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.