Slave trade heads to Israel

[Ognir]

Slave trade heads to Israel
By Mona Alami

JERUSALEM - Israel continues to be a favorite destination for the trafficking of women for the sex industry - also known as the white slave trade - and for a form of modern slavery where migrant laborers from developing countries are exploited.

The US State Department placed Israel in Tier 2 position in its 2007 Trafficking in Persons report. Also, an Israeli court ruled against the country's work visa policy which forces foreign workers into indentured labor with a single employer.

"Israel was only upgraded to Tier 2 last year," said Romm Lewkowicz, a spokesman from Israel's Hotline for Migrant

 
Workers, an advocacy group which defends the rights of foreign workers.

The US State Department divides countries into three tiers. Tier 1 is for countries that have successfully implemented measures to control trafficking (most Western countries fall into this category). Tier 2 is for countries that are trying to eradicate this modern day slavery but still fail to meet the necessary standards. Tier 3 is reserved for countries that have not addressed the issue at the most basic level.

In 2006, Israel was on the US State Department's Watch List for people trafficking.

"This position falls between Tier 2 and Tier 3. The US applies economic sanctions to those countries which fall into Tier 3, but as we have a strong economic relationship with the US, Israel was given a warning and placed in a slightly higher category," said Lewkowicz.

The Israeli government has also faced sharp criticism from the US for its so-called binding work visa policy which effectively binds foreign migrants - mostly from developing countries and former Soviet Eastern bloc countries working in certain industries such as construction, labor, homecare and agriculture - to the employer stated on their visa.

"The issuance of these visas is subject to the workers staying with the same employer stated on the visa, and if this condition is broken then the migrant worker is deemed illegal and liable for deportation without having a chance to fight the case in court," said Sigal Rosen from Hotline.

This has encouraged unscrupulous employers to withhold payment and extort employees, knowing they can always replace them and escape penalized.

One of the more notorious cases was the Turks for Tanks deal of 2002. According to the deal, the Israeli military industry (Ta'as) upgraded about 200 tanks for Turkey for US$687 million, in one of the country's biggest arms export deals. As part of the agreement, 800 Turkish workers were granted permits to work in construction in Israel, after being placed through the Turkish employment agency Yilmazlar.

One of Yilmazlar's contractors, Shaheen Yelmaz, arrived in Israel in 2006 dreaming of helping his father pay off his mounting debts after being promised a good job in Israel for $1,400 a month - a fortune by Turkey's standards where unemployment is high.

On arrival his passport and mobile phone were taken away and he and other Turkish workers were accommodated in squalid conditions.

"We were not allowed to leave the premises in the evenings, and were only allowed out on our day off. And we were not paid for the first three months," said Yelmaz.

The Turkish Embassy was unwilling to intervene because of the lucrative deal with Israel.

Yelmaz and his fellow contractors, most of them with little education, were coerced into signing blank documents before leaving Turkey that virtually ensured their dependency on Yilmazlar.

"We were also told by our Israeli employer that if we were unhappy we could leave. The police would then arrest us as illegals and we would be deported," said Yelmaz.

Following a number of similar cases, Hotline and other Israeli human rights organizations petitioned the Israeli High Court. The court acknowledged the inequity of the system, but ruled that Yilmazlar's contract with the Israeli defense industry was unique, and the company's contract with Israel was limited.

However, the court did rule in 2006 that Israel's binding visa policy in general was illegal, and ordered the state to establish an alternative. Rosen says they are still waiting for a final response from the state.

Yelmaz was subsequently deported to Turkey, $15,000 in debt, and Israel's contract with Yilmazlar was renewed.

"While the situation of indentured laborers remains serious, the white trade trafficking has improved somewhat," said Lewkowicz. "Since the US State Department put Israel on its Watch List in 2006, the number of women trafficked to Israel has declined, and it is now against the law to traffic in women. Furthermore, the government now grants prostitutes a one-year rehabilitation visa. However, the bureaucracy involved means the granting of these visas is often problematic."

But new problems have arisen. "Israel is no longer solely an importer of prostitutes but has become an exporter of them too. Last year we discovered a new business where Israeli women were being trafficked to the UK and Ireland to work in the sex industry," Lewkowicz said.

Prostitution has also gone underground in Israel. "Before it was openly done on the streets, now many of the players have resorted to working from private apartments, following a police and government crackdown on the trafficking," he added.

According to the Jerusalem-based Task Force on Human Trafficking (TFHT), approximately 1,000 of the estimated 10,000 prostitutes in Israel are minors.

Immigrants from the ex-Soviet bloc countries, some involved in the Russian mafia, manage about 20% of the trade, while the remainder are Israelis, says Lewkowicz.

A Global Terrorism Analysis report published by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation states that many of the trafficked women are smuggled in from Egypt's Sinai by Bedouins who have also been involved in arms smuggling.

The industry has proved very lucrative for the human traffickers, with each woman sold in Israel bringing in anywhere between $50,000 to $100,000.

But the state also earns a tidy profit from the white slave trade, according to Hotline.

Service providers, such as taxi drivers transporting prostitutes, lawyers who represent the clients, landlords who rent out their premises as brothels, all pay income tax, and this ultimately arrives in the state's coffers. Not to mention the cases of corrupt police officers who have also lined their pockets through bribery.

(Inter Press Service)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JI05Ak01.html

[Anonymous]

[youtube:1424m1mv]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arqbDRYzvjM[/youtube]1424m1mv]

http://www.venusproject.com/ethics_in_a ... avery.html

^ huge archive of articles on the subject

Trafficking in women a worldwide epidemic, Malarek says,

Up to - 10,000 trafficked women in Israel and more than 280 brothels in Tel Aviv alone -

- By Julie Lesser - Tribune Correspondent

MONTREAL - Calling human trafficking one of the greatest human rights abuses of our time, Canadian journalist and social activist Victor Malarek addressed the Jewish community at a Montreal synagogue last Thursday. ("good jew?")

Promoting a book he has written on the subject, Malarek said destitute Third World and Eastern European females as young as 12 are tricked into leaving their homelands with promises of wealth and prosperity in the West, as well as Israel. Instead, they are sold into the sex trade by organized crime, gangs, pimps and brothel owners.

"Newspaper ads from modelling and employment agencies promise exciting jobs, but the women are duped," Malarek told the Jewish Tribune. "They must submit, or they are raped, beaten and tortured. There are between 5,000 and 10,000 trafficked women in Israel and more than 280 brothels in Tel Aviv alone. It is a human rights issue the Jewish community knows about. They have a voice and they must use it."

The United Nations has cited human trafficking as an international crime generating more than US $12 billion worldwide. More than 800,000 people are trafficked annually, forced into prostitution and threatened with death should they attempt to escape the clutches of their captors. Canada is both a means of access to the United States, as well as a final destination for approximately 2,000 women each year.

"Governments should be held accountable," said Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, who also addressed the crowd. "It is a very serious problem in Israel, and Canada has been inadequate in the protection of victims of trafficking. It is a global slave trade."

As the previous federal justice minister, Cotler aided in the implementation of several bills addressing the protection of vulnerable individuals, yet he openly admitted there have never been any prosecutions made for human trafficking. He focused on raising the public's awareness of trafficking as a method to prevent what he called the fastest rising criminal industry in the world today. Responding to an audience member's question, he said the problem of mistakenly granting Canadian visas to people who should not obtain them is "an issue for the immigration department."

As customers' demands for slave trade workers who do not have HIV or AIDS increases, the age of victims proportionally decreases. UNICEF has determined that approximately 1.7 billion children are victimized annually. Ironically, Malarek didn't realize the gravity of the situation until he personally witnessed how many young girls were trafficked into Kosovo to service troops sent by the United Nations.

"There is both national and international indifference," said Malarek. "The public looks at the victims with apathy or scorn and foreign women are not the priority of most governments. Governments are complacent because the sex industry brings in money."

Cotler noted that governments must work together in prosecuting oppressors while protecting their victims. He said the RCMP is part of an international trafficking unit that reflects cooperation among a number of governments. Human trafficking should be a priority on international policy-making agendas, he added, and complimented the United States on taking the lead in exercising what he called moral leadership.

"Most people don't know how big this problem is," said Larry Sakow, who attended the public event. "As a Jew, I am upset about the trafficking in Israel. It is surprising that Jews have gotten into it and are making money."

Victor Malarek's book, The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade, is currently available.




Bollyn wrote about it a long time ago here,

http://www.iamthewitness.com/Bollyn/Bol ... Trade.html