It is only the threat of losing American financial aid which has brought about the Israeli government’s recent attempts to crack down on that nation’s notorious sex slave trade, a new report has revealed.
Writing in the Times of Israel, Rebecca Hughes, project assistant for the Israeli “Task Force on Human Trafficking” from the organization “ATZUM – Justice Works,” said that it was Israel’s ranking as a “Tier 3” nation by a US Report on human trafficking which prompted the very recent legislation which is trying to crack down upon the sex slave trade.
“By the late 1990’s, sex trafficking to Israel had reached such dizzying heights that the world began to take notice,” Hughes wrote.
“In 2001, the US State Department released its first Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report and ranked Israel as a Tier 3 Nation – the report’s lowest possible ranking.
“A Tier 3 country is defined by its high level of trafficking and its failure to take significant strides to combat it.
“Israel’s ranking was a public shaming at the hands of its most prominent ally. Moreover, it carried potentially massive economic consequences,” the article continued.
“According to the U.S.’s Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, Tier 3 nations would be subjected to strict economic sanctions.
“As Israel receives $3.1 billion in annual assistance from the U.S., the fallout would have been explosive.”
The possibility of losing this money—which effectively suibsidizes the Zionist state and its operations—is the reason why the Israeli government has brought in new laws, the Times of Israel writer then admits.
“The TIP Report and increasing pressure from NGOs, such as ATZUM’s Task Force on Human Trafficking, served as a catalyst for change.
“Since its Tier 3 ranking, Israel has passed a comprehensive anti-trafficking law, which imposes a maximum 16-year sentence upon traffickers.”
In other words, it is not any moral compunction which has brought about a change of heart, merely the exposure of Israel as a shameful world center of sex slave trade and forced prostitution.
Hughes explains in the article as follows:
“Prostitution in the Holy Land has a long history that stretches back to before Israel’s founding in 1948. At the start of World War II, Tel Aviv was known as a ‘Holiday City.
“Soldiers and men throughout the region poured into the city to partake of its burgeoning flesh trade and, according to complaints filed during the British Mandate, prostitution flourished in cafes, apartments, and various public spaces.
“After World War II and with the creation of the State of Israel, new immigrants, who were occasionally forced to prostitute themselves in order to survive, fueled Israel’s sex trade.
“As in countries all over the world, Israeli sex buyers readily exploited economically and socially disadvantaged populations.
“Yet, as Israel developed into a wealthy nation, it became economically viable to sustain a sex trafficking industry, and international organized crime quickly recognized a financial opportunity.
“By the 1990’s Israel was established as a destination country for trafficking, and international sex trafficking victims had replaced the local market.
“Israel’s flesh trade was booming and making between half a billion to three quarters of a billion dollars a year.
“It was a particularly desirable market for traffickers because the purchase of sexual services was, and still is, legal in Israel.
This protects traffickers because it makes it difficult to prosecute them and to identify their victims.
“Throughout the 1990’s traffickers acted with impunity and, according to the Hotline for Migrant Workers, smuggled 3,000 women annually into Israel.
“The women arrived largely from the former Soviet Union, but a small percentage came from South America and Asia.
The countries of origin shared two common denominators: a dire economic situation and women desperate to provide for themselves and their families.
“Traffickers promised women work as au pairs, waitresses, or medical masseuses. A few were told that they would work as exotic dancers and fewer were told that they would be prostituted.
“No one was told that upon arriving in Israel their documents would be confiscated and they would be bought, raped, and transported to brothels where they would service between 15 to 20 men a day.”
“According to Saleet, a hostel for prostituted women in Tel Aviv, the average age of entrance into prostitution in Israel is 14, and “coincidentally” 90 percent of prostituted persons are victims of incest, rape, and abuse.
“Prostitution and trafficking have been a shameful part of Israel’s narrative for far too long. In order to continue to move forward, Israel must recognize prostitution, as well as sex trafficking, as the form of modern slavery that it is”
The ATZUM website provides some more details:
“In the past decade, approximately 25,000 women, nearly all from the Former Soviet Union, were smuggled into Israel over the Egyptian border to be brutalized as sex slaves. Once in Israel, victims are repeatedly sold and resold to pimps and brothel owners. They are forced to work in slave-like conditions, ruthlessly abused and exploited, suffering severe beatings, rape and often starvation.”
