Posted on 06/29/2002 11:43:51 AM PDT by LarryLied
TEL AVIV — A string of cars marks northern Tel Aviv's Tel Baruch Beach, renowned for its posh seafood restaurant, Blue, but also for the dozens of prostitutes who flock here looking for business.
Many of them are from the former Soviet Union. Some of them are slaves.
About 3,000 women are bought and sold in Israel each year. Amid calls from international organizations and pressure from the United States to curb the sale, trade and barter of women, Israel has begun to crack down on this billion-dollar-a-year industry. Both police and state prosecutors call ending the slave trade one of their top priorities.
Until the recent crackdown, Israel — along with Bahrain, Qatar and Sudan — was stuck on a State Department list of countries failing to meet America's minimum standards for the suppression of sex trafficking. In early June, however, the State Department bumped Israel up a category: from a state that does nothing to prevent slavery to one taking action against it.
This coming Monday, as a result of one of the biggest stings on slavery in Israel's history, 18 men involved in drug sales and the smuggling, trafficking and prostitution of women will face trial in the Netanya Magistrate's Court and in a Tel Aviv District Court. The maximum sentence they may receive for the trafficking of the three women allegedly caught in their grips is 15 years. The director of the Special Crimes Unit, Deputy Commissioner Menashe Arviv, thinks they will likely receive sentences of between 3 and 10 years.
The police apprehended the 18 men and completed the sting when one of the country's biggest slave traders agreed to turn state's witness, said Central District police spokesman Shaul Zionit. What they uncovered, according to Zionit, was horrifying.
The women, who were allegedly bought for about $7,500, were traded and bartered for all sorts of goods, including drugs, Zionit said. Their new "owners" most often used them as prostitutes after first sexually abusing the women, according to the spokesman.
The three women the police rescued from slavery in this case, Zionit said, were smuggled from Ukraine into Egypt and from there over the Israeli border by Bedouins. They were lured to the region by advertisements promising jobs in Israel as models or nannies. Most often the women were unaware of the life they would be thrust into once in Israel. After their arduous trek through the desert, where the Bedouins raped them, the women were handed over to their new "owners," according to the police spokesman.
"It's horrible," Zionit said. "The women we found had been used along the way. After all, their masters had to test their product. They are touched and measured and prodded in heinous ways to 'ensure the quality of the product.' Some also bring friends or family to use the women. Then the women have to work for a period of one or more months free of charge to 'pay for their passage.'"
The Israeli police say stopping the crime is one of their top priorities.
Yet one of the most worrisome aspects of this type of case, said prosecutor Arviv, is that demand for women from the former Soviet Union is still high. It is also easy to smuggle in the women, given the 70-mile Israel-Egypt border, which is mostly unmarked and unfenced. Bedouin "traders" easily drive over it using dune buggies and all-terrain vehicles.
No fence exists along the border. According to a reserve major in the Israeli army's engineer corps posted to the border area, who spoke on condition of anonymity, a physical barrier would be ineffective because shifting sands would bury it within a year or two. The smugglers keep coming and are seldom stopped by Israeli troops, who are more concerned with catching terrorist infiltrators, he said.
The demand for the women and the ease with which they can be smuggled into Israel make it one the of the world's hubs of women-trafficking, lamented Esther Hertzog, a social anthropologist at Tel Aviv University and head of the Movement for the Equal Representation of Women. While police crackdowns have nabbed some suspects, the trade largely remains unhindered, she said.
Chaim Nardi, a sociologist at Tel Aviv University, links the slave-trafficking to machismo attitudes in Israeli society, which he said "allow men to consider women their toy."
Nardi, who compiled a report on the sale of women and prostitution in June 2000 and has since updated it, said most prostitutes suffer from depression, and the overwhelming physical and emotional abuse to which they are subjected drives a huge percentage to abuse narcotics.
Even so, he sees hope. "There are certain encouraging signs," he said. "It appears things are getting better. The Israeli prosecutors are working hard against this phenomenon. But prosecutors have said their work will continue to be low-key as long as citizens are not bothered by the phenomenon en masse. This type of thinking legitimizes the trade in women, and I think this should no longer be tolerated."
another is Freemasonry - according to my father.(a Freemason)
Huh? I merely pointed out the flaw in your "40:1" analogy. Relax. Take a valium. If major Jewish groups in America spent less time trying to block those moralistic conservative Christians from being confirmed to the bench and turned their attention to sex slavery in Israel the problem would end almost immediately.
I am sorry. I heard no more mention of these "moralistic conservative Christians" condemning this problem in Israel then that of the "major Jewish groups"... Have you?
Now, please explain to me just how you know that those women are not Jews.....
Yes it does.
Jury finds six of seven Ukrainians guilty of immigrant smugglingJune 26, 2002
By SANDRA MARQUEZ Associated
Press Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A federal jury found six of seven Ukranians guilty Wednesday of smuggling immigrant women to the United States for prostitution.Federal prosecutors contended the smuggling ring lured hundreds of Ukrainians - many of them young women - to Los Angeles for a "full service" operation that netted hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal profits.
The victims were transported in boats, in the trunks of cars, and even on foot, with stops in Mexico City and Baja California on the way to Los Angeles.
After nearly three days of deliberations, the jury convicted six defendants of smuggling and conspiracy to import women for purposes of prostitution.
The smuggling charges carry mandatory prison terms of five years. Sentencing was set for the fall.
The jury was unable to reach verdicts against Nataliya Korolova. U.S. District Judge Robert Takasugi ordered the panel to continue deliberations in her case.
Convicted were Tetyana Komisaruk, 50, who is Korolova's mother; Komisaruk's husband, Veleriy Komisaruk, 40; her daughter Lorina Latysheva, 25; Latysheva's husband, Oleksandr Latyshev, 29; Serge Mezheritsky, 36; and Grigoriy Chernov, 50.
Defense attorneys didn't comment in detail about the verdicts.
The trial lasted seven weeks, providing a picture of an illicit family business. The relatives and their friends divided up tasks, including: coaching immigrants on what to tell U.S. Border Patrol agents if caught; giving them clothes, including Levi's, in order to help them blend in; and teaching them how to walk across the border.
Prosecutors said the immigrants paid an initial $2,500 to get to Mexico City, where they were shuttled to hotels and a safe-house in Baja. The Ukrainians then were told they had to pay more to enter the United States.
Tetyana Komisaruk was described as the ringleader, responsible for overseeing the smuggled Ukrainians and demanding payment from them. She was convicted of a total of 39 counts of conspiracy, smuggling and money laundering.
Prosecutors said she shared command of the operation with her husband, Valeriy Komisaruk, who helped operate staging points in Mexico, including a villa near the California border where the smuggled immigrants were housed until they arrived in the United States. He was convicted of a total of 29 counts of smuggling, conspiracy and money laundering.
Mezheritsky, a Ukrainian emigre who once ran unsuccessfully for City Council in West Hollywood, was described as the third key player. He was accused of providing boats and cars for smuggling illegal aliens. He was convicted of a total of 24 counts of conspiracy, smuggling and money laundering.
The investigation was triggered by a video camera that Border Patrol agents found on a dirt trail near the U.S.-Mexico border in 1999. The taped showed what appeared to be the trip of a Russian family through Hungary, Mexico City and up to Tijuana.
Modesto Bee
Serge Mezheritsky is the grandson of Maria Mezheritsky (Rabinovich). Born in Minsk, Maria Mazheritsky , an immigrant to America, was the wife of a Lieutenant Major in the Soviet Army.
This is your problem. The Forward is about as far left as you can get, probably even farther to the left than Ha'aretz. The Forward does not speak for me or for any other right-wing, religious Jew. They try very hard to pretend that we don't exist. These guys still insist that the Chief Rabbi of Russia is that old guy appointed by the KGB left over from Soviet days, not the internationally recognized Rabbi Berel Lazar who met with President Bush.
I realize that. But the Forward surely is not making this up ,is it? The problem as I see it is that when the Soviet Union went bust, a horde of evil people, of all religions, descended upon the west. The USA should not have to pressure Israel to clean house. That 3,000 women a year can be sold in a country that size without someone in authority knowing of it is not believable.
They do know about it. They are taking steps to stop it. However, because of the ongoing terrorist attacks, this is not a high priority. This kind of thing goes on in every country on the planet, from time immemorial.
There are even a few women in america who are kidnapped each year into being literally white slaves on some pacific island for some super-rich person. I'm glad bush is emphasizing this issue world-wide, unlike Clinton who tolerated it I read.
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