by Shula Kopf
The Jerusalem Post - June 21, 2002
HIGHLIGHT:
Rape, beatings and humiliation are daily reality for
the thousands of women being sold into prostitution here. Three boxes at
end of text.
The girls are young, beautiful and desperate. Their
stories are heartbreaking.Listen to Marina, 19, from Moldavia."The day after
I arrived in Israel, men began arriving in the apartment. They wore a lot
of gold jewelry, they all had cellular phones and they smoked a lot. They
were fat and scary. They looked like criminals to me. We had to get undressed
and turn around for their inspection. They looked us over to see if we had
scars or stretch marks. I felt like the African people who were sold as slaves
200 years ago. I felt like an animal."
There are self-inflicted slash marks on Marina's forearms.
The 19-year-old cut herself with a knife in agitated moments of self-loathing
during her seven-month stint as a Tel Aviv call girl.
Tanya, 20, from Russia:
"The first day they explained the rules to me. I must
smile all the time and I must sit upright on the sofa in the reception room.
I must not laugh or talk with the other girls. In the lobby the owner could
see everything that was going on through cameras. But he was a good owner.
He never beat me."
In the last 10 years, nearly 10,000 women have been
smuggled into Israel and sold to brothels, grist for the mill of the lucrative
sex trade estimated to make $ 450 million profit a year. Trafficking in people
is the fastest growing area of international organized crime, preying on
women and children made vulnerable by poverty and despair. According to a
CIA report, one to two million people are trafficked each year worldwide,
50,000 into the US. The average age of entry into prostitution is 14. Most
are recruited or forced.
The profits are staggering and trafficking is now
considered the third largest source of profits for organized crime, behind
drugs and guns, generating billions of dollars annually. Generally the flow
is from Third World countries to the industrialized nations.
"It comes down to the point that men with money can
buy the bodies of weak, poverty-stricken, desperate women," says Nissan Ben-Ami
of the Awareness Institute, a non- profit Israeli organization which fights
trafficking. "Society enables men to purchase sex just like one buys a loaf
of bread."
Until recently, Israel has been a comfortable place
for traffickers to do business. According to police, a brothel owner can
profit anywhere from $ 50,000-$ 100,000 a year per woman, and he may have
from 10 to 30 working for him. The women generally get only NIS 20 per customer,
after they pay off their "debt" to the pimp.
In the last two years, Israel took the brunt of a scathing
Amnesty International report and was placed on a US State Department's black
list, a double punch which inaugurated the fight against trafficking.
"The issue of trafficking became politically correct,"
says Nomi Levenkron, attorney for the Hotline for Migrant Workers.
Just this month, due to its increased efforts, Israel
was taken off the US State Department's list of worst offenders.
"Very little has changed in reality," says Levenkron.
"The government's response continues to be the deportation of the women.
There is no safe house for victims who want to escape their pimps. The court
sentences are too lenient and there are too many plea bargaining deals."
Nonchalant politicians and an apathetic public ignore
the cries of alarm about modern-day slavery raised by activists such as
Levenkron.
"Israel started a bit late with this battle but is
taking big steps in the right direction," says activist Leah Gruenpeter Gold
of the Awareness Institute, which, together with the migrant workers' hotline,
publishes an annual report it submits to the UN. "When the phenomenon began
about a decade ago, with the last wave of Russian immigration, Israel wasn't
ready. It all came as a surprise."
In fact, until two years ago there was no reference
to trafficking in the penal code. Labor MK Yael Dayan sponsored an amendment
in July 2000 which set a maximum 16- year sentence for the selling or buying
of people.
At about the same time, the Amnesty report provided
the impetus for the creation of a parliamentary inquiry committee headed
by Zehava Gal-On of Meretz.
Gal-On's committee gained a shot in the arm eight months
later when the US State Department released its report listing Israel among
23 nations which do not take the minimum measures to halt the trafficking
of people across their borders. Israel's peers on this blacklist were Gabon,
Sudan, Qatar and Bahrein, not exactly the company Israel aspires to keep.
In addition, the report threatened to cut off US aid to countries that do
not take steps to improve.
'It amazed us that the state was punishing the women
by arresting and deporting them for illegal stay in Israel and letting the
pimps go," says Gal-On.
In 2000, nearly 400 Eastern European prostitutes were
arrested in police raids on brothels, jailed in Neve Tirzah women's prison,
and then deported.
"The government likes to fold them, pack them and ship
them," says Levenkron.
To date, Gal-On's committee has held 21 meetings, heard
testimonies from numerous expert witnesses and proposed 10 changes to the
law, of which six have received wide support from all parties.
"The trafficking of women is modern slavery and I am
not willing to have it take place in Israel," says Gal-On. "Some people say
that these women knew they were going to work in prostitution before they
came here. That is irrelevant. They are victims whose basic human rights
have been violated. They certainly didn't imagine the conditions they would
meet here: the rapes, the violence, the humiliation and their sale from pimp
to pimp."
Olga, 19, from Russia:
"We were never allowed out. The door was thick and
there were bars on the windows. We were always guarded. Sasha would accompany
us to the client's hotel and returned us immediately to the brothel. I knew
I was coming here to work in prostitution, but I didn't know that prostitution
means being closed up in a jail where 30 clients a day visit me without me
being asked if I am willing or not. I didn't know I would have to work hours
that never end and that I would always have to be ready, because maybe a
client wants me at 10 in the morning when I went to sleep only at
seven."
Gal-On, who heard testimony from young girls like Olga,
has declared an all-out war against trafficking with several weapons in her
arsenal:
-
An amendment to the penal code to require a four-
year mandatory sentence for trafficking.
-
A proposal to allow the government to confiscate the
traffickers' profits and property.
-
A witness protection bill to encourage victims to
testify.
-
The establishment of a special government task force
to lead the charge.
"Until now Israel has been an easy and comfortable
place for the pimps," says Gal-On. "We have to get the pimps where it hurts
- in their pocketbooks - to confiscate all their ill-gotten profits, as is
done in drug cases. We're talking about an industry that according to some
estimates, makes $ 450 million to $ 1 billion profit a year. They must be
made to understand that they can't sell women's bodies and get away with
it."
But get away with it they have."Of all the cases we
have investigated, made arrests and handed over to the prosecution, never
once have we been called upon to testify," says Pini Aviram, superintendent
in the Tel Aviv police and co-head of a special investigating team of
Russian-speaking officers. The cases rarely come to trial, and end in plea
bargains.
"The deals are ludicrous," says the burly police officer,
his voice edged with anger. "If we get them on three counts of trafficking,
that is only the tip of the iceberg. And for that they get 18 months when
the maximum sentence is 16 years on each charge. It infuriates me. I think
that anything less than 10 years is a light sentence for these people. This
is a plague that must be rooted out."
Aviram says, with no small measure of cynicism, that
he has arrested second-time offenders who were back in business after completing
their short jail term. However, he feels encouraged by a recent ruling by
a Tel Aviv District Court judge who refused to approve a plea bargain and,
instead, sentenced the pimp to three years in jail, two years probation and
a NIS 10,000 fine.
According to Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit, over the
last year 42 traffickers have been charged and 28 have been convicted with
sentences ranging from two to 12 years.
"We must root out this contemptible and ugly phenomenon
not just because of the Amnesty report, but because we are the State of Israel
and something like this should not be allowed to exist here," Sheetrit said
at a recent Knesset hearing.
His office has given prosecutors new instructions to
hold traffickers in jail until their trial is over and to ask the court for
financial compensation for the victims.
"If the pimp sits in jail for four years but his millions
wait for him when he gets out, that is not enough of a deterrent," says Eli
Kaplan, co-head of the special Tel Aviv police unit. "We need to get them
where it hurts, in their pockets, and confiscate all their money and use
it to benefit some of these girls, so that they don't go back to Moldavia
to pick potatoes and freeze in the winter. If they can get some compensation,
it will encourage them to testify."
About 60 percent of all arrests in the country come
from the Tel Aviv unit, including the well-publicized recent arrest of Mark
Gaiman who, according to police, ran a chain of brothels and a well-oiled
network for recruiting and smuggling girls from Moldavia and the Ukraine.
The unit has been cut back from 14 to seven officers as police have been
assigned other positions due to the security situation.
Almost all the women come from the former Soviet Union
where the high rate of unemployment and low pay make them vulnerable to the
lure of procurers. In Moldavia, for example, 55% of the population live under
the poverty line and the GNP per person is $ 400.
Christina, 21:
"In Moldavia, a woman simply must work somewhere so
that her child and her husband, who is capable of wasting a month's salary
on alcohol, will not starve to death. A salary of $ 35 a month is barely
enough to survive. So the girl, out of stupidity or naivete, goes abroad
with the hope of being a nanny, but arrives to a closed place where she must
pleasure clients for 20 to 30 shekels."
Today, after Israel has tightened control at the airport,
the women are smuggled through Egypt by Beduins, at a rate of about 30 to
40 a week, according to police.
Upon their arrival, the women are put up for sale,
sometimes at a public auction where they are exhibited in front of a large
crowd of pimps and sold to the highest bidder.
"The public auctions are just like the slave trade
that you see in the movies," says Aviram. "They check their teeth and look
to see if they have scars. The price is set by their looks. It's a slave
market in the most disgusting way. The pimps look at them as merchandise.
'You belong to me. I bought you,' they tell the girls. I heard one of the
girls say, 'When I lived in Moldavia I used to take my dog out twice a day
to the yard to relieve himself. Here they held me locked up. I needed permission
to go to the bathroom, to eat. My dog had it better.'"
According to a report by the Hotline for Migrant Workers
submitted to the UN Commission on Human Rights, "The woman's intimate parts
are often examined in order to appraise the value of the 'merchandise.' The
price of a woman may vary from $ 4,000 to $ 10,000 depending on age and looks.
The quality of a woman's false documents is also a factor in estimating her
price."
In the court case of the State of Israel vs Reuven
Rivai, the judge describes the sale of a woman named Eliona as follows: "A
meeting was set for the following day at the McDonald's restaurant at the
Gan Shmuel intersection... negotiations were held regarding the sale of Eliona
for the purpose of prostitution. At the end of the negotiations, Eliona was
taken to the men's room, stripped naked and examined by the buyer. It was
agreed that she would be sold for $ 6,000... Eliona's examination can only
be compared to the examination of cattle in the market."
After the sale to one of the country's 700 brothels,
the women are told they will have to "pay their debt" to the pimps before
they start earning any money - only about NIS 20 of the NIS 200 paid by the
customers. They are fined for numerous "infractions": not smiling at clients,
looking out the window or drinking a glass of wine without permission. The
working hours are unbearable - 15 to 17 a day, and the women get few, if
any, days off. Levenkron tells the story of one girl who was forced to spend
her 21st birthday servicing 37 clients.
"I worked the morning shift in the brothel," one victim
told the police. "The morning shift starts at 10 a.m. and ends at 3 a.m.
... the owner would sleep with any girl he wanted. We did not have the right
to refuse."
According to police, often the pimp sells the woman
to another brothel as soon as she has worked off her "debt" and the cycle
of exploitation begins again.
"They keep rotating the girls among the brothels so
the regular customers won't get bored," says Aviram.
"We have some girls who run away and come to us with
nothing but a nylon bag with a couple of pairs of underwear," says Kaplan.
"This is definitely modern slavery. In the end, after being abused, they
end up with nothing."
Svetlana, 22, from the Ukraine.
"One day Natasha managed to escape. We don't know how,
but we woke up in the morning and she wasn't there. We were so happy, not
only because it infuriated the owner. He went wild. But also because we hoped,
that if she succeeded, then one day we could succeed as well. That was the
only day that I can remember since I got to Israel that I stopped feeling
fear and despair and began to feel some hope."
A long-term solution to the problem, according to some
Israeli activists, is nothing less than a restructuring of society. They
point to Sweden where women have almost half the political power and, as
a result, prostitution has been reduced by 60 percent in the last few
decades.
"Prostitution is rooted in the structure of society
and in the inequality between men and women," says Gold of the Awareness
Institute. "To say that in 100 years the phenomenon will disappear, just
as did African slavery, might be too optimistic. But in order to begin making
the change we must not institutionalize or legitimize prostitution."
Gali (not her real name), an Israeli prostitute with
a going rate of NIS 50, has her own opinions on this and other subjects.
Gali has staked her spot behind the Mandarin Hotel in Tel Aviv, a dusty lot
that serves as daytime parking for beach-goers but transforms at night into
an outdoor brothel. Gali has fought off all challengers to her spot, especially
younger and prettier prostitutes, resorting to violence when cursing and
tough words don't scare them off.
"You have to be strong here or else you get trampled,"
she says in a husky voice.
It's a Thursday night and already the cars, headlights
piercing the dark, circle Gali and her colleagues like a column of ants around
breadcrumbs.
"This is pretty good traffic despite the bad economy,"
she observes and flicks the blonde hair of her wig with manicured
fingers.
Gali is an intelligent, articulate woman who seems
as if she could easily work as a store manager or run an office. She says
that as bad as things are for her and the other Israeli prostitutes, there
is nothing worse than the hell experienced by the young Eastern European
girls smuggled into the country by traffickers.
"What the pimps do to them is like cutting into live
meat," she says. "We've had a few of the girls who managed to run away from
the pimps. They went through hell, rape, beatings and humiliation. They didn't
know the language and didn't even know where they were. Their passports were
taken away. They told us they were afraid to complain. There is nothing worse
than for a woman to be forced into prostitution. At least I work for myself
and not for some pimp," she says.
Gali has the social equation neatly summed up: "As
long as there are men and as long as there are desperate, hungry women, there
will be prostitution."
(Box 1) Physical abuse, psychological
trauma
Prostitution is hazardous to mental health, even more
so than being a combat soldier, according to a recent American study which
found that prostitutes had a higher rate of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD), than American Vietnam veterans.
"It's a devastating experience. They are beaten, robbed,
raped and degraded and this has a cumulative effect on their self-esteem
and mental health," says Eli Somer, psychology professor at the University
of Haifa's School of Social Work.
Somer cites studies that indicate prostitutes are raped
on average eight to 10 times a year and have a 75 percent rate of at least
one suicide attempt. The vast majority, some studies indicate 90 percent,
were sexually molested as children.
"How can anyone even think of legalizing something
that is so damaging?" he asks.
Philosophically, Somer views prostitution as a shameful
thread woven into the fabric of a male-dominated society.
"This is another illustration of how men exploit women's
economic poverty," he says. "All the bad things assigned to us men are reflected
in prostitution."
He pauses and adds: "I get embarrassed sometimes for
being a man."
Nomi Levenkron, of the Hotline for Migrant Workers,
knows of at least two women who have had mental breakdowns and had to be
hospitalized.
Once the women are able to extricate themselves from
the clutches of the traffickers and return home, their nightmare is not
over.
Researchers for the International Organization for
Migration published a report last year stating that 92 percent of victims
had major problems returning to normal life. They experienced physical and
mental health problems, a divorce rate three times higher than the average
and numerous suicides or suicide attempts. They are threatened by traffickers
to keep silent, and some are forced to join the trafficking networks to recruit
new victims.
(Box 2) An old (Jewish) profession
Jews have been active in "white slavery" (as trafficking
was known) beginning in the late 19th century in Eastern Europe. The poverty,
discrimination, persecution and mass migrations proved to be fertile ground
for brothel keeping and procuring, according to Nissan Ben-Ami of the Awareness
Institute. A third of the women in the trade were Jewish and Jews organized
an elaborate crime network to procure and transport women to Argentina, South
Africa and England, he says.
According to Yale University historian Edward Bristow,
in 1892, 22 Jewish traffickers in Lemberg (Lvov) in the Ukraine were convicted
of procuring women for Turkish brothels. Jewish traffickers populated whole
streets in Czernowitz. Refugees from Russian pogroms established the first
brothels in Saloniki. In Warsaw, Jewish bundists were so outraged by the
presence of Jewish brothel-keepers, that in 1905 they demolished 40 brothels.
Eight people were killed and 100 injured in the riot.
In Buenos Aires, the powerful fraternity of Jewish
pimps and procurers was known as the
Zwi Migdal
Society. They had their own synagogue and burial ground. Surveying the
ground at the cemetery, the author Stefan Zweig remarked, "So much dirt,
how much Jewish dirt. Where can I get the energy to describe this?"
In his book, Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish
Fight Against White Slavery, Bristow chronicles the efforts of voluntary
Jewish organizations to rescue Jewish victims from brothels and to fight
the traffickers. It is largely due to Jewish efforts that legislation against
procuring and juvenile prostitution was passed in Britain and South
Africa.
Bristow cites a letter written in 1902 by American
Rabbi Stephen Wise to a London rabbi, president of the gentleman's club of
the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women.
"According to the statement of my informant, a large
number of Jewish women in Manila are to be found in the ranks of prostitution.
He thinks that at one time the number reached 200, but that now the number
is less than 100, thanks to measures of the American government. These women
are mainly of Galician, Russian or Rumanian birth. It is almost too shocking
to put to paper, but according to Mr. Rubinstein, the statement of a man
that he is a Jew is followed invariably by the question 'Have you any nice
women to sell?' Saddest of all is the fact that these women have not chosen
a life of shame of their own free will, but have for the most part been inveigled
under promises or pretense of marriage These victims of deceit and treachery,
though leading dissolute lives, are conscious of their shame, are not drunken
and hilarious and frequently weep over their degradation."
(Box 3) Luckier ladies 'sold' to cops
Tel Aviv police ran a sting operation on May 12, with
officers posing as pimps "purchasing" three Moldavian girls smuggled by Beduins
over the Egyptian border.
"This is the first time we were able to get close to
the smugglers working on both sides of the border," says Eli Kaplan,
superintendent of the Tel Aviv Police Central Unit. The Beduin were armed
and the police officers were not.
"So we gave them only part of the money, $ 10,000,
and the rest we told them we would pay in Tel Aviv. When one of the Beduin
arrived to get the money, we arrested him," says Kaplan. The police have
not yet arrested the other two, nor recovered the $ 10,000 of taxpayers'
money. According to police, the Beduin, Saliman Abu-Shalibi, 26, of the al-Azma
tribe, has been charged with smuggling, selling and raping the women.
The girls "purchased" by the police told a harrowing
tale. They were flown into Egypt and taken by Beduin into the desert.
"We spent three nights in the desert on the Egyptian
side. The first group of Beduin treated us OK. They gave us food and cigarettes
and laughed with us. They tried to rape us, but we threatened to tell the
bosses in Israel on them," says Olla, 20.
A rival gang of Beduin kidnapped the girls at
gunpoint.
"It was difficult and dangerous. They forced us to
walk on foot and climb hills. It was difficult to breathe and my heart pounded.
We had to climb big boulders. We hid when we saw headlights of cars. We moved
at night. To cross the border, we started at around 7 at night and we were
in Israel at 6 in the morning."
That is when their real ordeal began.
"We were put in a ruined house in the middle of the
desert and were left there the entire day without food or water. There were
signs left by women who had been there before us. We wanted to run away,
but we didn't know where to go."
Christina, 20, picks up the story.
"At night the Beduin arrived with a car. We drove around
in the desert. He was high on drugs. Suddenly he stopped the car, opened
the door where I was sitting. He shouted at me to get out. I didn't want
to. He was shouting at me. He was drugged out, so I was afraid. I got out
and he told me to get undressed. I told him I was in the middle of my period,
but he didn't understand."
At this point, Olla, who had worked previously as a
call girl, got out of the car to protect Christina, who was innocent about
such things. Christina, a petite girl with piercing blue eyes and a quiet
demeanor, had been told in Moldavia that she would work in Israel as a waitress
in a casino.
"He told me to get undressed. I refused," says Olla.
"He said, 'all the time that you are with me, I am your owner and you will
do what I tell you.' He threw me on the ground on my belly, stripped me,
held my hands behind my back, and opened up my legs with his and that's it.
He finished inside me. I told him I don't have contraception. He told me
I will have a baby and he laughed.
"At 6 in the morning he returned us to the house and
left us there all day with no food or water. Another night he brought two
friends with him."
The girls consider themselves lucky to have been "sold"
to the Tel Aviv police.
"We are helping the police by testifying so that this
phenomenon will be wiped out," says Olla. "We are not animals and we are
not slaves. We are people and not objects to be used."
Due to new regulations, the girls, who are in the country
illegally, are not jailed but stay in a hostel paid for by the police until
the time of the trial. Meanwhile they have found legitimate work.
"I am able to work in a respectable way," says Olla,
who is tall, skinny, and dressed provocatively in tight- fitting black pants
and high-heeled black shoes. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Her face
is clean of make-up. Her brown eyes are deep set and sad. She plays nervously
with a key chain during the interview. She has an air of hurt melancholy
about her.
"When I was a little girl my dream was to be a mother
and to give my children everything," she says.
This is Olla's second time in Israel. Previously, she
worked in an escort service for about seven months before she was caught
by police and deported. Upon her return to Moldavia she met the same poverty
and hunger that drove her to prostitution in the first place.
Olla says she can't remember much about her first encounter
with a client. She drank three glasses of whiskey to dull her senses.
"I felt hurt. Back in Moldavia I agreed to do this
kind of work, but when I was confronted with the truth and understood what
I needed to do, I felt disgusted." Olla says she had to work without pay
until she returned her $ 5,000 purchase price to the owner of the escort
service.
"Some of the clients were masochists, drug addicts
and perverts. It was disgusting. I tried to ignore my thoughts because I
had no choice."
The women say they would like nothing better than to
be allowed to stay in Israel on temporary papers and to work cleaning
houses.
"At first the pimp used us. And now the police will
use us as witnesses and then kick us out. All we want is a chance to work
in a normal job," says Olla.
