You don't need to be a Caucasian sexpot to travel to Israel --but it helps....
Knesset report: 3,000 women 'sold' by white slavers here every year
NINA GILBERT
Dec. 9, 2002
Some 3,000 women are brought into the country every year by white slavers to work in the billion-dollar-a-year sex industry, according to an interim report of the Knesset Committee of Inquiry into Trafficking in Women.
The women, who are smuggled in from former East Bloc countries, are "sold" for some $3,000 to $6,000, the report says.
It proposes that these crimes should have minimum prison sentences to deter the sex traders, who often jail, blackmail and enslave the women. As part of its work, the committee has drafted two bills, one banning trafficking in human beings and the other establishing a government authority to fight the problem.
Chairwoman Zehava Gal-On (Meretz) said law enforcement agencies have made progress in cracking down on trafficking. However, she said that the legal system does not have the means to deter traffickers. "When traffickers get to court, they get lenient sentences," she said.
As a result, under the bill, trafficking in human beings would have a minimum sentence of four years. Gal-On said the bill would be much wider than the present maximum sentence of 16 years for white slavers, and would also cover the realm of foreign labor.
She said that some improvement has been made since July last year when Israel was included on the State Department's blacklist of countries whose laws don't meet US criteria for dealing with this crime and threatened economic sanctions. Most of the women are working in some 250 brothels in the Tel Aviv area.
The total number of brothels in the country is estimated at 300 to 400.
According to the information gathered by the committee, clients pay an average of NIS 120 to NIS 150, but the women keep only about NIS 100 to NIS 130. The women must use the money they earn to buy their freedom, the committee noted.
The women work an average of 12 hours a day and six to seven days a week, and serve about 10 to 15 clients per day. Often, the women live in dismal conditions and sometimes they are physically abused or live in fear of their pimps.
News agencies contributed to this report.
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