- Between 3,000 and 5,000 women have been smuggled into
Israel and sold into prostitution over the past four years, according to
a Knesset committee investigative report examining the status of the sex
trade in Israel. The trafficking in women amounts to around a billion dollars
every year.
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- Yahad MK Zehava Gal-On, chair of the parliamentary Committee
Against Trade in Women, submitted the extensive report on Wednesday to
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin.
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- The women, sold to pimps for $8,000 to $10,000, are forced
to work seven days a week and between 14 and 18 hours a day.
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- The woman receive just NIS 20 from the NIS 120 paid by
the customer.
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- "When I established the investigative committee,
my goal was to map the extent of the phenomenon and to make both the policy-makers
and the public aware of the brutal nature of the trade in women in the
age of globalization," Gal-On wrote in the report's introduction.
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- "They should understand that right in Israeli society's
front yard there is sexual slavery that we have to eradicate," she
wrote.
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- The committee stated that its extensive action has led
to a significant improvement of the different state authorities - such
as the judicial system, the state prosecution and police - in their commitment
to fight human trafficking.
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- Many other problems still remained, however, the report
stated.
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