The campaign was initiated by the Jerusalem-based Task Force on Human
Trafficking (TFHT) - a project of the non-profit ATZUM, founded by Rabbi Levi
Lauer, and the law firm of Kabiri-Nevo-Keidar - which joined forces with the
two largest broadcasting schools in Israel, ACC and Jump Cut in Tel Aviv.
Together, they commissioned students to create 17 public awareness campaigns.
These advertisements were screened at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque in early
December, at an event so packed there was standing-room only. The screening was
also a competition: Just one of the commercials would be chosen to air on
national television. Milling about after the screening, it was clear the
favored clip was "Tifereth Israel." The clip is scheduled to screen shortly on
Keshet and Reshet television networks, both of which donated the airtime.
Tamar Yaron, the founder and director of the Jump Cut broadcast school, was
intrigued by the project as a way of using her program as a "platform for
contributing to society."
When Tirtsa Granot, the director of the ACC school, came to her a year ago
after being approached by her old friend Roni Aloni of the TFHT, the women
agreed the campaign was an opportunity for both her students and for Israel as
a whole.
"We like to give students something that will be meaningful both for their own
growth and for society," she says. "The goal of ads is to influence. I want to
see the day when the exploitation of women is not legitimate here."
Nava Oren, a 28-year-old student at Jump Cut, was part of the team that created
the winning clip.
"We wanted to show that it is the government's responsibility to help the way
they have helped with other human plights. The government needs to do more on
this," she says.
"We wanted to be very clear that sex trafficking is something different than
prostitution. It is slavery," Oren added.
Tamar Adelstein, coordinator for the Coalition Against the Trafficking of
Women, thinks the winning clip is a powerful statement. Still, she worries that
the ad campaign may not address the core obstacle: "I think that the main
problem of women trading is that it has a demand. And where there is that
demand, there will be a supply.
"I think that the men in Israel need to be educated that what they are doing is
damaging," says Adelstein. Her concern is not simply that Israel chooses to
ignore the crisis - it's that too many people don't think it's a problem at
all. According to pollster Mina Tzemach, 65 percent of Israeli men do not see
the trafficking of women as a human-rights violation.
Prior to 1990, Israel had no known involvement with the sex trafficking
business, and prostitution activity was relatively low. Since that time,
activists estimate that 3,000 girls and young women have been shipped each year
from the former Soviet Union.
Today, women in 80% of Israel's brothels are victims of sex trafficking,
according to the Hotline for Migrant Workers. While Israeli men make an
estimated 1,000,000 visits to these brothels monthly, the Israeli government
did little to respond to the issue throughout the 1990s - leading the US State
Department to rank Israel among the worst countries worldwide in a 2001 report
on global trafficking.
Since that time, Israel has begun investigating into and taking some action on
this issue. But, for many activists, the efforts simply aren't enough.
In south Tel Aviv, as in other parts of the country, men in search of illicit
sex need only look for one of the ubiquitous pyramid-shaped icons that mark the
entrances to brothels.
"What more obvious lead to a crime scene do the police need?" challenges Nomi
Levinkron, a leading expert on the subject of sex trafficking in Israel and
head of the legal department of the Hotline for Migrant Workers.
Just up the street from the downtown shouk, Levinkron stops and points at a
dark room with bars on the window, on the top floor of a yellowing building.
"I remember one time when I walked past this building and looked up at the
window," she recalls. "A girl was standing there, peering out. She had this
haunting sadness in her eyes. She was literally trapped. I will never forget
the expression on her face - total despair."
Levinkron pauses before passing the butcher shop next door - "One butcher next
to another," she says.
Much of the debate in Israel centers around the women's choice in entering the
sex trade. If prostitution isn't a crime in Israel, and many of the women
choose to come of their own volition, why should Israelis be concerned?
"The women simply don't understand the situation," explains Yasmin Keshet, a
legal advocate for victims of sex trafficking. "They don't realize they are
being taken into slavery. They are led to believe that they will work as
prostitutes for a certain amount of time, make good money to support their
families, then return back home. There is no way for them to imagine what
really happens in the end. It is worlds away from what is described to them in
the beginning." Victims, activists allege, can endure countless beatings and
rapes each day, as well as captivity and sometimes even death.
"It's a throwback," Keshet says, "to the slave trades of America, the Middle
Ages, and ancient Greece - things we as a society thought we had moved beyond.
These very things are happening today - right here in this country."
While some trafficked girls and women are abducted, others agree to
prostitution as a means of financial rescue.
"The former Soviet Union is in horrible economic shape," Levinkron explains.
"When women are making the equivalent of about 100 NIS a month there, 4,000 NIS
a month seems worth prostitution."
Not only do the women never see a shekel of the money they are promised, but
they get trapped in a nightmare they never could have imagined.
Numerous activists assert that classic attitudes towards prostitution -
specifically, criminalizing the woman - exacerbate the nightmare facing sex
trafficking victims.
"Authorities will often say, 'Oh, she's a prostitute. She chose it, so this is
what she deserves,'" says Keshet. For this reason, "interrogations often are
done improperly, and authorities frequently treat the women in humiliating
ways."
According to Ayelet Lachmi, an activist with Amnesty International and the
Coalition to Stop Sex Trafficking, "The government treats the women as illegal
aliens who are criminals - punishing them far more severely than the pimps who
bring them here," she says. "Israel thinks of sex trafficking victims as
'foreign workers,' which is why they are treated differently. The government
thinks it can do anything it wants with them."
Many times, Keshet believes, trafficking victims are forced to testify against
their pimps.
"Victim testimonies are the only way to collect evidence against and prosecute
these criminals," Keshet explains. "Their testimony helps the state a lot, but
it's at a very high risk to the victims. Associates of these pimps threaten
these women and their families back home. That's why the shelter [for sex
trafficking victims] was founded - to protect these women until they testify."
Though the shelter is safe, Keshet says, "it is closed like a prison." As soon
as victims have finished testifying, she continues, "the women are deported
from the country. The deportation is legal, because the Ministry of Interior
Affairs decides this. That's where I come into the picture: I represent them
against the ministry. I say, 'Look, these women helped the state, give them at
least a year to rehabilitate.'"
Police investigator Raanan Caspi of the National Investigation Office stresses
that compelling women to testify is the only way to effectively work on their
behalf.
"Our goal is to arrest as many of the pimps as possible," he explains. "When we
find the victims, our top priority is to convince the woman to testify, because
it is the only way to catch the perpetrators involved in buying, selling and
transporting the victims."
Caspi stresses that all women are given access to services of some kind.
"If she is prepared to testify," he says, "we transfer her to a safehouse. If
she's not sure, we transfer her to a different facility where she has time to
think about whether she wants to cooperate."
He estimates that 90% of the women eventually agree to testify.
The police portray a very different assessment of the victims' future prospects
in Israel than do most activists. Of the women living in shelters under
government protection, Caspi says, 60% begin working "normal jobs" in Israel.
They are also given access to lawyers and a small stipend from the government,
according to Caspi.
"If they don't want to [cooperate] they still can have services, but only for
two or three weeks and then they are returned to their country of origin."
Women who don't want to testify against their pimps don't deserve to stay
because they have chosen not to "be part of the system," the police say.
"The Israeli government is once again trying to downplay one of the most
atrocious human rights violations of our time," responds Yedida Wolfe, Director
of Advocacy at TFHT.
The police, however, say the law-enforcement challenges are much harder than
the activists admit.
"The victims are often working in private houses," Caspi says. "The women
working in brothels are now mostly Israeli women." According to the police,
"the percentage of Israeli women is up, and the number of trafficked women is
down."
Wolfe, though, thinks the government simply isn't trying hard enough.
"The official directive of the state attorney has been and remains that the
police should only investigate the crime of pimping in extraordinary
circumstances. Apparently, the state still does not view this crime worthy of
police attention or government resources."
Despite assurances given by the state attorney in response to a petition filed
by TFHT in the High Court this year, there has been no change as of yet.
"Instead of closing down brothels, the police simply raid them in search of
illegal aliens," Wolfe alleges.
"These women, trafficking victims, have been cruelly exploited by their pimps
and traffickers who routinely abuse, rape and even starve them," she continues.
"After a police raid, the women are transferred to a detention center - which
is much like a prison - pending deportation from the country."
Until Israeli government officials and citizens more closely examine the
complexity and severity of the sex slave trade, Wolfe believes, the battle will
continue - and young women will pay the price.
