"Ready for prime time?"

[bloom]

Jan. 12, 2006 10:15
Ready for prime time?
By LOOLWA KHAZZOOM

'Three thousand women in Israel: raped, beaten, trafficked," the caption reads. "Is aid on the way?" As images of forlorn-looking women flash on the screen, the 30-second television spot praises Israel's humanitarian efforts worldwide - including the rescue and support of southeast-Asian tsunami victims and Pakistani earthquake survivors. Why then, the message implies, would Israel neglect to prevent an epidemic of violence and despair affecting women within its own borders?

..."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."


http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1136361065470&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[Coastie for Truth]

1. Same thing here in Silicon Valley

with young women from India - here on H1B visas as "Programmers" - then there was a fatal fire in their "dormitory."

[Dunvegan]

2. I hadn't heard of that story, Coastie...

...I'd like to read about that...have a link, by any chance?

[Tom Joad]

3. I believe Coastie is referring to this story, but it has nothing to do

with israel. It does mean that the fight for women's empowerment is by no means limited to a few countries.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/01/24/MN89770.DTL

[Coastie for Truth]

4. Slavery in Our Time

Historians will look back in puzzlement at the way our 21st century world tolerates the slavery of more than a million children in brothels around the world.

India alone may have half a million children in its brothels, more than any other country in the world. Visit the brothel district in almost any city in India, and you can meet 14-year-old girls who have been kidnapped off the street, or drugged, or offered jobs as maids, and then sold into a world that they often escape only by dying of AIDS.

When I've written about "sex slavery" in the past, from Cambodia, I've sensed that readers assume the term is hyperbole. See if you still think so after hearing the story of Geeta Ghosh.

Geeta grew up in a village in rural India and attended only two months of school; like many of the girls who are trafficked, she is illiterate. Her own family abused her, but at age 11 she found refuge with her best friend's aunt.

For a year, "Auntie" looked after Geeta with a warmth that she had never found at home. Then one day when Geeta was 12 - but still physically a little girl, well short of puberty - the aunt took her to a beauty parlor. "You look a bit ugly, so why not try to look prettier?" Auntie suggested.

Then the aunt locked her in a soundproof room in a brothel with an Arab man who bought her virginity. "I was very terrified to see this huge man in front of me," Geeta remembers, adding, "I cried a lot and fell to his feet, pleading."

Note to Tom: That link is part of the story. There is so much going on here on the Peninsula that it no longer makes the first page of the Mercury.

When I was living in Tokyo there were travel agencies that specialized in tours to Thailand.

Kinda funny that Israel is singled out.

[bloom]

5. "Task Force on Human Trafficking" and other references...

I don't know how "65 percent of Israeli men do not see the trafficking of women as a human-rights violation"

(I wonder what the question was)

It would interesting to see statistics for men's views from other countries as a comparison.

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Website: Task Force on Human Trafficking (In Israel)

http://www.tfht.org/index.php?section=article&album_id=6

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Other references:

Poll: Public Backs Legal Prostitution (Sex -- Not Political)

"A prostitute who had been a victim of trafficking testified that since arriving in Israel by way of Romania, under a false name, she was bought and sold five times."

"Committee chair Eti Livni (Shinui) said that 98 percent of those employed in prostitution in Israel were victims of trafficking in women."

http://www.kokhavivpublications.com/editions/israel/2005/07/poll-public-backs-legal-prostitution.php

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Israel adjudicates the international human trafficking group

"The General Office of Public Prosecutor, Beersheva, has brought the formal accusation against the chief of the international criminal group engaged in human trafficking from Ukraine....

Israeli remedial organizations hail the criminal litigation against Turkin. However, some gaps of Israeli legislation may help the criminals to avoid serious penalties. “Beersheva’s hearing is the one of the isolated instances when the police succeeded in brining the case to the court and the suspected person was accused,” the legal experts say."

http://en.for-ua.com/news/2006/01/17/105008.html

more @http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/670596.html

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Jan. 23, 2006 1:26 | Updated Jan. 23, 2006 9:34
'Country must end ghetto mentality'

"Former foreign minister Silvan Shalom's much publicized handshake with his Pakistani counterpart last August represents just a smattering of the activity between Israel and the Islamic world taking place behind the scenes, Foreign Ministry Director-General Ron Prosor said Sunday.

Prosor also said Israel needed to jettison the "ghetto mentality of a nation that dwells alone" and begin thinking and behaving "like a normal country and a responsible member in the international community."

These words were said not in the context of Israel's conflict with the Arabs, but rather in a wider global context. For example, Prosor said that as a responsible and enlightened nation, Israel needed to meet international standards on a number of issues such as contributing a part of its GNP to developing nations, fighting trafficking in human beings..."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1137605894222&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull