Report: Israel has the world's largest white-girl slavery market

[llu]

Report: Israel has the world's largest white-girl slavery market

By Khalid Amayreh

Occupied Jerusalem: 17, 2002 (IAP News): The world's biggest market for trade in white women is located in Israel, according to Israel press sources.

On Sunday, the Israeli Hebrew paper Ma'ariv reported that Israel's new white-slave traders "import" and "smuggle" thousands of young girls from the countries of the former Soviet Union, especially the Baltic republics Moldavia, Estonian and Latvia, to work as prostitutes in Israel.

The paper described how the "imported girls" are treated like animals in a livestock market.

"After the girl is undressed completely, the prospective buyer examines every bit of her body, including the size of her breasts and genitals."

"Initially some girls hesitate to undress, but eventually they do as ordered because they have no other choice."

"It is the first order of business that the boss has sex with the would-be prostitute before she is officially instated in her job, that is in order to ascertain her ability to work and make the customers feel good."

"When she undresses, she is asked to move around as beauty models do, and then the prospective buyer would examine her tongue, teeth and genitals to make sure that she is physically sound.

According the paper, the girl-owner keeps the girl's passport and bars her from leaving the premises where she "works."

He often threatens to report to the police, warning her that she would be jailed for 20 years if she was caught.

The paper said an average beautiful slave-girl works 16 hours a day, from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 a.m. during which she "entertains" 20 customers.

The average monthly wage of a young and beautiful girl, say from Latvia, reaches a thousand US dollars, that is if her boss is a human being.

If the girl doesn't behave as "she should," the boss slashes 200 dollars from her salary.

Usually the less-beautiful girls shut up, but the more beautiful ones, the ones who attract customers, are quarrelsome.

www.iap.org

[llu]

i liked this one!!!

[Kaiser]

You need a lesson in geography, Moldavia is not in the baltics, Lithuania is in the baltics.
Moldavia is over a 1000 kilometers from the baltics.

[Outcider]

Ilu, I doubt that Israel has such a flourishing market, although the availability of Mauritanian, Moroccan etc. girls was quite adequate in many people's mind in Tel Aviv in 1984 when I stayed there.

I've heard many other reports concerning Russian and Moldovan girls in Germany, Italy etc. Any claims are difficult to make, since few official statistics include. One just has to rely on observations, newspaper articles, TV documentaries, etc.

And what about the whorehouses in Thailand and elsewhere in that area? According to tourists, going is quite wild there.

[llu]

outsider you are wrong!!! i have complete collection of israeli slave trade (biggest in the world) from ha'aretz jpost and other kosher sources if you would like to see

[Outcider]

Ilu, you need statistics from countries other than Israel as well and there are not many of them!

[llu]

i have themm if you would like to see smart guy

[llu]

Trafficking in women could threaten U.S. aid
Ha'aretz
melcache01.powertel.net.au
Sun Nov 18 21:48:53

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pa...t.jhtml?itemNo
=51475&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassI D=0&list
Src=Y

Trafficking in women could threaten U.S. aid

By Joseph Algazy




If the Israeli government does not take significant steps
to halt trafficking in women, it will face U.S.
sanctions. "Israel does not yet meet the minimum
standards for combating trafficking in persons, and has
not yet made significant efforts to combat the
problem," the State Department said in a scalding
report on human trafficking in 2001 issued last night.

The report cites Israel as "a destination country for
women from Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Turkey,
South Africa, and some countries in Asia." It
includes Israel in a "Third Tier" list of 23
countries where human trafficking is endemic, but does
note that Israel "has begun to take steps" to
combat the trade - mainly in women for prostitution.

The countries named are Albania, Bahrain, Belarus,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burma, Democratic Republic of Congo,
Gabon, Greece, Indonesia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Lebanon,
Malaysia, Pakistan, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia,
South Korea, Sudan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and
Yugoslavia.

The report was prepared under American legislation
approved in October that calls for imposing economic
sanctions in 2003 against countries that fail to act
against traffickers or protect their victims. If the
government does not take significant steps to end the
human trade, Israel will have to face the sanctions.

Trafficking as a problem has reached "staggering"
proportions around the globe, says the report. Research
"clearly demonstrates that most governments are
taking steps to curb this horrific practice ... of
trafficked victims being subjected to threats against
their person and family, violence, horrific living
conditions and dangerous work places."

The "root causes," says the report, "are
greed, moral turpitude, economics, political instability
and transitional and social factors." The report says
the Israeli government "recognizes that trafficking
in persons is a problem, but devotes limited resources to
combating it."

NGOs and some concerned state officials have strongly
criticized the government for failing to take vigorous
action against trafficking, especially given the
sometimes violent practices of the traffickers and the
significant numbers of women who are ferried into the
country.

"In June 2000, the Knesset amended a 1997
prostitution law to prohibit the buying or selling of
persons, or forcing a person to leave their country of
residence to engage in prostitution. The penalties for
rape and violation of the 1997 prostitution law require
close to a doubling of sentences if the victim is a
minor.

"The government has convicted one trafficker under
the new legislation," the report comments
laconically. The State Department says the government
"has provided training to immigration officials at
Ben Gurion airport," however "it has not formally
begun cooperation with other governments on trafficking
cases," but did work with Ukrainian officials on one
case.

"The government has not conducted anti-trafficking
information campaigns or other efforts aimed at
prevention. Little protection is provided to trafficked
persons," the report says. "Victims of
trafficking are detained, jailed in a special women's
prison separate from other female prisoners, and
deported. Victims who are willing to testify against
traffickers may be granted relief from immediate
deportation, but the government does not actively
encourage victims to raise charges against traffickers.

The report continues: "Israeli NGOs have encouraged
victims to take legal action. Some victims have accused
individual police officers of complicity with brothel
owners and traffickers. The government provides limited
funding to NGOs for assistance to victims."

Israeli law enforcement officials estimate that 85
percent of the prostitutes in the country are illegal
aliens smuggled into Israel via Sinai. They say present
laws do little to protect the women and enable the pimps
and slave traders to operate with relative impunity.

A report under preparation by a committee including
police and prosecutors is nearing completion and is
expected to include recommendations for a separate hostel
for prostitutes escaping the clutches of slave traders,
protection for the prostitutes when they testify against
pimps, and a legal defense mechanism that eliminates a
relatively common occurrence of the pimps hiring lawyers
for the women.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[llu]

Sex slavery thrives in Holy Land
Megan Goldin
152.158.247.97
Sun Nov 11 19:54:29







http://uk.news.yahoo.com/010910/80/c3fji.html

Sex slavery thrives in Holy Land
By Megan Goldin

NEVE TIRZA PRISON, Israel (Reuters) - Christina, an
18-year-old university student from Moldova, has been
bought and sold so many times she has lost count.


Christina, who declined to give her real name, studied
classics and anthropology and played basketball as a
hobby before she was lured from a rural town in one of
Europe's poorest countries to sex slavery in Israel.


She is not alone.


Hundreds of thousands of "Christinas" have been
bought like merchandise, beaten, raped and chained in
Western brothels in a 21st century form of slavery.


Christina received top marks in her anthropology studies
but couldn't scrape together enough money to pay for
photocopies, let alone buy textbooks.


Her dire economic situation made her fair game for women
hired by criminal gangs to lure young, naive girls from
Moldova and other financially-strapped Eastern European
countries into prostitution with promises of large sums
of money.


"I never thought I would actually have to do it,"
Christina said in bewilderment. "I thought once I
arrived I would find a way to escape and find other work,
as a waitress or something."


Christina was flown to Egypt where along with 20 other
Moldovan and Russian women aged between about 18 to 24,
she was escorted across the Sinai desert into southern
Israel by a bedouin smuggler.


They walked over dunes, eventually crawling under a
barbed-wire border fence in the middle of the night.


Rolls of money changed hands between the bedouin and the
Russian-speaking men who bought the women. Christina
doesn't know how much they paid, but the market price for
a woman like her in Israel is around $8,000 (5,500
pounds).


NO WAY OUT


Frightened, an illegal alien, unfamiliar with Hebrew or
Israeli geography, Christina had no real hope of escaping.


Instead she was taken to a brothel in northern Israel
where she was forced to have sex with around 15 men every
day, raped, beaten and threatened with death if she ran
away.


Eventually she did and is now a witness in a court case
against the pimp who bought and mistreated her under a
new Israeli law that makes human trafficking punishable
by up to 16 years in prison.


"It's very easy. You just put them on a planes, walk
them through the desert and you have slaves," said
lawyer Nomi Levenkron, who represents women like
Christina who are locked in a special wing of the Neve
Tirza prison near Tel Aviv while they wait to testify or
to be deported for entering Israel illegally.


Sex slavery, or white slavery as it was called in the
19th century, is almost as old as prostitution itself.
But it has had a sudden resurgence since the collapse of
the Soviet Union in 1991 devastated many eastern European
economies.


Women who earn around $20 a month in Moldova are promised
$1,000 a month abroad to work as prostitutes. It is a
tempting offer for young women with bleak futures in
their home countries or burdened with supporting a large
family.


Sometimes the women don't know they are being sent to
work as prostitutes and are told they will be waitresses
or secretaries. Others are simply kidnapped.


Almost always they are trafficked by the local Mafia,
frequently on a forged passport and threatened that if
they don't behave, their family back home will suffer the
consequences.


"They come from a place with no money, a very poor
family in a poor village, looking for a better
future," said Levenkron, a legal adviser to the
Hotline for Migrant Workers, the only organisation in
Israel that helps former sex-slaves.


"These women are so naïve, they don't realise people
are lying to them," she said.


ISRAEL TRAFFICKING DESTINATION


Israel is a popular destination for the human trade. It
is not difficult to smuggle and hide Russian-speaking
women in a country where almost a million people
originate from the former Soviet Union.


"It's very easy for them to disappear between all the
Russian-speaking women in Israel," Levenkron said.
"It's very easy for traffickers to bring women here
and when you have the supply, you have the demand."


A recent U.S. State Department report on human
trafficking put Israel on a list of countries where the
phenomenon is rampant. It has until 2003 to implement
"minimum standards for the elimination of
trafficking" or face stiff economic sanctions.


According to Zahava Gal-On, who heads an Israeli
parliamentary committee on trafficking, that means
deterring traffickers with hefty prison sentence instead
of a few months in jail, the usual punishment handed down
by Israeli courts.


It also means putting women like Christina in safe houses
instead of jail, thereby encouraging them to stay and
testify.


In the past the victim has been locked up, sometimes for
as long as six months, while the pimp is let off with a
small fine or a brief stay in jail although under the
law, it is the brothel owner, not the woman, who has
committed a crime.


Like most former sex-slaves, Christina is penniless.
Those lucky enough to be paid a paltry sum, usually a few
dollars, by their pimps save the money to buy themselves
freedom from their brothel-prisons. Often they are sold
before they can do so.


"They are slaves and slaves of the worst kind,"
Levenkron said. "They are disposable people because
it's so easy to buy a person".


21ST CENTURY SLAVERY


Human trafficking is becoming a modern day scourge, said
Tal Raviv, an advocate for the International Organisation
for Migration who works in Kosovo where trafficking is
widespread.


"This has become a huge phenomena in the last
decade," said Raviv during a visit to Israel.
"The estimates are between half a million to 700,000
women trafficked every year just to the West, but the
global figures are for millions."


Law enforcement officials say human trafficking is almost
as rampant as drug and weapons smuggling. Many of the
women being trafficked are forced to work in brothels.


In Africa and Asia, men are often sent to sweatshops and
children forced to work in cocoa plantations in West
Africa. Some of those trafficked are slated to be
unwilling donors for black market organ transplants,
Raviv said.


"Trafficking people is much easier than trafficking
drugs and weapons," she said.


"It's easier because if you find drugs or the arms,
there is no question something illegal has happened. But
if you find a person with a passport, how do you know
this person is not travelling out of their own free
will?"


Raviv says the only difference between the 21st century
version of slavery and that of the plantations in the
Americas some 200 years ago is that today slavery is
illegal.


"When you buy and sell a person, then it means a
person is merchandise and that is slavery," Raviv
said. "The person has no freedom, no control over his
or her fate."

[llu]

http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/0...ews.33463.html

Tel Aviv brothels 'modern-day slave trade'
By Marion Marrache


TEL AVIV (August 27) - MK Zehava Gal-On went slumming last night. As head of the Knesset Committee of Inquiry into Trafficking in Women, she and two other members of the nine-member committee took the press on a fact-finding tour of Tel Aviv's brothels.

MK Marina Solotzkin and MK Tamar Gozansky also attended.

Shuki Baleli, Vice Squad chief for the Tel Aviv District, was the tour guide. He took the group to a small brothel, The Palace Club near the Diamond Exchange, where there were three women working, then to a larger establishment at the Yitzhak Sadeh section of town, where 12 women sat waiting for clients in the Banana Health Club.

"The point of this tour," said Gal-On, "is to see first-hand the places and the conditions, and to hear what the women feel."

Baleli said he is concerned about the state of the women's health.

He said they rarely ever go to a doctor unless they are in pain. "If they die, no one will even know who they are," he added.

"It is modern-day slave trade," said Gal-On, "and the sentences for the pimps are not harsh enough, as judges still do not take this matter seriously enough. They pay more attention to drug dealing and murder. At the worst, [the pimps] spend a couple of years in jail, but they make a fortune."

In the Banana Health Club, there were rooms with velvet-covered beds and built-in showers. Some rooms had hiding places under the beds in case of a raid, while others had secret passageways behind mirrors for a quick escape.

Bijou, the pimp at the Palace Club, said the women make NIS 150 for half-hour's work, which is split 50-50 with him. Gal-On said she doubted this, adding that at a similar place in Eilat, one pimp told her the women make NIS 120 - "NIS 100 for me, NIS 20 for them."

Baleli said the women receive a maximum of 20 percent of the take. Nevertheless, they are better off financially than they were at home in the former Soviet Union, he said.

Angela, a 24-year-old from Moscow, said that even though her entire family is in the FSU, she prefers to stay here. "Life is better," she said. "I don't know what else I could do."

There are 250 brothels in the Tel Aviv region, the largest number in the country, yet Supt. Pini Aviram, head of the team that investigates these cases, decries the fact that his team for this task comprises only four members, all Russian-speakers. "Our problem is manpower. We need people who can speak to the people in their own language, and properly interrogate them."

The tour was supposed to carry on to the old central bus station area, but the MKs decided they had seen enough.

[llu]

Trafficking Articles
AMNESTY ISRAEL FAILING TO DEAL WITH WHITE-SLAVE TRADE
by Dan Izenberg and Heidi J. Gleit
May 22, 2000

ISRAEL: JERUSALEM POST - Israel has failed to take adequate measures against human rights abuses committed against women who have been brought here and forced to provide sexual services, Amnesty International charged in a special report on the trafficking of women from the former Soviet Union.

"This is so," the report continued, "even though many of them have been subjected to human rights abuses such as enslavement or torture, including rape and other forms of sexual abuse, by traffickers, pimps, or others involved in Israel's sex industry." Amnesty International also criticized Israel for not providing a procedure to grant asylum to women who have been smuggled into the country often on the basis of false promises of work having nothing to do with sex.

Fighting the trade in women and bringing foreign women here to work as prostitutes is a priority for the Israel Police, but it is a very difficult phenomenon to fight, police investigations head Cmdr. Yossi Sedbon said yesterday.

One of the main problems is that there is not a law against selling women, he explained, adding that he is aware of the initiatives to pass such a law and hopes they are successful. Justice Minister Yossi Beilin told Amnesty International representatives yesterday that Deputy Attorney-General Yehudit Karp is preparing an amendment to the Penal Law which would address the trafficking phenomenon and provide immunity for trafficked women. He predicted that the legislation would be presented to the Knesset at its winter session.

According to Amnesty International, hundreds of women are brought to Israel from the former Soviet Union every year. According to Amnesty International, Israel is bound by international law and by international covenants that it has signed to stamp out the sex trafficking.

Police are arresting suspects on related charges such as kidnapping, pimping, raping, and assaulting the women, Sedbon said.

The other major problem is that the women are scared to file police complaints and testify against the pimps, he said. Since most of them are in the country illegally, they are scared to approach police. Fear of reprisal by the pimps further paralyzes them. Police try to get around this both by promising to protect complainants and by initiating operations to collect evidence against and raid brothels, he said. An additional complication is that prosecutors need the women who complain to testify in the court cases against the pimps, which can be months after the initial complaint is filed. Since the women are here illegally and there is a chance that the pimps will harm them if they are left to their own devices here, they have often ended up sitting in jail until the trial is completed. Sedbon said that they now try to send the women home and bring them back here for the trial.

Sedbon declined to comment on the complaints filed against Afula police chief Ch.-Supt. Shlomo Marmelstein and Tel Aviv police chief Cmdr. Shlomo Aharonishky for not acting against the problem, saying he could not comment on specific cases.

Sedbon emphasized that the issue is a priority for police and that each police district's serious crimes division is dealing with the problem. Statistics police released earlier this year show an increase in the number of cases opened against pimps: 279 in 1997; 370 in 1998; and 506 in 1999. Sedbon also said that only a minority of the foreign women working here as prostitutes are kidnapped and forced into prostitution.




http://www.iofa.org/news/news5.html

[llu]

Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000
H.R. 3244
TALKING POINTS
February 11, 2000

Problem:
The sheer numbers:
Two million children are forced into prostitution every year, half of them in Asia.1
An estimated 10,000 women from the former Soviet Union have been forced into prostitution in Israel.2
Over 50,000 women are trafficked into the United States every year.3
Existing laws in the United States and other countries are inadequate to deter trafficking, primarily because they do not reflect the gravity of the offenses involved.
Each number is a woman or child who has lost everything—his or her family, dignity and hope. Each has a tale of abduction, kidnapping or fraud.
Where countries do have laws against sexual trafficking, there is no enforcement. In 1995, the Netherlands prosecuted 155 cases of forced prostitution, and only four resulted in the conviction of the traffickers.4 In some countries, enforcement against traffickers is hindered by indifference, corruption, and even official participation.
Provisions of the bill:
It provides severe punishment for persons convicted of operating trafficking enterprises within the United States and the possibility of severe economic penalties against traffickers located in other countries.
Establish an Interagency Task Force to monitor and combat trafficking, in order to facilitate and evaluate progress in trafficking prevention, victim assistance, and the prosecution of traffickers.
Authorizes funds to help foreign countries meet minimum anti-trafficking standards.
Prohibits non-humanitarian U.S. assistance (beginning 2002) to foreign governments that tolerate or condone sexual trafficking. The president can waive this provision. American taxpayers should not be obliged to send monetary aid to regimes that practice abhorrent human rights abuses. This is not a sanctions bill; it is the withdrawal of non-humanitarian taxpayer subsidies.
Offers assistance and protection for victims, including authorization of grants to shelters and rehabilitation programs, and a limited provision for relief from deportation for victims who would face retribution or other hardships if deported.
Conclusion
The sexual trafficking of women and children is the deepest violation of human dignity and an unspeakable tragedy. The United States must take the lead in stopping this abuse of women and children. CWA urges Congress to pass H.R. 3244 to protect the women and children of the world.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ENDNOTES
ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) representative Carol Smolenski, quoted by Alexandra Marks in "Activists Unleash Campaign to Shut Down Sex Tours," Christian Science Monitor, 16 January 1999.
"Israel Prostitution Ring Targeted," Associated Press, 23 December 1998.
United States Department of State, 1999.
"Trafficking and Prostitution: The Growing Exploitation of Migrant Women from Central and Eastern Europe," International Organization for Migration, May 1995.


E-mail a friend about this article
http://www.cwfa.org/library/misc/200...p_sx-trf.shtml

[llu]

Fighting the Flesh Trade
Although new laws are in the works to stem the white-slavery trade into Israel, the authorities must do more to treat the prostitues as victims rather than criminals.
- - - - - - - - - - - -



By Marion Marrache/Jerusalem Post


Jewsweek.com | "Woman's flesh for sale, woman's flesh for sale," yells a man in front of the Hamashbir department store in downtown Jerusalem, offering up to passers-by the young woman standing next to him.

Although trafficking in women is very much a reality in Israel, this scene was a protest staged last month by the Jerusalem Women's Center as part of the International Day of Protest Against Violence Against Women.



More on this story

Jewsweek.com




• SELLING SEX IN ISRAEL: They come to Israel from the Ukraine, Russia, and Moldova looking for freedom. Instead they are sold as sex slaves. And you thought Israel was holy.





"Instead of just protesting rape and domestic violence as we do every other year, we could not ignore the terrible issue of thousands of women being trafficked annually into this country to be used as prostitutes," says Adi Kunstman, coordinator of activities at the center, adding "Trafficking is modern slavery."

Israeli organizations dealing with the issue, such as the Hotline for Migrant Workers and the Awareness Center, believe that some 3,000 women are smuggled into the country every year for the purpose of prostitution. The majority of these women are from Moldavia, Russia, and the Ukraine. They are approached in their countries of origin - where they earn $20 to $30 a month - with the promise of employment which will bring in a magical monthly $1,000.

According to a report issued by the International Abolitionist Federation, an estimated one-fourth of these women are unaware that they will be working in the sex trade, believing instead they will be employed as waitresses, cooks, au pairs, models, or masseuses. None are prepared for what they eventually encounter. Most suffer beatings and repeated rape. The women are viewed and bought at pimping auctions - during which they are forced to undress - at prices ranging from $4,000 to $10,000.

According to attorney Nomi Levenkron of the Migrant Hotline, those who fetch the lower prices end up working in the slum area around Tel Aviv's old central bus station. Their passports are taken from them, and they are often kept locked up in apartments with barred windows. This was the case with the four prostitutes who were trapped and burnt to death when a religious fanatic torched a Tel Aviv brothel in August, 2000.

That incident briefly raised public awareness of the issue, and sparked calls for the authorities to start treating the problem seriously. But it is only in the past month that two bills that might alleviate the situation began to make headway in the Knesset.

Last month, a private member's bill entitling women who were sold into prostitution to public legal aid, passed its preliminary reading in the Knesset. Meretz MK Zahava Gal-On, sponsor of the bill and head of the parliamentary commission of inquiry into trafficking in women, notes that these women, when arrested, usually find themselves represented by their pimps' attorneys, an obvious clash of interests that goes against the principle of fair representation.

Also late last year the Knesset passed, in its preliminary reading, a bill that mandates a four-year minimum sentence for traders in women. Currently, there is a 16-year maximum sentence, but no minimum jail time, and many white slavers end up getting off with relatively light sentences.

"Israel has become a convenient center for pimps who trade in women," says Gal-On, who also proposed this bill. "It is modern-day slave trading, and the sentences for the pimps are not harsh enough, as judges still do not take this matter seriously enough. The courts give the criminals ridiculous sentences, rendering the current law meaningless. At the worst, the pimps spend a couple of years in jail, but they make a fortune. But from now on, criminals will know that you cannot trade in women and get off lightly."

250 BROTHELS IN TEL AVIV

An illuminated sign reading "Palace Club" flashes outside a seedy brothel in south Tel Aviv. A group of journalists joining Gal-On's committee on a recent fact-finding mission, head down a few flights of dark stone stairs to the reception area where three young women sit huddled in a corner waiting for clients. Beside them stands their portly pimp dabbing the sweat from his forehead with a large silk handkerchief.

There are approximately 250 such brothels in Tel Aviv, an increase of 100 since last year. This is by far the largest number of brothels in the country; in other parts of the country trafficking exists, but it is less common and there is far less awareness of the problem. Some of the women live in brothels, others have a room elsewhere.


“… The women are viewed and bought at pimping auctions - during which they are forced to undress - at prices ranging from $4,000 to $10,000. ...”



If business is good, a shift can last from 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. They are paid at the end of the month after expenses and "fines" have been deducted - prostitutes can be fined by their pimps for almost anything. And this is only once the girls have paid back their purchase price, during which time they are extraordinarily lucky if those who are pimping for them give them a daily allowance of 20 shekels for cigarettes.

Often, by the time they have finished buying themselves out of their slavery, they have been resold and must begin again. These women are told so often that they are the property of their pimps that they do not even stop to think whether or not they have to have sex with them as well. Although clients generally have to use protection, the pimps usually don't. Gal-On says one pimp told her his women make 120 shekels for a half-hour, "100 shekels for me, 20 shekels for them." Many brothels also have a kitty into which the girls have to put 30 to 50 shekels per client in order to cover the brothel's tax bill (declared income is credited to "massages").

These women are often lured into prostitution in their native countries by misleading job advertisements in the papers. They often have very young children who they have left behind with their families.

"Some have artistic careers, others are academics who want to make some money to pay for their studies," explains Levenkron. "Those who have children generally have not been part of the work force yet because they have married young."

Many of the women travel from Moscow to Sharm e-Sheikh, and then are taken to the Israeli border. They are met by there by Beduin guides, who smuggle them across the border and deliver them to an agent acting on behalf of procurers.

They are also provided with false documentation, needed for those times when the police raid brothels, check the womens' identification papers, and ask to see if they have valid visas. But according to the prostitutes, they rarely enquire whether they are being held against their will. In any case, the women admit, they are usually too frightened to answer truthfully.

Although prostitution itself is not a crime in Israel, such groups as the Migrant Hotline and the Awareness Center accuse the authorities of treating the trafficked women as criminals, instead of victims, interested simply in deporting them - as has been the case with more than 1,000 such women in the past three years. These organizations also accuse law enforcement of generally ignoring the crimes of pimps and traffickers, even though they "buy, sell, rape and torture women," because they sometimes cooperate with the police by providing information about other criminal activities.

There have also been at least a half-dozen cases of sex trafficking involving policemen as suspects, and one policeman was charged with managing a brothel. In four cases, policemen informed the pimps of expected raids on their premises, and in one instance a policeman was accused of selling a woman to another pimp following her arrest.

One prostitute, Sonya (not her real name), says she went to a police station and asked to be arrested because she had just ran away from the brothel where she was held against her will. The policemen turned her away, and as she left she heard them saying (in Hebrew) they were going to call her pimp.

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN

One officer who does care is Tel Aviv Police Superintendent Pini Aviram, who heads a special investigative team dealing with the trafficking issue. But Aviram complains that he does not have anywhere near the manpower need for the job.

"My team consists of only five Russian speakers," he says, "We need people who can speak to the women in their own language, and interview them adequately."




JAIL TIME: A Neveh Tirza prisoner awaits deportation on charges of prostitution. "Julia", 23, told stories of an organized sex trade which brought her from Eastern Europe, and left her in jail.




This adequate interviewing is actually taking place, but unfortunately not until the women have already found their way into jail. They are held, usually at the Neveh Tirza prison but alternatively at Abu Kabir, Kishon, Negev or others, for weeks and sometimes for months, awaiting deportation. Levenkron or other volunteers from Migrant Hotline visit Neveh Tirza every Sunday taking a translator and additional student volunteers with them. Hotline is the only non-governmental organization which has been allowed access to the prisons, and they bring the women phone cards and clothing.

"One women sticks in my mind," says Levenkron; "She wore one green satin pajama for three weeks straight, until we were able to bring her clothes."

Now, thanks to Neveh Tirza warden Debi Sagi, Hotline has better and easier access to the women. "Debi doesn't think they should be in prison," says Levenkron, "but as long as they are she wants to make life as easy as she can for them."

In general, the prostitutes are housed separately from the hardened criminals, but that is not always possible due to space restrictions. Levenkron worries about this because of the danger of the women being influenced to take drugs by their cellmates. Eastern European prostitutes, unlike their Israeli counterparts do not generally take drugs. In fact, Levenkron has only come across one such case among all the women she has met and whose interviews she has looked over.

Another difference between foreign and Israeli prostitutes is that the latter get to keep a larger percentage of the takings. Sadly, says Levenkron, one girl's ambition was to "become an Israeli prostitute."

When asked whether they had tried to run away - and if not, why - many of the women explain that they are afraid for the safety of their families back home. Some have tried to escape, and were later caught and beaten. One women presently housed at a hostel waiting to testify against her pimp, told the Hotline that a man who had befriended her was supposed to meet to help her escape but when she arrived at the prearranged meeting point, her pimp turned up instead. She began to scream and the police came and took her into custody.

In many cases when a woman is arrested, her pimp will pay an 30,000 shekels bail pending her deportation, so that she can go back to work. Thus, says Levenkron, "these women, who were raped, trafficked and exploited before their arrests, were in fact sold once more, this time by the state itself."

Police Deputy-Commander Avi Davidovitch, head of an inter-ministerial team dealing with the trafficking issue established at Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein's recommendation, says that although the number of trafficked women is growing alarmingly high, few complaints are filed against pimps, and many women either refuse to complain or later retract earlier statements they have made to the police out of fear of reprisals.

Police investigations head Commander Moshe Mizrahi also expresses concern about how to protect women who decide to testify against their pimps. If they are simply repatriated, those who imported them will be able to find them; additionally, many are supporting children in their home countries whom they fear may be harmed. Mizrahi calls for a "serious international operation" that would extend to the women's countries of origin.

For example, in some countries of the Former Soviet Union, a poster campaign has sprung up and women are able to read on buses and other public places about the dangers of falling for the offer of a well-paying job abroad. But, Mizrahi insists, much more still needs to be done.

At least now, thanks to the Hotline's intervention, every woman who does come forward is provided with some assistance at the state's expense. This came about after four women filed a petition through the Hotline requesting the court instruct the police to seriously investigate their complaints against their procurers. The women stated they would be ready to testify against the pimps in court, provided they did not have to spend the intervening months in jail until called upon to give evidence at the trial. As a result of the petition, the police questioned the girls, and those who agreed to testify were provided with a safe place to stay and living expenses until the time of their testimony.

But Hotline insists that even this aid (said by police to cost 6,000 shekels a month per woman, a sum with which Hotline disagrees) is inadequate, especially when it comes to medical expenses. Many of the women come out of the brothels with serious health problems; one 21-year-old former prostitute is now unable to have children because of untreated gynecological problems. According to Shuki Baleli, Vice Squad Chief for the Tel Aviv District, they rarely even go to a doctor unless they are in pain. "If they die, no one will even know who they are," he adds.

Even when under police protection, almost every medical incident needs to be appealed separately by Hotline on behalf of the women. The humanitarian group Doctors for Human Rights treats these women for free or for nominal sums in the 30 to 50 shekels range, but serious health problems sometimes require the women to seek other sources of treatment.

So far, despite the provision providing them with a place to stay outside of prison, only a few dozen of the trafficked women have agreed to testify against their pimps. What they need, says Levenkron, "is a reason to come forward and to give evidence against these criminals."

She recommends that instead of threatening these women with deportation, they be given work or student visas for a specified amount of time in order to make the ordeal worth their while.

"Legalization of their status is the only real option," she says, an issue that applies to all foreign workers in this country. "If there will be further laws written," adds Levenkron, "they should insure that these victims get effective legal representation, medical treatment, and a proper place from them to stay."

Until then, the women will continue to suffer.

*** ***

{ Marion Marrache writes for The Jerusalem Post. }

http://www.jewsweek.com/israel/091.htm

[llu]

ISRAEL - FACTS ON PROSTITUTION OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN

Women trafficked from Eastern Europe, were stripped and sold naked as slaves to Tel Aviv traders for US$500-1,000. Smuggling, fraudulent documents, collaboration between police and brothel owners are involved. There are routine brutal beatings and sexual abuse. (New York Times 11 January 1998)

While trafficked women are frequently arrested as illegal workers, the men who brought them to Israel -- many of whom are Israeli citizens -- are not. Justice Ministry spokeswoman Etty Eshed said the government would think about making legal changes to address trafficking in the "near future" but had no date or plan for doing so. (Elisabeth Eaves, "Israel not the promised land for Russian sex slaves," Reuters, 23 August 1998)

Lyubov, 17, arrived in Israel from a Russian coal mining city only to be sold into prostitution. Now she sits in a prison cell awaiting expulsion as an illegal worker. Six months ago, a man in Lyubov's hometown told the young woman he could get her a plane ticket, a visa and a job abroad. She entered Israel with a tour group and was met by a hotel owner who befriended her and gave her a job as a cleaner in exchange for a room. The hotel owner introduced her to friends, showed her around and taught her some Hebrew until one day he told her to get out of his car and into another. Then he drove away. "At first I didn't know I had been sold. Then my owner told me he had bought me for $9,000," Lyubov said in an interview in a prison office. Her new "owner," as she calls him, told her she would work as a call girl. It was the beginning of a stint as an unpaid prostitute -- part of an international crime phenomenon which women's groups see as a modern slave trade. Lyubov's "owner" kept her and eight other women in two apartments. He never paid any of them but instead said they were indebted to him for their plane tickets and every expense incurred, from doctors' visits to haircuts. Transported to clients by drivers and often under guard, Lyubov had sex with an average of six men a day for about $75 an hour. All she could keep were tips. She worked round the clock, seven days a week, with no holidays except for Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. (Elisabeth Eaves, "Israel not the promised land for Russian sex slaves," Reuters, 23 August 1998)

There are over 10,00 women in prostitution in Tel Aviv. (CEDAW Report, 8 April 1997)

Men pay for 25,000 acts of prostitution every day. There are 250,000 foreign male workers who help create a demand for prostituted women. Women are held in apartments, bars and brothels where they are bought by up to 15 men a day. They sleep in shifts, four to a bed. (Police officials, Michael Specter, "Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women," New York Times, 11 January 1998)

The Russian mafia has moved into Israel to profit from trafficking and prostitution. Police in Israel have been keeping around 30 organized key crime suspects under surveillance. (Kevin Connolly, "How Russia’s mafia is taking over Israel’s underworld," BBC, 3 April 1998)

The Tropicana in Tel Aviv is one of the busiest brothels. The women are all Russian. There are 12 cubicles where 20 women work in shifts, 8 during the daytime, 12 at night. Buyers are Israeli soldiers, business executives, tourists, and foreign workers. The brothel owner said, "Israelis love Russian girls. They are blonde and good looking, and they are desperate. They are ready to do anything for money." (Michael Specter, "Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women," New York Times, 11 January 1998)
http://svc173.bne113v.server-web.com/issuesisrael.htm

[Sultan]

Hmmm. I remember reading about the sex-trade in Isreal on the BBC news a couple of years back.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, there has been a big problem with the trafficking of women from Easten Europe.

Many girls are lured into this dispicable trade by being tricked into promises of work abroad, only to find themselves into a line of work they were not told about.

It is a big problem today and I feel that governments around the world are ignoring it, or worse, tolerating it.

I posted a thread a couple of days ago where the International Police Task Force (peace keepers) are themselves the culprits of a flourishing sex trade in the Balkans.

[llu]

the problem with israel is that slavery is not legal and until just recently neither was prstitution....also with the russian immigrans have come the russian mafia.....

slavery is still not illegal except for sex.....its not prohibited in torah

so israel has become the center of prostitution and the russian mob

[Saeedujana]

as salaamu alaikum,

interesting, i read that recent statistics show that israel has something in the region of 1 million girls who are forced into prostitution. i read it from some feminist magazine, i can't remember the name.

ma'asalaama
saeed

[Emelianenko]

hmm..interesting..good work ilu..

[Ruprecht]

as salaamu alaikum,

interesting, i read that recent statistics show that israel has something in the region of 1 million girls who are forced into prostitution. i read it from some feminist magazine, i can't remember the name.

ma'asalaama
saeed

This thread is nearly 4 years old!

Anyway why focus on Israel (actually don't bother answering, I already know full well )?
Modern slavery in it's various forms is a global problem.

http://www.antislavery.org/

[Emelianenko]

lol sheesh i didnt even bother looking at the date the thread was started!!