Dear Project 119 Activists,
First, we wish you and all dear to you good health and hope the pandemic soon abates.
It is important to us, even in this time of COVID-19 and Israel election complications, to update you on our ongoing work to end human trafficking and prostitution in Israel.
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We are pleased to report that as a result of TFHT’s multi-year campaign, all Tel-Aviv strip clubs were closed by the police in February.
Our fight to shutter strip clubs began in 2016 when we appealed to the courts to close the infamous Tel-Aviv Pussycat Club, which only happened last July.
With your help and commitment, TFHT succeeded in changing the authorities’ previous reluctance to take firm action. We insisted they recognize such clubs function as illegal brothels where women are nightly exploited and prostituted in private backrooms and while performing public lap dances. After TFHT’s unrelenting efforts, the police closed all clubs and launched criminal investigations against their owners.
Yet progress is not straight forward. Regrettably, club owners’ attorneys secured a court order permitting one of the clubs to reopen, albeit under severe restrictions that will likely prove daunting to its business. As past experience suggests the owners will not likely comply, we shall closely follow the situation and continue to press the court and police to close the club permanently.
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Yelena Devayan, who left the world of prostitution three years ago, was interviewed in February in “Yediot Ahronot” about the urgency to shut these clubs and enable other young women to escape exploitation. She soberly observes:
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“When we took a client to the private room, we went through the bar, paid 100 shekels [$27.50] and were given a key together with a condom, all in clear sight of the client. When I began working at the club, every day I feared, ‘Tomorrow I will definitely sink into prostitution.’ The other girls told me, ‘Don’t worry, you’re already there.’“
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Click here to read the full interview with Yelena in Hebrew.
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TFHT worked many years for the day when women and girls would no longer be exploited in these clubs and dragged into the underworld of sexual exploitation and prostitution. Though that day is closer, TFHT will continue to head the effort to ensure permanent closure of these “businesses” as well as secure the immediate release of resources for social, economic, and vocational rehabilitation to aid those exiting the flesh trade.
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In January 2019, simultaneous with passage of TFHT-authored law prohibiting consumption of prostitution, at our urging the government approved a three-year, NIS 90 million (~$25 million) program to aid the rehabilitation of victims of prostitution.
While the Finance Ministry transferred NIS 21 million (~$6 million) to the Ministry of Social Affairs in April 2019, new programs have not been initiated, nor existing services expanded. Consequently, last December, TFHT, represented by our pro bono legal partners, Kabiri-Nevo-Keidar-Blum, filed a petition with the Supreme Court against the Ministry and Minister of Social Affairs as well as the Ministry and Minister of Finance to locate and immediately allocate the missing funds.
Click here to read the article on Globes in Hebrew, and an interview on kan -bet on the program of Keren Neubach.
Crucially, as the 2019 budgets were not used, we asked that the funds not be transferred back to the Finance Ministry at the end of the year as is the normal practice, but instead be directed to urgent rehabilitation measures.
In response, the State committed to comply with the Supreme Court should it rule the remaining 2019 budget be allocated as intended for rehabilitation purposes. Though decision on our appeal is not imminent, in the interim, we continue to press the Ministry of Social Affairs to both transfer the funds and establish new services to address the specific needs of transgender and male prostitutes, and prostituted mothers. |
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Like the rest of the world, Israel is now enveloped in a state of uncertainty owing to the coronavirus pandemic. This situation and attendant anxiety are shared by prostituted people and those struggling to exit. We continue to work alongside the organizations in the Coalition against Prostitution in Israel to assist these women and girls in dealing with the crisis.
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TFHT is a multi-pronged initiative engaging the Israel Government, enforcement agencies and the public to confront and eradicate human trafficking by lobbying for reform in the areas of prevention, border closure, prosecution of traffickers and pimps, and the protection of trafficked and prostituted women. For more information please visit us at www.tfht.org
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