Jerusalem – Israeli brothel keepers have the right to buy and sell prostitutes in the same way that football clubs transfer players, a lawyer claimed [ in
early June ] . ‘There is no difference between trading football players, hi-tech programmers, or surgeons, and selling women for purposes of
prostitution,’ Yaacov Shklar, who specialises in defending pimps, told a Knesset committee.
Jerusalem – Israeli brothel keepers have the right to buy and sell prostitutes in the same way that football clubs transfer players, a lawyer claimed [ in
early June ] . ‘There is no difference between trading football players, hi-tech programmers, or surgeons, and selling women for purposes of
prostitution,’ Yaacov Shklar, who specialises in defending pimps, told a Knesset committee.
His comments came in the midst of a parliamentary investigation into Israel’s sex trade which has caused scandal for the cynicism of the
pimps and their lawyers towards the women they exploit.
Racketeers who smuggle women into Israel from eastern Europe sell them to brothels which then send some of them to other brothels for a
transfer fee. One Russian woman, a physics teacher whose case has been documented by Amnesty International, was sold twice – the second time for 6,500.
About 2,000 foreign prostitutes – mostly illegal immigrants – work in Israel’s 340 million-a-year sex industry. It is estimated 25,000 paid-for sexual transactions take place in the country every day.
‘Prostitution is an important social commodity and anyone who says differently is a hypocrite,’ Shklar told the Knesset. The cost of bringing women into the country illegally forces brothel keepers to
cover expenses by trading them, he said.
A Knesset committee last week retraced a trafficking trail from the Egyptian border to the massage parlours of Eilat on the Red Sea. Russian
women are flown to Cairo then taken to villages in Sinai where Bedouin guides escort them on foot through the desert to Israel.
Much of the 80-mile frontier is marked with a fence designed to keep out animals rather than people. ‘It’s very easy to cross,’ one of the
delegation said. On the Israeli side, the women are picked up in jeeps and taken to Eilat where they are sold for 2,400 each. Some brothel
keepers buy twice as many women as they need, and resell half of them at a profit to recoup their investment, the committee found.
The brothel keepers take most of the women’s earnings, claiming this is to cover the expense of bringing them to Israel.
At a massage parlour in Eilat, where the committee interviewed a Moldovan woman and two Ukrainians, the women were allowed to keep 20 shekels from each customer, the boss keeping the remaining 120 shekels. On average, each woman served about 10 customers during a shift of eight to 10 hours.
Other foreign prostitutes enter Israel through Ben Gurion Airport on a tourist visa, which prohibits them from working and is valid for only three months.
Usually, when arrested during raids on brothels, the women are charged with immigration offences, which do not entitle them to free legal
representation. With no money to pay for their own defence, they resort to lawyers hired by their boss and may not be properly represented. In many cases the women have been abused and held as prisoners by their ‘owner’.
Mia Negel, parliamentary adviser to Zehava Gal-On, the Meretz party member who is chairing the committee, said: ‘The lawyers are hired by the men who employ the prostitutes and support the interests of the men, not the women. The men just want the women to get back to work.’ The committee is expected to recommend a widening of the Public Defence law, to safeguard the rights of prostitutes by allowing them to be defended at government expense.
In 1998, the UN Human Rights Committee expressed regret that ‘women brought to Israel for the purposes of prostitution… are not protected
as victims of trafficking but are likely to bear the penalties of their illegal presence in Israel by deportation’.
Author: Brian Whitaker
News Service: The Observer
URL: http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,504631,00.html
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