Judith Ben-David's plan was straightforward enough, and if it worked there would be no need for another showdown with the police.
First, she and her friends would seek out the supermarket manager and make their plea. They were single mothers living off welfare, they said, and their children were hungry because Israel's finance minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, had slashed their benefits and told them to get jobs. But there was no work.
With the plea came a threat. If the supermarket manager was not prepared to give them food then the women would fill their trolleys, just as they had done at other shops all over the city of Beer Sheva, and charge out the door without paying.
"We're in trouble," Ms Ben David told the manager of a supermarket next to the central bus station. "We're Israelis with families and we don't have any money. We intend to fill our trolleys with food and we don't intend to pay. We don't care if we get arrested but we would be very grateful if you didn't stop us."
The women - all in their 40s with children in their teens or younger - call themselves the "Lionesses". They are among a growing number of Israelis driven deep into poverty by an economy ailing under more than three years of the Palestinian uprising and Mr Netanyahu's zeal for slashing social benefits to pay for lower taxes.
His many critics accuse him of robbing the poor to pay the rich, and of killing off the welfare state that was once a hallmark of Israel. Payments to single mothers, pensioners and the unemployed have been cut by a third in recent months.
Last week, the price of bread rose by a quarter while Mr Netanyahu reduced taxes on luxury goods. The leader of the Labour opposition, Shimon Peres, invoked Marie Antoinette. "Netanyahu and the Sharon government are proposing to hundreds of thousands of elderly who face starvation that if you don't have bread, let them eat television sets," he said.
With unemployment above 11%, one in five Israelis now lives below the poverty line, almost half of them children. Voluntary welfare organisations report a sharp increase in people looking for help. Hazon Yeshaya feeds about 5,000 people a week with hot meals; the majority are children. "We have seen a 65% increase in people coming to us over the past year," said the organisation's founder, Abraham Israel.
"It used to be we helped those people who were falling through the cracks; the old, the sick. In the past six months, we are getting those people who had jobs and were making it over the poverty line due to the assistance of social benefits. But the government has cut all these benefits."
Beer Sheva is one of the poorest of Israel's cities and flush with Russian immigrants who cannot find work.
The Lionesses met with a mixed response during earlier raids on a handful of supermarkets. At a couple they took the food and made a run for it. On one occasion they were arrested, but the shop did not press charges.
At the shop next to the bus station they decided to do it right. The security chief eyed them suspiciously but the manager, Yaish Biton, listened to their plea.
Ms Ben-David explained that she had three sons to feed and that Mr Netanyahu had cut her child support payments, her only source of income, from 3,800 shekels (£450) a month to 2,300 (£270). Her friends Michal Magen and Ahuva Mor-Yosef said they were in the same boat.
All three women are divorced and entitled to alimony payments, but such matters are handled by rabbinical courts that do little to make fathers responsible for their children.
What particularly riles the women is Mr Netanyahu's claim that welfare has created a culture of dependency and that many single mothers are too lazy to work. Ms Mor-Yosef used to work as a supermarket cashier. "Five years ago I had a heart attack and while I was recovering they fired me from the supermarket. Now they say I'm too old to hire," she said.
Mr Biton was sympathetic. "If it was up to me... " he said with a shrug. "But we are part of a chain. You have to ask headquarters." He invited them to send a fax to head office. Coca-Cola and chocolate croissants arrived while they awaited a reply. The security chief departed.
Mr Biton said he understood how hard life was for many Israelis today: "We used to have a special trolley next to the door. Customers were invited to put a tin of food in it for the poor. When the trolley was full, the food was delivered to the poor.
"Now there are so many hungry people they come to the supermarket and take tins out of the trolley. It never fills up anymore. A lot of people eat food straight off the shelf. They even bring can-openers. We don't stop them."
An hour later, a message came back from head office that there would be no free food. In the meantime, the security chief had called the police. The women felt duped. They grabbed a trolley and began to stuff it with rice, beans, chicken and oil. Mr Biton did not stop them but when they headed for the exit and barged past the security guard, the single mothers ran into a line of police.
There the women stayed, shouting to other shoppers for support and hanging signs on their trolley: "Any child has the right to food from its mother". An old man admonished them, saying he survived on 1,800 shekels a month. Several women told them to go and find work. Other shoppers said they understood, but stealing was wrong.
Opinion polls show considerable distress among Israelis at the erosion of the welfare state. Nearly 80% say they believe the government is being cruel to the weaker members of society. Three-quarters say Israel is in the midst of economic collapse even though Mr Netanyahu says the economy has turned around.
Yet polls on voting intentions also show that those views will have almost no impact on which parties and politicians Israelis support in the next election. If a ballot were held today, Mr Sharon would be returned to power, despite his government's economic programme and the fact that many voters suspect he is corrupt, because the bulk of Israelis still put more trust in him than his dovish Labour opponents in dealing with the Palestinians.
As the standoff at the supermarket doors continued - the single mothers clinging to their trolley and shouting for support, the police blocking their periodic attempts to make a run for it - Ms Ben-David complained of shortness of breath. Then she keeled over.
The police called an ambulance. Some of the other shoppers believed it was an act to gain sympathy. Out of the crowd came an elderly man who said he would pay for everything in the trolley. Ms Ben-David recovered.
"After I saw the woman fall, nobody even brought her a glass of water," the man said, declining to give his name. "My heart breaks when I see this. We're all Jewish."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1151109,00.html
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