Posted in: Israel, World Events
Published on Jul 14, 2020 by Phyllis Chesler
Published by Israel National News
Israel's law against slavery
A revolutionary law recognizes prostitution as violence against women, a significant achievement for a country under permanent siege. Op-ed.
Bravo, Kudos, every kind of Kol
Ha Kavod, to all those Knesset members, on both the right and the left,
especially former Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, and Gilad Erdan,
then-Minister of Internal Security (now Israel’s new Ambassador to the United
Nations), who worked on the new legislation that criminalized customers ("Johns"),
not prostitutes; who understood that prostitution is violence against women;
and who were wise enough to also pass a funded enforcement provision which has
just gone into effect.
This is a revolutionary law
because it recognizes that prostitution is violence against
women.
Although the issue is hotly
debated, especially among feminists (“sex workers have to eat, they can’t
starve’), I stand with Knesset member, Shelly Yachimovich (Labor) who stated:
“The war against prostitution is like a war to free the slaves.”
Oddly enough, many anti-capitalist
feminists rarely glorify mind-numbing factory, agricultural, or low-level
office work. They are clear that the “workers” are being oppressed. When it
comes to prostitution, the alleged “work” is often viewed as a form of
resistance, rather than as a forced choice, as a “job” which they actually say
allows women greater independence than marriage ever can.
If caught, the newly criminalized
customers (“Johns”), will have to pay a fine of 2,000 shekalim ($580.00).
Repeat offenders might face criminal charges.
Dr. Anat Gur is a pioneering
Israeli therapist, the founder of the Women’s Wisdom Center, a professor at Bar
Ilan, and an author (Women Abandoned: Women in Prostitution, Foreign Bodies: Eating
Disorders, Childhood Sexual Abuse, and Trauma Informed Treatment),
has worked with women prisoners, incest and eating disorder victims, and
prostitutes since 1984.
According to Dr. Gur: “Prostitution
is not a job or a livelihood for women. In addition to the severe violence,
humiliation, and ongoing rapes, it is not ‘easy money’ for anyone but the pimps
and traffickers of women, not for the girls and women who are exploited as
prostitutes. Prostitution is the direct continuation of the exploitation of the
most vulnerable women in society, those who have already been ‘groomed” by
childhood incest, and are ready to be exploited as prostitutes.”
Dr. Gur independently confirmed
the important, and also long-time research of Dr. Melissa Farley,
namely that the complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorders among prostitutes are
more severe than the Stress experienced by many combat veterans of more
recognized wars. Dr. Gur told me: “While exploited in prostitution, they are
completely disassociated and disconnected and cannot afford to tell what is
really happening to them.”
Poignantly, Dr. Gur described the
rehabilitation process, which included working in “simple jobs at minimum wage.
But I remember how when each of them got the first poor salary they said it was
the first time they could enjoy the money because it was unpolluted money,
money not obtained through humiliation and torture and violence. The money they
made in prostitution was wasted on drugs and harmful things and they did not
really earn or support their children with prostitution.”
Dr. Gur hopes to begin operating
more “government funded apartments” for mothers and children by this fall. In
her opinion, this law has achieved two things: “both a significant budget
allocation for the rehabilitation of people, and an accompanying budget to
criminalize the clients of prostitution.”
Such legislation is not an
insignificant achievement for a small country under permanent siege.
This is not the first time that
I’ve been called upon to write about the Israeli heroes who were and still are
fighting violence against women in Israel.
In the summer of 2003, Leah
Grumpeter and Nissan Ben-Ami, of the Israeli Awareness Center, contacted me
about one artist’s very personal boycott against Israelis.
For a decade, Grumpeter and
Ben-Ami had been fighting legislation that would have legalized and normalized
prostitution. They had organized a conference on this hotly debated subject and
wanted to show a particular film, one that exposed the nature of prostitution
and what it does to girls and women.
However, according to Grumpeter
and Ben-Ami, the Swedish filmmaker, Lukas Moodysson, had "personally
bought back the distribution rights for Israel" and would not allow its
showing at their upcoming conference about such trafficking in Israel.
The hit film, Lilya
4-ever, is a relentless and lyrical work about female sexual slavery.
Professor Donna Hughes, who had testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign
Relations Committee about global trafficking, compared the film to Harriet
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Moodysson's film depicts the
abandonment and betrayal of Lilya, a teenage Russian girl, by her mother and
maternal aunt, leaving her vulnerable to a sweet-talking pimp who traffics her
into Hell and death in Sweden. The film had been shown in many countries where
trafficking, brothels, and other human rights abuses flourished. But he would
not show the film, not even once, not even to assist a conference that wanted
to expose the extreme danger and harms of prostitution.
What could I do? Well, I
published a piece about the anti-Semitic prejudices of great artists and about
the nature of boycotts. Within 24 hours, Moodyson was all over my email
confronting me. Unbeknownst to me, a Swedish journalist Louise Eek, had also
just written about the matter. Within 48 hours Moodyson had relented and
allowed the conference to show his film, once, non-commercially, at the
conference.
Amazed but humbled, I once again
understood that, sometimes, the pen is as mighty as the sword.
Reposted at the Jewish Voice
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