Our case seems simple and clear. For us the matter of our destiny is not just a matter of life - and - death for ourselves, but also a last border of human dignity and rights" issues. We were actually misled and mistreated by a foreign government, and our son kidnapped by the same government. However, the circumstances and some details were somehow complicated, and the matter as whole too delicate. Whoever would have courage to help us must prepare for loosing some stereotypes. The state, which has "kidnapped" our son (and us) is "untouchable". In spite of wide human rights violations, slavery, and ignorance of international standards, that state won a special privilege not to be criticized or boycotted. This makes our tragedy more complex and deep.

We are Natalya and George HAZINSKY, former citizens of Kazakhstan. In a certain "moment" of our life we have found out that we do not belong to the group of "true" citizens any more. Even among Kazakhs themselves there was a wide tribal division, but to be a non-Kazakh in Kazakhstan became completely "illegal". Georgian origin, George never felt comfortable in Kazakhstan. Everything became even worse after a Muslim state was established there. He was severely beaten and injured, our son was beaten with complicated injures. We looked for ways to escape from Kazakhstan.

Unfortunately for us, the only state we could go to was always taking advantage of instability and persecutions in various parts of the world, recruiting victims as immigrants, whom they needed for slavish manual labor and army. By then we did not know that. Because life in Kazakhstan became unbearable, we left for that country, which we imagined differently from what it became for us.

However, we don't think our case should be politicized. We don't want to blame political regimes for our suffering. They are what they are. For a number of people life over there seems and is normal, even if they live under the most monstrous regimes. The refugee tribunal in Canada did not understand or did not want to understand that we never tried to blame any political regime. Can you blame a twister (which did not do any harm to thousands of people but ruined your home), or a meteor, or a wind, or a thunder?

However, separately from this attitude, we must accent the fact that from the Canadian perspective what happened to us, our situation should be unacceptable. If the tribunal was looking into our case through a prism of Kazakhstan"s or Israeli standards, then conclusions it made were obvious. A question we wanted to ask the tribunal was the next: could we be treated according to Canadian standards before becoming Canadians? This is what bothering us. Then - the tribunal did not understand (or did not want to) that the phrase "your country" does not correspond to our situation, especially to George. He is a refugee from Abkhazia in second generation (his family flied Abkhasia in result of the Abkhasian-Georgian conflict, loosing the whole property, house, everything), and lost all links with Georgia. He doesn't have Georgian citizenship, and lost the citizenship of Kazakhstan, which wasn't "his country" anyway.

The tribunal never doubted persecutions, discrimination and assaults, which we faced in Kazakhstan and Israel. In the same time (by refusing to recognize us as refugees) the tribunal (as well as the Federal court) has demonstrated an inability to look into our case through a non-politicized perspective. In other words, no solution was given to us in ours' extreme situation.

We think that it happened because they did not find a solution of how to classify the administrative mayhem of our status, and our relation to the state of Israel.

According to the most common international practices legal immigration to any country automatically requires a citizenship or a permanent resident status given by the state to immigrants.

However, our situation contradicted it. As we received Israeli immigrants' visas, we should expect Israeli citizenship (a permanent resident's status wasn't expected because: 1) normally it is not practiced in Israel 2) it is incompatible to Israeli internal laws, which makes life of a permanent resident impossible there).

However, in Israel we did not receive the citizenship automatically. Opposite, our Kazakhstan passports and other documents have been confiscated, and we were pushed through a ridiculous procedure of definition of nationality, with our citizenship status becoming dependent on its results. We found out that we were administrated not from Tveria but from Jerusalem.

It is important to mention that in Israel your life without the "teudat zehut" (it plays a role of an internal passport, but by mistake often interpreted as an ID card) is impossible. Without TZ you can not enter any public institution, including school. You might be also arrested by police at any time for not carrying the TZ on you (etc.) We were left without the TZ since September till February 1999. It is obvious that the delay was used in Jerusalem to prevent us from returning to Kazakhstan. They had to know the citizenship law of Kazakhstan, and when after February 1999 we went to the consulate of Kazakhstan, we were told that after 3 months without registration we've lost the citizenship, and now can not return to Kazakhstan.

When we received the TZ's, our nationality was mentioned as "Russian", which is not a full citizenship: it makes you a second-class "citizen". We also found out that our children were refused Israeli citizenship at all. From the civilized perspective it seems absolutely ridiculous: the parents were given the citizenship, and the children were not! This is an administrative division of a family. It splits it!

In Israel we were always afraid that our parental rights could be taken away together with our children. It partially happened (we mean our oldest son's situation). We could prove that the status of our children in Israel wasn't equal to the Western-style legal definition of the permanent resident status. If someone insists that they had a permanent resident status in Israel, we must disagree. We could submit the full prove later.

However, only one fact must convince anyone: our son was admitted to the water-polo national team of Israel, and had to participate in international competition in Holland, but he was officially (!) refused (by Israeli Ministry of Internal Affairs) a travel document - "because was not an Israeli citizen"(!).

We do not speak about the psychological trauma, persecutions and batteries. They were obviously programmed by our statuterial situation and provoked by the official Israeli anti-Christian racist propaganda. In the most countries in the world non-citizens are not taken to the compulsory military service. In Israel they are. In Israel a permanent resident is not illegible to open a business, buy a house and / or land!

Because Israel recognizes only a Jewish religious marriage, our children were considered as "mamzerim" ("bastards", untouchable) - and had no rights to travel with us. Nominally they were not treated as our children at all. "Bastards" ("mamzerim") also have no rights in general in Israel: they can not marry an Israeli, they can not work in the state institutions, buy land, open a business, etc.

In violation of some Israeli and international regulations our older son was taken to Israeli army against his will. As we (our friends) remember, in one of Sochnuts' brochures it was written that only volunteers might serve in Israeli army without Israeli citizenship.

When even a category of "citizens" with "Russian" or "nationality was not defined" remarks in internal passport, have no rights or protection in Israel, people like our son are totally rightness. In the army he already has tremendous problems, but we can not describe them precisely - because in revenge our son can be beaten or even killed. We consider the fact that our son, not an Israeli citizen, was taken to the compulsory military service as if he was kidnapped and taken away from his parents.

Israeli army is a tool to convert non-Jews into Judaism by force. When our son was told to take the military oath on Tora, he asked for a Bible, but in response received such threats that has to obey - and take the oath on Tora. In our humanitarian file we have a material about an Israeli general"s statement that all non-Jews in Israeli army should be forced to go through "giyur".

We turned to famous Israeli politicians and lawyers, to the Minister of the Internal Affairs and to other institutions, personalities and authorities. All of them said that Israel is an anti-non-Jewish (anti-Christian) state, and that non-Jews should not come there. They said that the state of Israel was designed so that non-Jews should not be able to work, live, even exist in Israel. You could learn who and how said that from our refugee file.

However, - again - we would not politicize our case and label that all as "racism" and an "undeclared war against Christians". They have their own laws and traditions, which we may respect as soon as they apply to people, who came to Israel because of their nationalistic believes or were born in Israel. As soon as they try to extend these laws to people like us - foreign citizens, Christians, - keeping us in Israel as prisoners: only then it is unacceptable. It is clear that the state of Israel did not fulfill immigration obligations towards us. In reality we never immigrated to Israel and can not be considered as citizens of Israel.

We could leave Israel and take our younger son out of that country only through a dangerous and illegal way. This proves how desperate we were and how serious was our situation. Moreover - the IRB Panel in Montreal wrote at page 2 of their decision the following:

'Le tribunal ne doute pas que les non-Juifs puissent кtre victimes en Israel de discrimination, de harcelement ou d'agressions, dans certaines circonstances particuliиres et dans certains milieux particuliers'.

So, even IRB in a way recognized our trustworthy evidences about ugly reality towards gentiles in Israel.

Also, because we left Israel utilizing another passport to save our stateless child, upon the hypothetical return there, we will face a danger of being imprisoned for that. What would happen with our child if we were in prison just because we wanted to save our child from the manifestation of hostility towards him?

We ran for our lives. If now we would be forcefully removed back to Israel, we would be punished! Our son David will be taken away from us for sure and will be converted into Judaism. Our case is the last resort, last borderline to defend the Christian civilization. We believe that behind unfair refugee tribunal's and Federal Court's decisions were Israeli attempts to return all "fugitive slaves" (as they consider people like us) back to Israel.

However, our major concern in the present situation is our older son. He is so terrified by an eventual revenge that if an independent representative should ask him if he serves voluntarily in Israeli army, he would say "yes". Until he leaves Israel he will be bound to this answer. We can only testify that he was taken to Israeli army according to Israeli law of the compulsory military service. We have one of the army orders submitted to my son for compulsory military service. If needed, we can send a copy and the translation of this document. Anyway, administratively our son was taken to Israeli army, and this is the main issue.

Please, give us an advise, what to do.

We hope that this document would be kept confidential, out of acknowledgement of the brutal Israeli regime.

Yours truly, Natalya HAZINSKY

29.07.2001