was that thousands of people were making such statements publicly and collectively. On September 3, 1948, the first Israeli ambassador to the USSR, Golda Meyerson (later Meir), arrived in Moscow. What followed was a series of improvised, spontaneous, and unsupervised political rallies—something the Soviet capital had not seen in more than twenty years. For Golda Meir, who had been born in the Russian Empire, visiting the Soviet Union was a kind of homecoming. On the very first Saturday after her arrival, she went to the Moscow synagogue and, having greeted the rabbi, broke into tears. The purpose of her visit, however, and of course the purpose of the new state she represented, was to remind the Jews of all countries that their true home was not their home. During the next month, every one of her public appearances was accompanied by a demonstration of Soviet Jewish identification with Israel. On October 4, 1948, on Rosh Hashanah, thousands of people came to the Moscow synagogue to see her. Some cried, “Shalom”; most had probably never been to a synagogue before. And on October 13, on Yom Kippur, a large crowd followed the Israeli diplomats from the synagogue to the Metropole Hotel, chanting, “Next year in Jerusalem.” 132