Selling Slave-Sex in Israel- Filthy ZYDS - Repost
Frank Arthur
On 27 Nov 2005 16:19:47 -0800, "Ariadne" <ariad...@gmail.com>wrote:
>Jason P wrote:
>> By Paula Amann
>> Washington Jewish Week/Jewsweek - 2001
>> http://www.jewsweek.com/society/059.htm
>> 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.
>> Jewsweek.com | Their names are Natalya, Oxana or Svetlana. They come to
>> Israel, as immigrants do, for a better life. But their dreams of
>> working as a waitress, nurse, or au pair turn nightmarish upon their
>> arrival.
>> Their fellow countryman who met them at the airport, speaking the
>> language of home, takes them to a locked apartment with barred windows
>> and a phone that only takes incoming calls, where they are forced to
>> provide sexual services to strangers.
>> Those who rebel risk being raped, beaten, or starved. Even those who
>> knew they were going into prostitution are shocked by the stark
>> conditions, the pay of roughly 20 shekalim ($5) a day or less for their
>> labor.
>> This disturbing story unfolds all too often at the hotline for Migrant
>> Workers, a Tel Aviv agency founded in 1998 to protect the human rights
>> of foreign workers, victims of sex trafficking among them. The hotline
>> takes as its motto the familiar line from Exodus 22:20: "You shall not
>> wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of
>> Egypt."
>> Agency director and co-founder Sigal Rozen, along with the group's
>> counsel, Nomi Levenkron, were in Washington, D.C., last week to give a
>> lecture at the Johns Hopkins Nitze School of Advanced International
>> Studies, to network and to speak with supporters. Among them are the
>> New Israel Fund, which has given the hotline a total of $19,000 during
>> the past year and a half.
>> In an interview, Rozen called sex trafficking an "unorganized crime,"
>> based largely on personal networks of immigrants from the Ukraine,
>> Russia, and Moldova.
>> "... "It's easier being a trafficker than being a plumber ..." --Nomi
>> Levenkron
>> Those three countries alone accounted for 91 percent of the 474 women
>> arrested in brothels and deported from Israel in 2000, according to
>> figures compiled by hotline volunteers during visits to the Neveh
>> Tirzah women's prison.
>> These statistics represent only a fraction of the problem. Police
>> spokespersons have set the number of women brought into the country to
>> work in the sex industry at 2,000-3,000 annually, the number of
>> brothels at 250, Rozen said.
>> "It's Misha that knows Sasha that knows Vladimir," added Levenkron,
>> noting the economic incentive to be a pimp or work with one. "It's
>> easier being a trafficker than being a plumber."
>> One day she got a phone call from a rape crisis center where a woman
>> pleaded to be arrested and deported.
>> This young Moldovian had twice tried to escape her pimp and at 18, was
>> burned out on prostitution and just wanted to go home.
>> "She's so young and sweet," reflected Levenkron. "She came to Israel to
>> be a waitress."
>> A year ago this month, Israel passed the Law Against Trafficking Women.
>> Before that time, other laws existed against soliciting, pimping, and
>> running brothels.
>> Yet hotline staff point out that few pimps involved in trafficking ever
>> face a judge, with the majority of prostitutes deported without ever
>> facing a trial that might involve their testimony against their pimps.
>> Out of 459 women deported in 1998, only 35 cases went to trial; out of
>> 253 in 1999, a scant five ended up in the courtroom.
>> Judicial indifference is compounded by police complicity, Levenkron
>> argued.
>> The 18-year-old Moldovian, it turned out, had at one point in her
>> misadventures, found herself in a Tel Aviv police station where some of
>> the officers, who were her clients, recognized her and moved to call
>> her pimp.
>> Overhearing their plans, the woman fled and moved in with a
>> client-turned-boyfriend.
>> But somehow the pimp found her again, threatened the boyfriend. The
>> young woman, with no place to go, went back to the brothel. Now the
>> case hangs in the courts, where Levenkron has faint hopes for a
>> positive outcome.
>> The police role in such trafficking ranges from casual to highly
>> serious, she alleged.
>> "There are police who just come as clients, those who get special
>> discounts because of their good relationships with the owner of the
>> place and those that inform the owner about police operations,"
>> explained Levenkron.
>> One young Beersheva prostitute told the attorney she was forced to work
>> seven days a week unless a police raid was expected.
>> Widespread fear of violence from pimps has muted the public outcry, say
>> hotline staff. When Levenkron filed a suit on behalf of a
>> Beersheva-based woman, a 20-year-old Moldovian who had survived six
>> pimps and multiple rapes, several of the lawyer's friends came to her
>> home to bid her a final farewell, in anticipation of her imminent
>> death, she said.
>> INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM
>> Worldwide, trafficking in persons for domestic service, forced labor,
>> and prostitution ranks third after drugs and guns among the activities
>> of international crime, according to a congressional service report
>> released May 10, 2000. For comparison, about 50,000 people are brought
>> to the United States annually, the report stated.
>> The rise in trafficking seen over the 1990s was fueled by feeble
>> economies in source countries, such as the former Soviet Union and
>> Southeast Asia, along with weak penalties for traffickers, said a
>> government official familiar with these issues.
>> Last October, the United States passed its own law addressing this
>> problem, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, which
>> calls on the State Department to report annually on the scope of
>> trafficking in various countries and measures taken to combat it. The
>> report was due for release on June 1, but its publication has been
>> delayed.
>> In Israel today, official policy on trafficking is to arrest and deport
>> foreign sex workers. The women are held for an average of 30 days under
>> crowded and sometimes harsh conditions, longer if they testify in court
>> against their pimps, according to hotline data.
>> Rozen and Levenkron take issue with this approach. "Deporting women
>> doesn't make things better," said Levenkron. "I'm tired of shouting
>> this all over Israel so I've come here [to the United States] to shout
>> about it."
>> Rozen contends that a one-year work permit in specified fields such as
>> home health care or child care, before their return home, would put the
>> former prostitutes in a stronger position to take care of themselves.
>> Gruesome albeit unsubstantiated stories abound, she says, about revenge
>> attacks on returning women and their families by the original
>> trafficker in the home country.
>> A nest egg from a year's legitimate work, Rozen suggests, would allow
>> victims to re-establish themselves in a new community and stay out of
>> the clutches of traffickers in the future.
>> Meanwhile, Levenkron is seeking professional back-up in her job
>> representing the victims of trafficking.
>> "I am the [hotline] legal department," laments Levenkron. "We need
>> lawyers and we need public awareness."
And here is my address as promised, so call or visit, days or nights:
FRANK H ARTHUR
378 MCDONOUGH BLVD SE
ATLANTA, GA 30315
(770) 739-6508