Чтение онлайн

people without any legal status because we were socially (and legally) totally deprived. We could not obtain a bank card,

credit card, take a loan, be responsible for any business operation, in other words, had no rights of citizens.

11. After my wife was bitten on her job and turned to police, she was not paid her salary. No institution (this event was

discussed during our immigration hearings) expressed a will to defend her rights.

To examine documents related to this part see our file and also Supplements, Documents #51,52.

B). Incredible financial pressure through illegal billing, taxation, or fines.

1. Illegal billings. Exaggerated telephone bills, bills for long-distance calls, which we never did, etc., were coming. We had

to pay all of them because it was no place where to turn to dispute them.

2. Taxation. We had to pay taxes for TV, which we did not have by then (in Israel you must pay taxes for radio and TV), for

medicine and medical services (some of them fresh immigrants or - in other cases - people with small income - did not

have to pay). We were also forced to pay municipal tax instead of the owners of the apartment, which we rented. In that

case as new arrivals we were eligible to pay reduced tax for immovable property, but were given this privilege only in 1994,

short time before we left for Canada. In spite of the law that new immigrants do not pay taxes I was forced to pay taxes

from money I earned playing concerts. Ministry of Taxation and Revenues has also submitted us an application form for

paying taxes as if we had an enterprise and refused to pay taxes. This form was submitted to us not from Tel-Aviv, as

normally was practiced, but from Jerusalem - as if I was a special person. There were other examples of such taxation.

(Examples of such bills were presented to the commissioners).

3. We had to pay fines for things we did not do and for violations we never committed.

Supporting documents are enclosed (see Supplements, Documents #53,54).

C). Draft Board has submitted me orders to appear sometimes every several days. I know that the compulsory military

service for people of my age, who never were in the army in any country before, was not practicing. I do not think that they

had intentions to take me to the army anyway. But they called me to appear there so often that it distorted my whole life

and became an obstacle for work or social activity. I had also to spend a lot of money for bus tickets to appear at draft

board, at Tel-ha-Shomer. They also refused to give me a permission to leave the country during more then 3 years.

Supporting documents are enclosed (see Supplements, Documents #55). They were also presented to the

commissioners.

D). I could not say that the whole issue with my wife's eternal passport ("Tehudat Zehut") - during the refugee hearing

was a well-coordinated with the Israeli side provocation (conspiracy) only because I have no material proof. But there are

a lot of coincidences and indications in favor of such a suggestion. When (first I, and later my wife) we were given

"Tehudat Zehuts", clerks told us that this document is the property of Israeli government and do not has to be shown to

any foreigner or taken abroad. I knew many other Russian-speaking people who were told the same. Even Mrs. Malka, the

immigration officer, has to recognize the existence of this regulation (please, listen to immigration hearings tapes, the last

hearing), but she suggested that (as some of Russian speaking people did) we had to violate the law and to bring

(smuggle!) our "Tehudat Zehuts" to Canada illegally!

When the day of our departure from Israel came, we had completely forgotten about this regulation, and our "Tehudat

Zehuts" among other papers were taken to airport. That happened because for us it was a tremendous moment. (Only a

person with sick imagination could suggest that a family like ours could take a hard decision to fly a country where we

(nominally, but...) were citizens and spent more then 3 years just because of economic reasons or "exaggerations"). Car, in

which I was with my friend Igor Puchinsky (my family went to airport in another car before me) was stopped at the military

post by a solder - a Moroccan origin. He told us to get out from the car and to show our identities. I had only my foreign

passport (my "Tehudat Zehut" was with my wife). He began to shout on me and threaten me by an arrest "because I had

no Israeli ID". He claimed that the foreign passport is considered in Israel as a document for departure only and does not

recognized as an ID. He told that a real ID is only "Tehudat Zehut", which is not permitted to be taken abroad. And he

said that he suspect me in an attempt to smuggle my "Tehudat Zehut" abroad. May be my friend Mr. Puchinski's

respectability, may be the intervention of the officer- an European origin, helped, but I was released. This incident

reminded us that we still have "Tehudat Zehuts" with us. From another hand, even if we had an intention to smuggle

them, we were too much afraid, and we destroyed them in airport.

This I told Mrs. Malka during our last immigration hearing.

(Any one, who had a chance to hold in hands an Israeli "internal passport" ("tehudat zehut") had a chance to notice that

there are not one but two nationality-related marks in it: one is the brutal disclosure of the genetically-related information

about a person, another one mentions his country of origin. Even if Mrs. Malka or her parents do not possess one, she