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Prostitution is a legal trade in Israel and there are no laws against pimping, slavery or trafficking. |
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Maria came to Israel from Ukraine in 1999 answering an advertized study opportunity only to be sold and forced to become a prostitute.
"I was taken to an apartment in Ashkelon, and other women there told me I was now in prostitution," she told the BBC News Online on Tuesday, November 6.
"I became hysterical, but a guy started hitting me and then others there raped me," recalled Maria, now 40.
"I was then taken to a place where they sold me - just sold me!"
Since escaping the criminal gangs, Marina, not her real name, rarely leaves her two-room home in northern Israel.
She is hiding from both the Israeli authorities for being an illegal immigrant and the gangs.
With thousands of women like Marina lured into Israel under false pretexts to feed a booming industry, Israel is gaining notoriety as a safe haven for sex trafficking.
Most of them are from former Soviet Union countries like Ukraine, Moldova, Uzbekistan and Russia.
Typically, the traffickers take the women's passports before selling them to pimps for $8,000-$10,000.
Many of them are raped and beaten as they are smuggled.
Last year, the UN named Israel one of the main destinations for women trafficking in the world.
Israel also appears on the US State Department's annual black list of nations allowing human trafficking.
Prostitution is a legal trade in Israel.
Blind Eye
With law enforcement authorities turning a blind eye, the women trafficking industry is thriving.
"During the first 10 years of trafficking, Israel did absolutely nothing," said Nomi Levenkron, of the Migrant Workers' Hotline, an NGO helping trafficked women.
"Women were trafficked into Israel - the first case we uncovered was in 1992 - and not much really happened."
An estimated 3,000 women a year were imported to Israel for prostitution, either legally or smuggled across the borders.
It was only after repeated criticism from the US and the threat of sanctions that Israeli authorities began to act.
In 2000, trafficking for sexual exploitation was made a crime.
Another law passed in 2003 allows the state to confiscate the profits of traffickers.
In 2004, the government opened a shelter for women trafficked for sex.
"While government officials are saying that their efforts have drastically cut the number of victims in the country, the NGOs on the scene really don't feel that's true," said Yedida Wolfe of the Task Force on Human Trafficking.
She cites as prove the fact that industry prices have not gone up.
"[This] leads us to believe that the supply of victims has not gone down."
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