UN Summit Battles Human Trafficking in Israel, Middle East
Experts from the Middle East and North Africa met last week at the United Nations headquarters in Vienna to prepare an action plan to stamp out the growing problems of human trafficking and migrant smuggling. The three-day symposium – the first of its kind – brought together representatives from Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, UAE, Yemen and Malta.
[…] A UN report in April said Israel was a top destination country for trafficking in human beings, and the US State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report, published in June, placed Israel in the Tier 2 (Watch List) category of countries whose governments do not fully comply with the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act but are making significant efforts to do so.
“In the Middle East/North Africa region, exchange of information is complicated by heightened security concerns and tense diplomatic relations,” said Israel’s representative at the meeting, Yedida Wolfe.
[…] According to a report released in 2005 by the Knesset Subcommittee on Trafficking in Women, between 3,000 and 5,000 women had been smuggled into Israel over the previous four years to work as prostitutes.
According to the report, the women, who were mostly from the former Soviet Union, were sold at public auction for as much as $10,000 and forced to work up to 18 hours a day. On average, the women received only three percent of the money they earned from prostitution, and many were raped and beaten. Most of the women had been smuggled over the Egyptian border.
(By the way, “white slavery”? Slavery is slavery, I’m sorry. On This Is Babylon, I discuss the recent West African summit to end African slavery. Many of the girls who are captured from Central and West Africa “end up in the [Arabian] Gulf” so I would assume many of them are being discussed at the Vienna summit.)
I am always happy to hear of the end of someone’s tenure as a slave, the end of someone’s life under peonage. “Every year each person is required to see themselves as if they themselves left Egypt…”
If anything “white slavery” is worse than regular slavery, since it implies rape and forced prostitution – which is basically endless rape.
This is an enormous Chillul HaShem.
Y’know, I’ve wanted to go into journalism for the longest time. Just want to clue you in to a piece of breaking news: African girls are being raped as well… but you’re right this is such a Chillul for this to be happening in Israel…