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Disappointed by her economic situation since arriving in Israel from Uzbekistan in the 1990s, and doubtful her economic prospects will improve any time soon, Tatyana Rudinsky wants to emigrate to Europe or North America.
As a single mother in her 40s who cleans floors and toilets in a Tel Aviv office tower for a living, Rudinsky’s acutely aware her chances of being accepted anywhere in the West are not good. But despite the temptation, she will not attempt to convince Canada to accept her as a refugee fleeing persecution as hundreds of her fellow Israeli citizens did last year.
Rudinsky's explanation was simple: "It would be absurd.
"Nobody in Israel has ever treated me badly because I am Russian. I want to leave Israel because I thought life would be better for me here than in the Soviet Union and it hasn't been."
Canada has accepted more than 580 refugee claims by Israelis since 2000, but only 45 of those were given refugees status in 2006, according to the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB).
Canada accepted 151 Israelis alleging persecution in 2005, which was 31 per cent of those who filed applications for refugee status.
The number of those trying to claim refugee status increased by more than 200 in 2006, but the number of those accepted declined to 45 — or 18 per cent of those who applied.
The Israeli government and Jewish groups in Canada were outraged at the fact the IRB agreed with some of the claimants they had a well-founded fear of persecution in the Jewish state after alleging, among other things, Israeli schools persecuted the children of Russian immigrants.
"The Government of Canada has to appeal these decisions and give proper directives to those making these decisions so that this stops," said Moshe Ronen, chairman of the board of governors of the Canadian Jewish Congress and chairman of the Canada-Israel Committee.
"To be compassionate is one thing, to be a sucker is another. If this situation gets out of hand we will make our case very forcefully. Israel is not a country that persecutes its citizens or its new immigrants. I cannot fathom any grounds for a Russian living in Israel to make such a claim."
Israel was the only developed country to make Canada's Top 10 list for refugee claims last year. Other nations on that list included China, Haiti and Nigeria.
Suggestions Israel persecutes immigrants from Russia has a special resonance here because the Jewish state was created in 1948 as a safe haven for Jews escaping persecution. Israel's foreign ministry, its embassy in Canada and the country's immigration absorption ministry have all strongly denied Israel persecutes its Russian-speakers.
"If it were an Israeli-Arab or a Palestinian, there might be political reasons for making a refugee claim in Canada, but if it is a Russian speaking Jew making such a claim, it must be economic," said Evegeni Satanovsky, vice-president of the Russian Jewish Congress, in an interview from Moscow.
In an era of globalization and trans-national economies: "New York, Toronto or Moscow might represent a better choice for some Russian Israelis," Satanovsky said. "Tens of thousands of Russian Jews have, for example, returned to Moscow from Israel, but this is a question of preference, not persecution."
Astonishingly, as he is widely known in Canadian Jewish circles as a staunch defender of Israel, Moshe Ronen said in his private capacity as a Toronto lawyer, several Israelis with Russian backgrounds had sought him out for help with their Canadian refugee claims.
"Not only have I met them, I was asked to represent them," Ronen said. "Each of them knew they did not have a chance in hell except to apply as bogus refugees and then delay the process as much as they could until they found someone in the IRB willing to err on the side of caution and let them in a door to Canada that they would not otherwise get through."
Although exasperated by such dramas, Ronen asserted they caused embarrassment to Canada, not to Israel.
"Israel is not a perfect society. What society is?" Ronen asked rhetorically. "What is embarrassing is that the acceptance of some of these claims by Canada shows that there are IRB officials who are clearly incompetent. They do not understand what a true refugee is."
The hullabaloo generated by Canada having accepted so many of the Russian-Israeli refugee claims has attracted considerable media attention in Israel. Whether the claims were spurious or not, it has underlined the difficulty Israel has had assimilating the 980,000 immigrants that have arrived from the former Soviet Union since it began to break up in 1989.
One in five Israelis speaks Russian as his or her mother tongue.
At Qiryat Gat, about 40 minutes drive south of Tel Aviv, shop signs are often in Russian, young women still dressed in the same garish clothing favoured by their sisters in the former Soviet Union, and pork was openly available for sale in some supermarkets. This was because many of the immigrants from Russia were not religiously observant Jews.
In fact, as many as 400,000 of them only have distant Jewish roots since Israel's liberal Law of Return grants citizenship to anyone with one Jewish grandparent and their spouses, whether or not they have any other Jewish connections.
Marianne Gershon, 34, who emigrated to Israel from Ukraine in the mid-1990s, guessed that as many as half of the Russian speakers she knew would leave Israel if they could find a western country that would take them.
Still, huge numbers of Russian Jews have made a tremendous contribution here, especially in the fields of medicine, music and high tech.
"Israel has not been bad for all Russians. Many have thrived and are happy," said Gershon. "But for me it was a mistake. I do not feel that I belong here."
When pressed, she said the main reason she wanted out were economic.
Although she holds masters degrees in Russian literature and in English, and learned Hebrew fairly quickly, she had been unable to find work as a teacher. She worked part-time now selling flowers.
The number of disaffected Russian Jews in Israel is likely to slowly disappear over time because the flow of new immigrants from the former Soviet Union has decreased.
The Jewish Agency, which encourages the Jewish diaspora to return, has estimated there was still about 800,000 Jews living in the former Soviet Union. Yet only 7,400 of them emigrated to Israel last year, down from a peak of 185,000 in 1991.
"The reservoir of people wanting to come from the Russian speaking countries is obviously much less than it was," Michael Jankelowitz of the Jewish Agency said. "The challenge for us is to gently persuade more of them to emigrate to Israel. But it is difficult because, for example, Moscow is now looked on as a city of choice to live in. That was not the case 15 years ago."
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