Israel, a Destination Hotspot For Women Trafficking

By the start of the new century Israel gained a reputation as a destination hotspot for sex trafficking. At its peak time from beginning of 1990s to early 2000s an approximate number of 3,000 women were trafficked every year. In 2006 The United Nations named the country as one of the main destinations for trafficking women.Human trafficking only began to be accounted in early 1990s when Israel did absolutely nothing to solve the problem, one NGO activist in Tel Aviv told the press.



Most victims are subject to sex slavery or forced prostitution while others are imported to Israel as labor slaves. Preys to this modern slavery in Israel are mostly women of the former USSR. Rinat Davidovich the director of the Maagan Shelter in Tel-Aviv told reporters that out of the70% to 95% Eastern European victims, 21.45% come from Ukraine,11.24% from Moldova,9.2% from Russia, and 5.11% from Uzbekistan. Women trafficked from Eastern Europe were reportedly sold to Tel Aviv traders through routine brutal beating and sexual abuse.In 2006 Chinese women have been stated as the new victims.


Most of these women have followed a job advertisement which promised a place to stay and a good pay. They are often arrested for illegal stay in Israel shortly after being sexually exploited. The average time they spend in prison is 50 days and they are supposed to pay for their own expenses to leave Israel. The modern form of slavery helped the traffickers and pimps earn 50,000-100,000 US dollars every year for each prostituted woman which makes it a 450 million US dollars sex industry.
After the US threatened to place sanctions on Israel, the regime which considers prostitution legitimate, started to employ new tactics including the establishment of a shelter in North Tel Aviv where these women were perceived as victims of a crime rather than accomplices. According to Rinat Davidovich, these women from former Soviet Union Countries and also from China are all in bad conditions, suffering from sexual diseases, hepatitis and even tuberculosis. Some have problems sleeping because they remember what happened to them at nights.



Although in 2007 Israel claimed to have gained significant success in combating the problem, it seems the so-called restrictions have just altered the way in which the women were trafficked and has only moved the victims to undergrounds. Victims are now mostly taken to places hidden as massage parlors, saunas or even Internet cafes.
Above all, the crackdown has led to the rise of a new problem i.e. domestic sex trafficking, a new phenomenon whose existence has been flatly denied by the Israeli regime. The U.S. Trafficking In Persons Report, issued in June 2009, states: “Police did not initiate any investigations into the trafficking of Israeli citizens within the country and generally did not recognize trafficked Israeli women as such.”
According to haaretz Israeli men pay approximately one million visits per month to brothels. The demand has made the traffickers recruit local girls to fill the void left by foreign sex slaves.


Yedida Wolfe, of the Task Force on Human Trafficking says: “While government officials are saying that their efforts have drastically cut the number of victims in the country, the NGOs on the scene really don't feel that's true."

Israel who has constantly condemned the Muslim world for violation of human rights and especially women’s rights had failed to battle the violation of its own women’s rights and those of outside its borders brought to the Tel Aviv brothels to supply the demands of its men.

Also read:
http://www.jpnews-sy.com/en/news.php?id=1145
http://www.haaretz.com/news/report-israel-not-doing-enough-to-combat-human-trafficking-1.91121

Posted in: Israel. Human Rights,Sex trafficking,women's Human Rights