Everything looks hunky-dory in the Holy Land. -g-
Israel: No Promised Land for Sex Slaves
by Elisabeth Eaves
NEVE TIRZA PRISON, ISRAEL
Blue-eyed 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.
At any one time, as many as 100 women like Lyubov may be awaiting deportation
in Neve Tirza women's prison near Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport, a prison
spokeswoman said.
The non-profit Israel Women's Network estimates that 70 percent of prostitutes in
Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial center, come from the former Soviet republics, and
that about 1,000 women are brought into Israel illegally each year.
"This is a whole industry - recruiting them, bringing them and distributing them to all
of the parlors," said Efraim Ehrlich, former commander of the Tel Aviv vice squad.
And the economic hardship in the former Soviet Union has made them especially
easy prey for the human trafficking networks feeding the industry.
Police in Israel say they are powerless to stop the flow of trafficked women until
the laws change.
"They are very much afraid to come to the police and complain, so the police really
can't do anything," said spokeswoman Linda Menuhin.
"The problem is there is no law against trafficking people, and no law against
prostitution."
But Rachel Benziman, legal adviser to the Israel Women's Network, said there are
a variety of crimes - rape, abduction, battery, deceit and theft - which the
authorities rarely bother to prosecute for, even though they have the power to do
so.
Amir, a Tel Aviv pimp who refused to give his last name, said a woman could cost
up to $20,000, depending on her looks.
"It's like a car. It depends how valuable she is," he said, standing on a street lined
with flashing lights advertising brothels near Tel Aviv's old central bus station.
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.
"You have to have very strong nerves to do this kind of work," she said.
Though crime networks distribute women throughout the world, Hebrew University
criminologist Menachem Amir said Israel's appetite for prostitutes may be
bolstered by three groups - foreign workers, Orthodox Jews and Arabs.
Many of Israel's nearly 200,000 legal and illegal foreign workers are young,
unattached men, likely to buy sex.
Amir said Arabs and Orthodox Jews have "very strong taboos against sexual
connections outside of marriage and therefore go to a place where they can do it
more anonymously."
"It's a matter of supply and demand," he said.
Meanwhile, the prostitutes from the former Soviet Union have contributed to a
backlash against the more than 630,000 legal immigrants Israel has absorbed from
the region since the late 1980s.
Mostly Russian, they are often stereotyped as having brought crime and prostitution
while exploiting Israeli laws enabling anyone with a Jewish grandparent to
immigrate.
A poll by the Women's Network showed 44 percent of Israelis believed all
Russian immigrant women provided sexual services for pay.
But the economic decline in formerly communist Eastern Europe has hit women
especially hard. World Bank figures show women in Russia earn only 70 percent of
men's wages for the same work and make up 70 percent of the official
unemployed.
Lyubov is not Jewish. Her customers have been Jews, Arabs and foreigners.
Raised by an alcoholic mother who was imprisoned when her daughter was two,
and thereafter stayed in a state orphanage that fell apart when the Soviet Union did,
Lyubov thinks she has little to go back to.
"There were days when I had nothing to eat," Lyubov said.
She weighed 50 kg when she left Russia, and gained 20 kg after arriving in Israel.
She said circumstances had made it hard for her to quit.
"I came into this circle and then it was very hard to get out. My papers were fake, I
had no money, I had no acquaintances and I was in an enclosed place," she said,
playing with dyed black hair growing out to reveal blond roots.
The nearest police station was across the road from the apartment where Lyubov
was kept but she never
went there, inhibited, like many others, by the double bind of fear of her owner and
fear of deportation.
"I kept hoping some day I would earn some money. But when they actually caught
me, I was relieved," she said.
She would not say which Israeli city she had worked in and asked that her
hometown and her working name not appear in print. Lyubov, her real first name,
means "love" in Russian.
"I made a mistake. But there are no jobs in our city. Everything is closed," she said.
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