Trafficked women neglected

By REBECCA ANNA STOIL
18/05/2010 04:06


MK Zuaretz: We have such a problem and no rehabilitation center?

Talkbacks (4)

MKs and experts pointed to the need for additional holistic rehabilitation programs for trafficked women during a meeting on Monday of the Knesset Subcommittee on Women Trafficking.

The session, called to discuss possible solutions to the correlation between prostitution and drug use among trafficked women, saw welfare authorities testify that they were able to meet immediate demands, while other witnesses complained that challenges related to funding and the legal status of trafficked women created difficulties.

Subcommittee chairwoman Orit Zuaretz (Kadima) called data from the Knesset Research Center “extremely worrisome” and said they show a clear connection between prostitution and the use of psychoactive chemicals to enable women to confront emotional traumas.

“The fact that there is simply no center for drug and physical rehabilitation in a country that has such a wide-reaching phenomenon of women trafficking and prostitution is highly worrisome,” Zuaretz said. “We must act to immediately establish such a center.”

Zuaretz called on the government to clearly differentiate between women who had been victims of trafficking and foreign workers. The government, she argued, must establish a separate budget for trafficked women.

One woman who had been the victim of trafficking and wished to remain anonymous during her Knesset testimony said she had “used drugs to die” but that “someone up above did not want to take me. I am speaking in the name of those women. I am afraid that every time that there is no money for them, they will go back to prostitution, and it shadows the whole rehabilitation program.”

The woman said that when she was kidnapped in Lithuania at the age of 17 and brought to Israel, her kidnappers provided her with fake documents. As a result, she did not have any legal documentation and could not receive any health care or rehabilitation. Her deliverance, she said, came only after she was arrested, when she was allowed to participate in a drug rehabilitation program in prison.

Beatrice Rosen-Katz, director of the Ofek Nashi program for treating and assisting prostitutes, told the subcommittee that her Tel Aviv and Jerusalem emergency centers were both at 100 percent capacity.

“Women are asked to pay NIS 600 for three weeks of treatment,” Rosen-Katz said. “The message is then for them to go and get a few more customers in order to fund their rehabilitation.”

Galit Geva of the Welfare Ministry argued in response that “there have not been any woman who have waited more than 24 hours” for immediate intervention, adding that government services cooperate to ensure that extra places are found in the event that the 13 available beds are full.

Nevertheless, Dr. Miki Dor, chair of the Interministerial Team for Medical Treatment for Victims of Women Trafficking, said there was a serious problem since “the country doesn’t offer any response” for the 150,000 people in Israel who do not have medical insurance, including women who were brought illegally into the country. Dor recommended that the coverage offered to citizens – which ensures that they are provided with physical rehabilitation – be extended to trafficked women, even if only for a limited period.



Jerusalem Post

Hundreds rally for foreign workers' kids in Tel Aviv

Protest against deportation held in Tel Aviv ahead of final decision on future of foreign workers' children in Israel

Yael Branovsky
03.20.10, 21:55 / Yediot Haachronot


Hundreds of people protested in Tel Aviv Saturday, calling on the government to grant citizenship to 1,200 foreign workers' children facing deportation from Israel.

The protestors carried signs reading "Israeli kids – Israeli citizenship" and "No to deportation."

The demonstration was held as the government prepares to reach a final decision regarding the children's future in Israel. An inter-ministerial committee is slated to submit its recommendations to Interior Minister Eli Yishai and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu within several weeks.

One protestor who declined to be named, the 12-year-old daughter to Filipino parents who was born in Israel and visited her parents' homeland only once, said: "It is strange to me that they want to deport me there. I don't know anything in that country. I was born here and feel that my home is here."


Gabriel Bourdon, an activist in the Israeli Children Organization said that the community is much more Israeli than is generally thought.

"Their whole thinking is based on what happens in Israel and our goal is to show that to the public," he said.

Knesset Member Dov Khenin also participated in the protest, which also featured a song written by singer Ivry Lider and journalist Guy Meroz and recorded with the participation of the children and such figures as Minister Avishay Braverman and MK Yuli Tamir.

3 foreign workers report sexual abuse to help line in 1 day

Photo by: Ariel Jerozolimski

By RON FRIEDMAN
12/03/2010 01:59
Jerusalem Post


Workers’ rights organization Kav LaOved released testimonies on Thursday from three female foreign workers who claim to have been sexually abused by family members of their employers.

None of the women know each other, but all three complained on the same day, marking a new low in the organization’s records. What links the cases, aside from the fact that the complaints were received on the same day in late February, was that in all three cases, the alleged molesters used the threat of job termination and possible deportation to pressure the women into committing or acquiescing to sexual acts.

Kav LaOved refused to disclose the plaintiffs’ identities, but offered their stories to raise awareness of the phenomenon.

The debt made her stay

B. is a Filipino worker who has been working in Israel for six years. Three-and-a-half years ago, she began working as a caregiver for a sick, elderly woman who lives with her son.

On her first day of work, her employer’s son asked B. to massage him “like in Thailand.” B. flatly refused to touch him and also refused to be touched.

After several months, the son offered B. a loan of $13,000 if she agreed to strip her clothes off in front of him. When she refused, the son suggested that he give her the same loan, but instead of undressing, she would pay him $1,000 interest. B., who paid $3,000 in commission fees to come to Israel, needed the money and agreed to the arrangement.

B. made sure to pay the son $1,000 every two months from her earnings. All the while, he continued to harass her, asking her to have sex with him and to massage him. Despite her protests, the son would masturbate in front of her.

B. wanted to complain, but feared that if the loan were revealed, she would be forced to return the money immediately. So she continued to pay and put up with the son’s abuses.

Recently the son fired B., claiming she owed him large sums of money and had refused to pay him back.

B. turned to Kav LaOved to help her return to her job with the elderly woman, despite the terrible harassment and humiliation she had experienced. She explained that since she had large debts in her native country and owed money to her employer’s son, she was willing to work at any cost.

Salary for sex

D. is employed by an elderly Alzheimer’s patient who lives with her son. As a condition for her monthly salary, the son demanded that D. have sex with him. The son would leave her alone for the entire month, only approaching her on the 10th, the day she received her salary.

According to the employee, she did not understand at first that his actions were unusual, unreasonable or illegal.

After several months, when she could no longer cope with his actions and asked him to stop, he told her that if she left, she could never find another job, and that he would see to it that she was deported from the country.

The woman said she was afraid to leave the family or to complain about the son because she feared for her life. She turned to Kav LaOved to learn what social rights she would be entitled to if she ever built up the courage to leave her employer.

All attempts to convince the worker to file a complaint against her employer’s son were unsuccessful.

“Stop telling stories”

J. is employed by a disabled woman who stays at home during the week and whose husband works away from home. Once a week, J. takes her employer out of the house for a while to visit the local community center. While her employer is at the center, J. goes back to the house to cook.

J. said the husband would regularly wait for her at the house, where he would harass her physically and verbally – patting her buttocks when she bent down, cupping her breasts, stroking her face and her belly and pressing up against her – until she left the house to collect her employer and bring her back home.

The employee complained to her employment agency, and the company sent a social worker to the employer’s house. The husband denied the accusations and said the story was the product of J.’s wild imagination. The social worker believed the husband and told J. to stop.

After that, the worker complained several more times, but the company refused to send another social worker and advised the employee to “stop telling stories.”

A week ago, the employer’s husband warned J. that if she complained again, he would fire her immediately. Now she is afraid that next time she tells him no, he will throw her out of the house.

Even in this case, the employee refused to complain or give any details about her employer, and only asked for information regarding her rights in case she were fired.

Idit Lebovitch, who oversees the caregiving section at Kav LaOved, said that though it was unprecedented to receive three complaints in a single day, the phenomenon as a whole was widespread. She also said that the complaints the hot line had received were only the tip of the iceberg.

She explained that the nature of the job, where the workers lived with the employers and their families and were with them 24 hours a day, made discovering cases of abuse of any kind nearly impossible.

“Unless the employees file a complaint, something they are extremely hesitant to do, there is simply no way to know,” said Lebovitch.

Lebovitch added that the traditional background of the workers prevented most of them from speaking up about cases of sexual harassment or abuse.

“Where they come from, it’s simply not talked about, and they suffer in silence,” she said.

She tries to bring the issue up herself in every complaint that she receives, she said, because she knows that the women rarely dare to bring it up on their own.

Lebovitch said that when a worker was willing to come forth and file a formal complaint, she would urge them to open a file with the police, but that in 95 percent of the cases, they would refuse, fearing unknown outcomes.


“What we do is take down a testimony before a lawyer and pass it on to officials at the Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry, who can then follow up with an investigation with the employer. The problem is that often, it’s not the employers themselves who do the harassing, and as a result there is not much the officials can do. In some cases, they will freeze or revoke the employer’s permit to employ a foreign worker, but that’s where it stops.”

According to Lebovitch, the only way to combat the phenomenon is to inform the workers of their rights and make the issue public.

“We try to make sure that the workers know what is required of them in the job and what definitely is not,” she said. “We hope that providing them with knowledge will boost their self-confidence and willingness to resist harassment.”

Noodle Movie

Noodle is an excellent Israeli movie about a young Chinese boy who was left behind in the house of an Israeli woman and her amazing journey to bring him back to his mother- נודל

Israel's Illegal Immigrants — and Their Children

Mila Valdez, 40, lives near the central bus station in Tel Aviv. It is thousands of miles from where she was born, in the Philippines. She and her 7-year-old son live a cramped existence in three small rooms plus kitchen and bathroom — plus eight other people. But she is fighting for the right to stay in Israel.

Valdez is among 200,000 foreign workers from East Asia, Africa and Latin America who have found their way to Israel. About half of them are illegal, as Valdez is now. She went to Israel legally but her visa lapsed at about the time she gave birth to her son Jerry. Her apartment is among the Eritrean cafés, Sudanese restaurants and Filipino bars in the streets around the old central bus station — underneath a police advertisement inviting residents to inform on their neighbors' visa status. "I am working as a house cleaner because I'm now illegal," Valdez tells TIME. "My husband was caught in 2007 and he was deported. My son Jerry loves Israel. We're hoping to stay."

And it is Jerry who may be key to her chances. He and another 1,200 children are at the heart of a political battle that cuts across traditional political loyalties, raising fundamental questions about the mission of the Jewish state. Interior Minister Eli Yishai, leader of the ultra-orthodox Shas Party, wants to expel the foreign workers, many of whom are devout Christians, like Valdez, a Roman Catholic. Yishai says their presence "is liable to damage the state's Jewish identity, constitute a demographic threat and increase the danger of assimilation." The government says the illegals and their children must leave Israel once the school year ends in June.

A new police unit, Oz (from the Hebrew for "strength"), has been rounding up illegals and shipping them home. Since July, 800 have been deported while more than 2,000 have left voluntarily. But the government decision to expel children born in Israel has split the ruling Likud party. "Those 1,200 children that were born in Israel and didn't ever know another country are not to be blamed. They should stay here and we should resolve their status," Likud minister Limor Livnat tells TIME. The government is still debating the order and it may yet be countermanded or changed. It has happened before. In 2006, Israel naturalized 567 families with school-age children.

The municipality of Tel Aviv, where most of the immigrant workers live, together with about 17,000 refugees mainly from Darfur and Eritrea, provides free health care and day care for children, including vaccinations and education. Adult health services are provided by Physicians for Human Rights. The Hotline for Migrant Workers has people on call 24/7 to provide welfare and legal advice. "Whoever is in our territory deserves our services," deputy mayor Yael Dayan tells TIME. "It's not a question of grace, it's really a question of right. It's not doing them a favor and it's not how moved we are by these little children. They have added a lot to Tel Aviv society in many ways."

The uncertainty of residency and the constant threat of arrest takes its toll on the children. Parents report nightmares, bed-wetting and clinginess. "I've been there in that situation they are going through right now. I was illegal and I was afraid whenever I saw men in uniforms," says Jenalyn Zuno, 22, a Filipina granted permanent residency in 2006.

The problem may be becoming cyclical. Israel started recruiting workers from East Asia 20 years ago, after the first intifadeh ended the flood of day laborers from the West Bank and Gaza. The migrants support entire families back in their home countries. Noa Kaufman of the Israeli Children pressure group, says Israel encourages deporting workers after five years or when they have children. But then those departing workers are simply replaced by new arrivals who go through the same turmoil. "The recruitment companies only get money for new workers. If a worker moves jobs once he's here, the recruitment company doesn't get any money," she says. "It doesn't make sense that there is no naturalization process for someone who was born here or someone who lived here as a refugee for 10 years. They are people, not machines. You can't expect them not to fall in love, not to give birth."

By MATTHEW KALMAN / TEL AVIV wEDNESDAY 21 OCT. 2009