ГУЛаг Палестины

Гунин Лев

Batteries, assaults, abuses were real and happened to us in real life. If my son could come to school and could hear a discussion about the last article in a Hebrew newspaper, in

which "Russians" were called sons of a bitch, prostitutes, fools and thieves: was it "unreal"? And the computer games in Hebrew accompanied by songs with words like

"Russians, go home": They were as real as the real life. And the social climate in Israel is so horrible that if a child is beaten at school "because he's Russian" - he is forced

to feel guilty himself as if he's guilty in not being an Israeli but being a Russian.

Any person with conciseness (a journalist, immigration official, a human right organization official) could take a translator from Hebrew, go to a library or to an archive and

find articles in Hebrew newspapers which have highly aggressive untie-Russian contest. And what about thousands of articles in Russian newspapers published in Israel about

what can be called almost genocide against "Russians"?

When they began to call my son to a draft board (because Israel has a compulsory military service) he asked an alternative military service each time they called him: because

he was afraid of hostility towards "Russians" within the Israeli army and also because of the rule that a single son can not be taken into the front-line units against his will.

They gave him no decision, but kept ordering him to come to the draft point again and again.

One day a new routine order to come to the draft point arrived. My son was ordered to come one day - but the order has been sent one day later then the date of his appearance. A

couple of other days past before he got the order. But as soon as he got it he immediately went to the draft board.

When he came they have arrested him incriminating him a disobedience to the order to come. No excuse, no explanation was admitted. Everything happened so fast that there is

no doubt: they were prepared. So, they have submitted this order for him later then the date he was called to intentionally. He was accused in a refusal to come to the draft board

(they ignored that he arrived voluntarily) and in avoiding the military service. They have treated him like if he already was a soldier and flied from a military unit. He was also

given a soldier's number as if he was a soldier when in reality he never entered the army and never wearied a military uniform. When he admitted that he's going to become

mentally ill because of the military prison they refused to give him a Russian-speaking psychologist, and the Hebrew- speaking psychologist couldn't speak with our son, but

wrote a report based on ungrounded insinuations. When later a Russian-speaking psychologist appeared he translated him that report but told that it is impossible now to

dispute what the Israeli wrote.

When our son was in the military prison severe humiliations were committed over him. All the violations of the rules and of the moral norms in his case were too innumerable

to mention them. During his imprisonment our son was transformed from a healthy person to a mentally ill boy. When he was released from the military prison (he was in the

prison more then 3 months; no charges were posed against him, no court took place) the military medical committee recognized him as a mentally ill person. When he was just

imprisoned he was recognized as a fully healthy person suitable to the military service. He received some treatment here, in Canada, and the immigration board knows it. We

did everything we could to release our son from the military prison. But the civil lawyers refused to take his case as soon as they heard about the conflict with the army. Some

of them assaulted us refusing to take the case. We demanded a military lawyer but the military commandature in Jaffo denied us a military lawyer. We turned to all the

possible places like Israel Bar Association,human rights organizations, Sharansky's Zionist Forum, Israel and foreign media, state officials: nobody couldn't or didn't want to

help us. Then we decided to send a letter to Amnesty International. A friend of us - a dissident and a journalist Lev G.
– has contacted Amnesty International and later submitted

several faxes to them. When the authorities realized that we complained to Amnesty International they released our son from the military prison.

We couldn't live in Israel any more after what happened to us and to our son there, and also because we were afraid that our son can be arrested again if we will stay in Israel.

The only reasonable solution for us was to escape. And the only way to do it was to become refugee claimants. We flied to Montreal in November 1994.

I don't want describe the whole farce of so called "immigration hearings". There were 2 of them.

Any positive decision couldn't be taken in our case since the immigration officer assigned to our case is a Jew, probably, an Israeli, and she hates the Russian-speaking

people. We prove in our later appeal that it was her who took the decision in our case.

Several months ago when our son was on a party, one gay called him out and took him to a car.

That gay was drunk. When driving the car he damaged several parked vehicles. Later we discovered that he took another person's car.

Despite the clear evidences that not my son drove the car police accused him. We also have an audiotape where that other boy recognizes that he (not our son) was guilty. There