Foreign Prostitution

There has been a consistent increase in the numbers of foreign women who are arrested for illegal stays in Israel and who are detained before being deported to their home countries. Most of these women are involved in prostitution and over 95% of these cases, the women are from former Soviet countries. These women were bought and sold in Israel for prices that ranged from $5,000-$20,000, as well as earned their “pimps” or traffickers $50,000-$100,000 a year from each prostituted woman, which resulted in a $450 million sex industry. This is mainly due to the establishment of the Russian mafia in Israel.

Propaganda Picture

It is very clear that the vast majority of young women trafficked to Israel come either Romania or the USSR. These women are seduced by agents of organized crime, being told that they can smuggle them from their home country, where they can make good money. This can be very appealing if you haven’t had real food for months and there are no good paying jobs where you’re from. 

Most of these victims have a lot in common. For example, they truly didn’t know what was happening to them at the beginning. In the article on the SomethingJewish website, a girl named Anna (her real name suppressed) talks about her experience. She was asked to go to Israel to work in an elderly home by an Israeli girl named Shula. When she was aboard the plane, she had no idea where she was landing. She thought it was Israel at first, but it was actually Cairo. Collected by a liaison with a group of women, they traveled through the desert escorted by Bedouin armed with automatic weapons. They then had to walk for hours after their car ride and crawl under a chain-link fence. Most of the time, the Bedouin are the first to tell them that they are going to be prostitutes by raping them.

The women are then thrown in front of a group of men and asked to strip down. This ordeal is known as an “auction” we can parallel this with a cattle market. The traffickers inspect the women and bid for who they want to buy. They “touch her breast, her ass….They check her tongue, her teeth, to see if she’s healthy. They touch her private parts….They tell her, ‘walk forward, backwards, strike poses like a model, wiggle it honey, bend over. Lower. Let’s see what you’re worth.” They aren’t really picky about where these auctions take place. One was conducted in the men’s room of a McDonalds.

Women are locked up mentally or physically.

These women are given tight, see-through clothes and told to put them on. And their initiation begins with rape. They are forced to take clients whenever they select her. Their money goes not to them, but to their owners, but they get something for food and contraceptives. Some women are made to work 7 days a week and an average of 13 hours a day. These meetings are short, about 15 minutes, so they can see about 3-4 an hour. They have to work during their menstruation cycles as well, using diaphragms to prevent leakage.

There is a huge demand for prostitution in Israel is huge and there is an estimated 3,000 women being brought into the country each year as sex slaves. Most of the customers are regular Israelis; Soldier and Orthodox Jews. In the Rosenthal book, it says that most of the prostitutes say that a fifth of their clients are very religious Jews that are identified with the traditional garbs.

Nomi Levenkron, a Legal Director of the Hotline for Migrant Workers in Israel, has given the victims of trafficking a voice and vows to help as many as she can find justice.  She has written several pieces that have been much instructed. When the Hotline first contacted her in 1999, trafficking of women wasn’t even a crime under Israeli law. Most of the material above is from her research with trafficking victims. I wonder what a Trafficker would say about his profession and the women he has victimized.

Marriage and the Druze

Since 1957, the Israeli government has recognized the Druze as a distinct ethnic community in Israel. They are located in the Northern part of the country, mainly in the hilltops. According to the 2008 National Resilience Survey, more than 94% of Druze classified themselves as “Druze-Israelis” in a religious and national context. The faith of the Druze creates a loyalty between them and the country that they reside in and in Israel they have a lot of patriotism for the country.

Making Kube for a Druze Wedding

The Druze have extreme joy in the most significant of all the life-cycle events, which is a wedding.  Weddings not only provides another opportunity to bond with the community, but it is also one of those rare occasions in which young men and women get to socialize and eye one another as potential marriage partners. A traditional Druze wedding is prepared days beforehand and many members of the community join the celebration by helping out. The weddings can be quite elaborate and extensive, so the guests expect copious amounts of food and drink, which they too help make. It can be said that of all the ethnic group and religious groups, the Druze are the ones who dine better and more festively. Even though it is frowned upon, weddings are a time when wine and other alcohols are almost approved of.

Marriage is expected of all Druze woman at a very early age, unlike Israeli’s, between the ages of 17 and 21. This marriage is usually preceded by a two year engagement and both the bride and groom are expected to be virgins the night of their wedding. These marriages are often chosen for the young people. Who do they marry though? It is against the Druze faith and is strictly forbidden to marry anyone outside of the religion. “If you marry out, you convert out,” said Haeyl Azaam, a 30-year-old Israeli Druze who was quoted in The Jewish Bulletin of Northern California. “You're excommunicated. There's just no place for you in the community anymore.”   No one can convert to the religion because they believe they are born into it, so converting out is a huge deal and can place shame on the family. The Druze take this very seriously. In the Rosenthal book, the reader learns of a Druze woman Ibtihaj Hassan. She divorced and moved away like she was supposed to. But she committed the ultimate sin; she married outside of her religion, a Bedouin. Her family was shamed and asked her to come visit them. Her brother slaughtered her in the middle of the town square, while people called him a hero and a real man.  

A Druze Bride waving goodbye to join new husband

The Druze may marry within their families though, which includes parallel cousins. More than a third of marriages are to close marriages. But Rosenthal tells us that now they recognize that this can case deformations and genetic problems for the children, so this is not practice as much anymore and are more careful with whom they marry.  A Druze can also marry a spouse from another country in order to keep the marriage ties strong. The main negative thing about marrying outside their borders is that once the bride leaves her country and her family, she is not allowed to go back. Arwad Abushanhen, an Israeli Druze, tells us how she had to bid farewell to her home country once she married her husband. Her wedding took place in no-mans –land so that both families could take part in this wondrous event. “I am so happy to be married today,” Abushahen said. “But I am so sad to leave my family.”

The Druze live in secret truly and we do not know much about their religion. Marriage is a celebration for the Druze because it means that they will continue on in secret, passing their knowledge from son to son and daughter to daughter.

The Haredim and Sexuality

Curvaceous Barbie Doll

A Barbie doll is given to a little girl 7 years old, by a friend of the family, but afterward the father takes it away and exchanges it with a proper baby doll. Why?  Because “what secular girls know at seven, our girls must not know until seventeen” (Rosenthal 183). Those were the words of a Haredi father about the curvaceous Barbie doll. Within the Haredim (ultra-orthodox) sects, women receive no Sex Education, while men only receive some just before they marry. They grow up without the basic knowledge of their bodies and about their sexuality. The intentions are not necessarily bad because the parents want to shelter their children until the right moment in time when they have to deal with it. Sexuality is just not talked about even within married couples. Everyday life in a Haredi community clearly influences against exposing and talking about body parts of both men and women. The women are even encouraged to avoid being verbally explicit about their own sexual desires or giving any hints about those sexual thoughts. But it is probably difficult for both men and women to be conscious of those intimate desires when they are taught their entire life to repress any sexual thought or fantasies. The Haredi couple is protected from the outside world and sexual information during the entire course of marriage. This is because they are sexually isolated, with no television, radio, movies, secular novels, and magazines.

Men and Women showing no affection

The Haredi see sanctity as “infusing every aspect of human experience” and all sexual activity should be intentionally sacred. To keep intimacy sacred they must consciously focus on creating an atmosphere of holiness.  This is done by thinking proper thoughts and having limits on sexual behavior. They even believe that the Sabbath is the time for sexual relations. There is also a time and schedule to have these intimate relations. Strict Jewish observance forbids any physical contacts between man and women during the menstruation period and the week following. Like mentioned earlier, intercourse is encouraged on the Sabbath as well as the mik veh night, which is after the woman’s ritual bath at the end of the 2 weeks of abstinence because of the menstruation cycle. Sexual activity must take place in the dark and they must be fully undressed, but covered with a sheet.

Modesty is prized above all

The goal is to be modest. Since they are not exposed to television or magazines that the secular world produced outside of the communities, they are not exposed to such affection. They prohibit any public display of affection, which includes contact as well. Haredi children grow up without seeing their parent’s examples of affection and couples are taught to repress any sexual thoughts and fantasies about their spouse.  Even before they are married, women can sometimes have sexual guilt when they make the transition from being single to being married because it is difficult to act on your sexual desire and see it as acceptable when they grew up feeling the complete opposite and having to constantly repress the desire.

This lack of knowledge about sexuality does possess some problems. Some couples have to go to fertility clinics because of lack of pregnancies, rather than “the sexual dysfunctions that produced the infertility to begin with." But to protect their modesty, most fertility physcians do not collect information about the couple’s intimate life. There was one instance when a couple, who had children by artificial insemination, their physician discovered that they had never had intercourse. But this is not so rare. It just needs to be said that Haredi lead a different life than the secular world especially when it comes to sexuality.

Homosexuality and the Military

Israeli soldiers working together no matter what their sexual orientation is.

To the normal citizen in the United States, the military is something of an option, but for an Israeli, the military is a period in their life, that must be followed. Serving in the Israel Defense Forces is compulsory in Israel for both men and women except for Israeli Arabs, students engaged in religious studies in an accredited Jewish Law institution , and women who are married, are pregnant or who have children as well as other reasons. All eligible men and women are drafted once they turn 18 years old; men serving for 3 years and women for 2 years and after, until they are 40-45 years old, they serve in the reserves for a month each year.

In this June 25, 2009,  Israeli soldiers march in the gay pride parade in Jerusalem.

For the last 17 years, Israel has taken it a step further than most when it comes to who they allow to enter the military. They are 1 of 24 countries that allow openly gay individuals to serve in the military since the early 1990s and they can serve without fear of discrimination or harassment. Well not actually allow, but require them to. In Israel, sexual identity doesn’t present any formal barriers in terms of a soldier’s eligibility for promotion or their military specialization. David Saranga, a former IDF officer, said “It's a non-issue... You can be a very good officer, a creative one, a brave one and be gay at the same time.”

Out-of the-closet gays are treated no differently than straights. One Israeli soldier said, "I had thought Israel was less tolerant than the United States, but when I enlisted, I never witnessed any morale problems caused by homosexuals and didn't really hear any homophobic talk--nothing along the lines of 'He shouldn't be serving.' There were openly gay soldiers I encountered, but no one seemed to resent it. It's not even an issue. I don't know why it is in America."

Eli Kaplan, who was inducted into the Israel military 8 years ago, says that when he went in for his psychological assessment he was never asked about his sexual orientation, even though he told the interviewer anyway that he was openly gay. Kaplan ended up serving in the navy’s most elite units as a drill sergeant for incoming mechanics. He never encountered any problems or homophobia during the three years in the IDF. Kaplan even says certain intelligence and naval units were known for having a large proportion of gay soldiers. Kaplan goes on to express that he believes that the Israeli society is much less homophobic than other countries and bashes on the U.S. policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Since 1993, the right to be openly gay has been acknowledged in the IDF and there is really no evidence to suggest that this policy has caused problems. Even beyond the army, Israeli law has generally been progressive in issues of sexual orientation.

For some, the military has even been the steppingstone that they needed to come out to the world. One soldier talks about how the military helped him solidify his sexual orientation. The military is full of hardships, so this brings about strong friendships and bonds. When he finally opened up, he found that the reactions were always supportive, and his friends would say “we know you are a good fighter and a member of the team.” This helped him come out to his family and eventually find a partner. He served in an elite unit, even though most of the officers knew, but that didn’t mean he was a bad soldier and no one held it against him.

The point is, maybe we should all follow Israel's lead.

Will the Peace Negotiations Continue?

Will Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish State or not? Many opinions and demands have halted Peace Talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.  

According to the article by Avi Issacharoff, one demand of the Palestinians, stated by Senior Palestine Liberation Organization official Yasser Abed Rabbo, is that the Palestinians are willing to recognize the State of Israel in any way that it desires, if the United States presents a map of the future Palestinian state, which has to include all of the territories that were captured in 1967, including East Jerusalem. The outcome of the War of 1967, fought between Israel and neighboring states of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, was that Israel seized the Syrian Golan Heights, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), the Gaza Strip, as well as the Sinai Peninsula. In the article, Rabbo says, "We want to receive a map of the State of Israel which Israel wants us to accept." He argues that if this map which is to be produced does not include the land based on the 1967 borders, then the Palestinians will be willing to recognize Israel immediately.  Rabbo argues that it is important that the Palestinians know where the borders are that will separate Palestine and Israel.

Rabbo

Within the article, Rabbo makes it a point to state that the Palestinians want to make sure that map does not include their land. That is why there is such a massive struggle. Peace Talks have halted due to the fact that there were settlement constructions taking place within the borders of what the Palestinians claim is their land. Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu proposed to freeze the settlement construction as long as the Palestinians recognize Israel. According to another article titled Palestinian official: PA will never recognize Israel as Jewish state, even though there has been a freeze on the construction, Palestinian negotiator Saeb says that this demand could never be accepted. His colleague Nabil Sha’ath adds that the government in Ramallah will not tolerate a “partial construction freeze” and that the freeze should be including East Jerusalem. They don’t want Israeli homes being built in their land.

Netanyahu

In this new article Rabbo accuses Israel’s Prime Minister of beginning to destroy the peace process by ignoring the key issues. What Rabbo is trying to say is that as long as it is a partial freeze, negotiations will be halted. The Palestinian government rejected the Prime Minister’s proposal right when he offered it. The Palestinians were sure to say that this issue of the Jewishness of the state has nothing to do with the matter." They must have felt that since it was a partial freeze, when the time came Israel could want to continue building. Netanyahu proposed and stressed that Israel is willing to make concessions and a further suspension once the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish Homeland. He feels that the Palestinians have wasted 10 months; therefore, he feels it may be a trick to avoid allowances that must be made because they are barely saying something about the settlement freeze. President Abba thinks a differently though. The Jerusalem Post says that the Palestinian leader claims that the Palestinians gave all their guarantees and fulfilled there part of the bargain, but Israel is failing to take steps toward peace.

It seems that this is a never ending argument. Neither side seems to want to budge, but by not doing so there will be no progress. The articles are very reliable because their informants are actual high-standing people within the Palestinian and Israeli governments. The writers of the articles remain objective because they do not express their views, only the officials they are interviewing.

Sukkot Celebrated at Renovated Joseph’s Tomb

Author Alad Benari 09.17.2010

“This is a symbolic closure, an exciting historic moment, a tiny repair in the shame of the abandonment of Joseph’s Tomb.”

  On Monday, more than a 1,000 people took part in the special prayers for Sukkot at Joseph’s Tomb. They came from all over Israel to the first massive gathering at the site of the Tomb since the destruction of Joseph’s tomb, 10 years ago by angry Arab pillagers, who destroyed the original stone. According to the article, the restoration operation was very complex and took all night to complete; it began on Saturday night and ended Sunday morning. The operation included, a five-stone slab being lowered into the exact location where the original stone had laid in the ancient tomb structure.

The restoration of the Tomb only brought great excitement to the people who attended and some prominent Rabbis took part in the ceremony, which included former French Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Yosef Sitruck. Soldiers took place in the ceremony and “read from the book of Tehilim (Psalms), many of them with tears of excitement in their eyes.” According to the article, during Sukkot, the ushpizin prayer is recited. This prayer symbolizes the welcoming of 7 guests, one for each day of the holiday: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David, and Joseph. The significance of Joseph’s tomb is that the prayers took place on the day of Sukkot. This is because according to tradition, Joseph comes and visits the Sukkah, which is, for the people who attended, Joseph’s Tomb.

Regional Council Mayor Gershon Mesika thanked IDF's Samaria Brigade and Civil Administration for their cooperation and assistance in the restoration efforts, but according to the article, he went on to say that this excitement is also mixed with disgrace due to the nation’s abandonment of the tomb 10 years prior. He even goes on to state that he urges the Israeli government to make amends and “allow the Jewish stay at Joseph's Tomb, which was anchored even in the Oslo Accords, in which it was determined that Joseph's Tomb will remain under full Israeli control.” The article even mentions MK Hotovely, an Israeli politician and a doctorate student at the Faculty of Law in Tel Aviv University, says that she believes that the Jews should be allowed to pray at Joseph’s tomb regularly.

Joseph’s Tomb is highly significant in Yom Kippur and according to the article, even before the Tomb was restored, Thursday, September23, hundreds of people gathered in the Samaria community of Mitzpe Yosef, which actually overlooks the Tomb. The ceremony focused primarily around the writing of a Sefer Torah, which organizers believes will eventually be placed inside the Tomb once Israel has a permanent border. The ceremony also celebrated the announcement that the coming year will be known as the year of Joseph’s Tomb and the year will include educational and public activities, as well as many other special events.

Through observation, the author does not share his point of view on the matter, especially on how he feels about the abandonment of the Tomb before now. He only states what happened and quotes people who have control in the government in some way. Whether or not the author expresses his own point of view, I think that it would have been better if he would have shared some of the views citizens that either attended or not and how this historic site makes them feel. This would make the article a lot more approachable and possibly make the reader feel some type of emotion because of this historic event. It is very obvious that this is a reliable source. He does not present his objective opinion on the matter and therefore only states the facts as to what took place. How more reliable can that be? The reader isn’t thrown into the mind of the author and I find that really reliable. He also has been writing for the Israel National News: Arutz Sheva for a while now. After doing some research on the author, he has been writing on Israel for while now and must know his stuff.

Early Release of Tom Hurndall's Killer Symptom of Wider Israeli Crimes

An Israel Defense Forces soldier, Taysir Hayb, convicted of manslaughter in the 2003 death of British photography student and peace activist, Tom Hurndall, was released from jail on September 8th. Thomas Hurndall was shot in 2003 while photographing an International Solitary Movement protest in the Gaza strip city of Rafah. Hayb was part of the Bedouin Reconnaissance Battalion and was stationed in a watchtower in the Gaza strip. The court found that Hayb was guilty of violating in shooting the activist, therefore, not only committing manslaughter, Hayb was convicted of obstruction to Justice and false testimony. According to the article, the Israeli government failed to contact the family about Hayb’s early release, resulting in British Foreign government having to notify them. The article then goes into detail how the Israeli government does not know how to take responsibility for their actions, stating that “His,” Thomas Hurndall, “murder was only a symptom of a much wider culture of impunity in the Israeli army.” The article bashes on the Israeli government by arguing that this early release of Hayb reinforces the accusations that the Israeli government can commit war crimes without fear of serious consequences and that Israel has disregard for international law and opinion.

The article is clearly a bias opinion due to the fact that it comes from a Palestinian News Agency. The article states that Hurndall’s presence in the Gaza strip was to protest against the shooting of children, who play outside their homes and their deaths never being investigated. The article uses the death of children to entice their audience and make them sympathize with them, as to draw in followers. I think that this is both smart and mean. The author is making it seem that the Israel government is impassive and willing to anything in order to get ahead. The article says, “[Israeli] security forces killed more than 2,200 Palestinians who were not taking part in the hostilities at the time they were killed.” Supposedly only 287 were opened into a Police investigation and only 33 of these cases resulted in the filing of indictments. This is clever to use numbers as a way to reinforce their arguments. The author is making it seem like the Israeli government is not doing their job. According to the article, the Amnesty International believes that “Israeli soldiers kill civilians in Gaza with near-total impunity, week in week out.” The author is trying to make the Israeli government seem like this kill-all agency with no sense of remorse or responsibility.

Even Tom’s family supports this Palestinian view on the killing. His father states this is not a tragedy, but the Israeli government’s fault and responsibility for the death of his son. He would like the Israeli government to acknowledge this and take the appropriate actions to ensuring that civilians are not shot through changing policies. A witness to the shooting believes that this was a part of “a culture of impunity in which generations of Israelis are taught that Arabs hate them and are subhuman.” The article states that the Israelis are given guns and feel that it is okay to shoot Palestinians because they know that they can get away with it. The article and people believe that it is an “occupation and aggression of Zionist policy is harming ordinary Israelis as well as Palestinians.”

This article is mainly based on an opinion from a bias source. I do not believe that this is from a reliable source because the point of the article seems to be to gather followers against the opposite side. But I do not completely believe that the WAFA is completely wrong with the way they are doing things to gather followers. This is because they are part of a larger group that truly believes these ideas. I just think that we aren’t hearing the entire story about what had happened in 2003 or the reasons that the Israeli government did release Hayb.


For more information on this, read Early Release of Tom Hurndall's Killer Symptom of Wider Israeli Crimes