םלועב םישנה רחסו תונזה תעפות רקחל העדות ןוכמ
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Prostitution is a result of social and gender inequality, and this situation worsens during war times. In times of war, prostitution and pornography offer the bodies of women and children as a gift to soldiers to entice them to sacrifice their lives for the war. Male culture has glorified death on the battlefield, and men are unaware of the real role that they play in this situation. It is high time that we reveal that prostitution, pornography and war construct a deadly downward spiral.
The history of prostitution in Israel emphasizes this statement.
To illustrate this statement in last year's report the article of Prof. Debbie Bernshtein of Haifa university was quoted. In this report , which is more focused on the attitude of the public towards the phenomena of prostitution and pornography (the sex "industies") , we chose to qoute the speech of Prof. Yaffah Berlovitz during the 33rd International Conference of the International Abolitionist Federation (2002).
Review of the attitude of pre-state Israeli literature to prostitution [2]
Our session is intended to address the issue of prostitution in Israel from a historical perspective. In the original plan, we had intended to address the issue from two aspects: The sociological historical aspect of sociologist Prof. Debbie Bernstein; and the historical cinematographic aspect, by actress Gila Almagor and by film director Keren Yadaya.
Meanwhile, Gila Almagor has cancelled her participation, so as the hostess, I have been asked to fill in for her. And because I deal with literature, including Jewish and Israeli literature, I shall make a few comments on this matter. I shall start by saying that when you deal with literature you deal, as you know, with plots and conflicts, but most of all with characters, representations of characters and the relationships between the characters.
When we try, therefore, to investigate how prostitutes or streetwalkers were represented as characters in the New Hebrew literature, say from the 19th century onwards, we run into some problems. For us, the prostitute is not a legitimate character (as she is in international literature). Even when we recognize her existence as a social function in Warsaw or Jerusalem our literature is not comfortable dealing with her. This could be because of vestiges of our Jewish codes.
In any case, when Shalom Asch put on a play in 1907 called El Nekamot (The God Who Avenges), which took place in a Jewish brothel, the scandal was earth shattering. The Jewish public was shocked, and there was a tremendous argument whether to even stage the play.
But even in Beer Sheva of 1982, when this "old fashioned" play was put on again the Israeli Censor came to check it out. Why? Because the brothel has a torah as an integral part of the scenery throughout the play (the father wishes to repent, and in the act of reconciliation he donates a great deal of money for writing a new torah scroll). And this is what the Israeli Censor did not permit.
In any case, the character of the prostitute in international literature, with all its puritan Christian codes, appears at the very beginning of the novella form. Whether in a juicy, piquant form, as in the 14th century Decameron, or in social realism stories intending to ostracize the dark, warped symptoms of so-called decent society, which cynically produces the conditions of poverty, illiteracy which lead to prostitution.
In honor of our French guests I can say that the French literature of the 19th and 20th centuries led the way regarding this subject, from Victor Hugo's Les Mis?rables, through Emile Zola's Nana to Jean Paul Sartre's play, The Respectable Prostitute. In short, all of these works deal with the subject in an open, straightforward manner. Yet with all their criticism of the phenomenon, the use of the whore figure is, after all, a narrative, plot-based, even decorative one.
It very rarely develops into an essential, cognitive debate; a debate that is intended not only to point out what is known and trivial: that the persistence of backward socioeconomic conditions constitutes fertile ground for the rise of prostitution but to explore the hidden, fundamental aspects of the essence of our culture, which as we know, is a male culture - period! And this male culture has been completely self-centered throughout the centuries of our civilization. It is a culture that operates to satisfy exclusively the wants and desires of the male, and only the male.
This occurs at various levels: whether at a sophisticated level of spiritual, intellectual needs or at an elementary level of body and sex. Prostitution is of course an elementary, fundamental product, which from a perspective of masculine culture, is off limits for debate, clarification or examination. But rather as I said: this is a narrative commodity that is to be channeled into an esthetic, artistic status. Sometimes, this narrative (the narrative of prostitution) gives rise to sympathy of sadness and compassion, and sometimes it is outrageous and repulsive. But there is no debate as to the essence of prostitution. There is no discussion. Not even for these great writers.
So that is one thing.
But we really want to talk about Israeli literature, or more precisely about the pre-state literature (1882-1948). And really, what went on there? So the literature of pre-State Israel (like the pioneers in pre-State Israel) came to build and be built. In other words - to produce a surprising, fresh literary option dealing with national revival, the new Jew, a new life. So this literature focuses mainly on narratives of nature, a return to soil, settlement, rather than decadent narratives of urban life such as in Jerusalem or Yaffo.
Nachum Guttman, for example, who lived in Neveh Tzedek bordering Yaffo, takes the liberty of portraying the Arab prostitutes of Yaffo; the question is whether he would have also portrayed the Jewish prostitutes of the old city in Jerusalem. Recently, a book by Margalit Shilo called Princess or Prisoner: the Feminine Experience in the Old City of Jerusalem, has been published, in which she examines, inter alia, the phenomenon of prostitution among religiously observant Jewish women whose poverty has led them to become street walkers.
This was before World War I. During World War I (and here the factor of the war enters our discussion, i.e. prostitution and war, as a subject of this conference); during World War One, when the terrible famine caused people to literally drop in the streets, prostitution in Jerusalem intensified and assumed genuinely startling dimensions, until even literature could not be silent. The most prominent book about the Great War in Jerusalem is in fact a trilogy. The trilogy is called Up to Jerusalem, written by Aharon Reuveni (by the way, he was the brother of President Ben Zvi). But the thorniest book of the trilogy is the second book, which also focuses on the stories of women who prostituted themselves there. It is called Exodus.
After the War, pre-State Israel experienced a change of rulers, as we all know. The British mandate replaced the Turkish regime. The mandate period was effectively a colonialist regime, which used an army to keep the natives in order. But on the other hand, the combination of army + pocket money for soldiers + entertainment for soldiers in their spare time, as well as the provision of bars and alcohol consumption, naturally leads also to the consumption of women and increasing escalation of supply and demand.
As I said, Prof. Debbie Bernstein will talk about prostitution during the mandate period from a sociological viewpoint; I have tried to look for the responses to this consumption in the literary work of the time. And what I have found is interesting. I have found many literary reactions, particularly during the World War II mandate period, when the fighting moved into Egypt and legions of soldiers from throughout Great Britain's colonies engulfed the country. What is of no less interest is that this period corresponded to the first generation of native-born writers, particularly those from the Hashomer Hatzair movement, who related to the issue of prostitution with compassion and sensitivity.
I refer particularly to the periodical Yalkut Hareim, which began publication in 1942. In their manifest they ponder what kind of literature they should write. They declared that first of all, their writing should not deal with the beautification of life, and (quote) with "roses, stars, a blue sea or pink sunsets". To the contrary, their writing was to deal with material about "the scum of the earth" (in their words), which authors usually evade dealing with; materials and characters from the loathsome, rejected margins of society. And there they write: "And let us kindly go to the houses of the main characters of our works. We shall bring them our stories and poems. We shall read them out to them". And who are meant to be the main characters in their works? Here, they specify various representations, headed by (and I quote): porters, tired washerwomen and whores.
By the way, this manifest was written by Moshe Shamir, who was among the editors of the periodical.
So there they were, at the time, 20-22 years of age, idealistic and na?ve. But all in all, they did not just write manifests, they also wrote literature, and their works reflected their declarations. For example, in the second volume of the magazine, we find a story by Yigal Mosinson entitled An Autumn Night. It is about a Tel Aviv woman who was forced to engage in prostitution after not having heard from her husband for two years. The husband had enlisted in the Jewish Brigade (of the British Army) and left her with two small children. When she lost her job as a needle worker, she had no choice but to make a living by hosting British soldiers.
After two years, her soldier husband returns and, of course, he finds out the story. She is not given a chance to speak in the story. She has no voice. Only the man's voice is heard. So when this man finds out that his wife is a hostess, or to put it more precisely, a whore, he tries to murder her, hurt her, take revenge. And he explains why: because when he stood before her in the bar, and found out the whole matter, he felt exactly like standing and facing a machine gun that was spraying him with bullets. Because then, metaphorically speaking, he was dead. She had murdered him. So he had to pay her back in kind and mow her down. In other words, the war here is depicted on two planes that nourish one another: the war against the Nazis and the war against his wife.
In the 4th (and last) volume of the magazine, there is another story about a prostitute, this time being from the pen of the young Dan Ben Amotz. It is entitled Piccolina. Here, the confrontation is again between a pre-State Israel soldier from the Jewish Brigade and a torn and worn 15-year-old Italian girl. He notices her at night, in a port (in Naples) and is attracted to her beauty and innocence (after having had his fill of "all the dirty whores", as he puts it). He gives her lots of presents, canned food and chocolate bars that he gets from the canteen, but he does not God forbid exploit her sexually. He barely touches her, only strokes her pretty head, etc.
Now, the ship is about to sail, but when the commander announces some sort of delay, he runs to her room again to part with her, and here he finds a file of soldiers buttoning up their trousers. He is of course offended to the bottom of his soul, but in no way does he want to understand her. His misunderstanding is in fact twofold, and the more she tries to explain to him in her emotional Italian, the more he persists in not understanding. He does not understand her because of her language (Italian), but he also does not want to understand her existential language. An existence which does not allow her to remain loyal to this na?ve soldier who falls in love with her for a day or two and disappears; because her existence is survival from day to day, and from crust to crust. But he of course, with his manly obtuseness, decides that he is the victim, and that she is a trickster (as he puts it), and he rudely thrusts himself into her like all the rest of the men in the queue.
Another story is that of an authoress. She is not one of the Yalkut Hareim writers, but belongs to the Dor Ba'aretz (generation in Israel) writers. Her name is Shoshana Sharira, and she published a collection of stories called The Green Nile in 1947.
One of her stories, called Embarrassed Heart, is, again, about a Tel Aviv woman tempted into prostitution by the presence of British soldiers. The young, handsome woman, called Naomi, is married to Yair, but lacks confidence, and is frightened mainly of abandonment. The abandonment trauma originated in her childhood, when her beloved cousin sailed to America and promised to return for her. He did not come back, and that affront and fear of abandonment probably continue to haunt her, so much so that she decides to sell her body, and with the money to spoil and endear herself to her husband with the attractive clothes that she buys for him and herself.
Here, of course, prostitution is not just an economic or social matter, but a private psychological case of a woman. On the other hand, it is this male environmental context of war, soldiers and easy money that enables her, or challenges her, to try out prostitution. Because probably in no other context could she conceive of doing this. So in the end she loses her mind.
This last example seems to confirm what I stated earlier. That prostitution is not always just a socioeconomic fall, or a biography of sexual exploitation, but a stipulation or consumption that is produced by male culture, and knowingly or not, also drags along the free, independent woman - to choose prostitution as a solution to certain problems.
The most amazing example of this period, and with this I conclude, are the stories of the author Yehuda Borla, who was born in Israel but worked for years as a teacher in Damascus. It turns out that in Damascus of the latter 19th century, the Jewish quarter of the city became a major quarter of prostitution, but elegant prostitution; all the prostitutes were Jewish, and they granted their services to the higher Muslim classes, such as ministers, governors, etc. The historical explanation for this is long, and may be found in the studies of Ron Harel of the Israel History Department in Bar Ilan University. These were mainly rich women whose greatness had diminished because of economic war crises.
These crises also disrupted Jewish society in Damascus and its rabbinical authority. The husbands of these women were financially ruined, left Damascus, took ill or were killed, so these women mustered all their talents to survive. Survival was made possible through a sort of elegant prostitution of song and dance, leading to their name of "poetesses". These women made a good living, contributed a lot to the community and its synagogues, maintained religious observance and adopted and educated female orphans to continue the profession.
Burla wrote a series of long and short stories about these poetesses. He calls them songstresses. Here, it is worth adding that it was actually Burla who did not take the matter of prostitution for granted, nor that of elegant prostitution. In any case, in these stories, he asks questions and tries to understand what makes the woman choose such a course of life.
His novel Marionette, for example, I would describe as a philosophy of prostitution. There are long debates here, between a conservative Jewish character and the songstress, depicted here as a woman of perfect beauty, wisdom and manners. This Jewish woman talks and defends prostitution, explaining it not only in the culture of women, but as an exclusive possibility of feminine freedom and equality. It appears to me that this forgotten work of Burla should be reexamined. Mainly as it is an Oriental woman, and an Oriental woman who speaks of feminism in the early 20th century in the form of daring, original thought, more than any of the suffragette demonstrators in London or New York. I would want to quote her, but I do not have the time, and that will do for now.
Marionette, how does a woman get into this occupation? Does she sin? How does she perceive herself? And is it moral to educate other young females to go in the same way?
Demand was and is always the main reason for the growth of the sex industry in Israel as around the world.
In the pre-state years and during the beginning of the 20th century "Clients for prostitutes, included foreigners, British soldiers and policemen. During the war years clients were Greeks, Poles, Americans, Australians, and South Africans. In addition to military customers there were Arab clients that came with regular frequency. It is interesting to note that the complaints from the time of the British Mandate do not mention Jewish customers, although there is no reason to believe that they avoided using the services of prostitutes" [3].
During the last 10 years throughout the world various research has been conducted regarding the demand for prostitution . The Clientelism [4] is a a result of a society and not an individual flaw to "cure" or to "punish" . Instead of adopting a passive helpless position it is necessary to question the totality of social mechanisms which produce the inegality between the sexes through the research on Clientelism". In order to analyse this need many studies, in many countries need yet to be conducted. One of the theories shows a link between the way in which "masculine" identity is socially constructed and the desire to buy sex ( Petman 1988, Barry 1995, Mansson 2001.
" There may be a link between the social devaluation of woman and the demand for prostitution in a sense that the more a society devalues "femininity" the more important it is for men to distance themselved from the "feminine" by asserting their "masculinity" [5].
The issue of demand is complicated and must be taken seriously and based on more academic research. It is clear though that without demand there were no prostituted persons.
We have been stressing and will continue to stress the fact that during the last 30 years the most dramatic changes in the sex industry world wide have been the growth of a global market in most of the countries and its banalization. Israel was not spared mainly due to the following reasons:
The main reasons for the fast development of the sex industries in Israel are:
Women are still trafficked into Israel from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Lithuania, Belarus, Brazil, Colombia, Estonia, Latvia and others. The economic situation in these countries is catastrophic. Women are ready to do any kind of job in order to survive economically and to be able to bring money back to their families. Organized criminal groups are taking advantage of the situation and continue to act as illegal traffickers for prostitution purposes. We estimate that in about 70% of the cases the women are aware of the fact that they will be selling their bodies in prostitution and some are even returning for the second time. Important to note though, that their consent is irrelevant to the fact that they are deprived of basic human rights. During 2004 the borders were heavily guarded in order to fight trafficking but the local infrastructure of discrete apartments, sometimes locked apartments, still exists (see about developed local prostitution in Chapter 3).
The 11th of December 2003 was a turning point date in the understanding of the danger posed by organized crime in Israel due to an explosion caused by criminal organizations in which innocent citizens were killed. 644 brothels were shut down between the 11th of December and the 17th of February - though some of them have reopened since then. Since the 11th of December a coalition of the security forces and fiscal governmental entities was formed in order to fight against these criminal organizations and to eliminate them. A strategy was formed which comprises several points: forming a task force, increasing fiscal penalties based on the law to confiscate properties of criminals, increasing international cooperation and full cooperation with the IMPA.
The year 2003 saw a drastic improvement in the fight against trafficking in women as the public authorities realized the danger it represents for the Israeli society. Unfortunately since trafficking in women was separated from prostitution as two different phenomena, during 2003 we also saw the renewal of efforts of MKs to legalize prostitution under the cover of a fighting against trafficking and the wish to "improve" the situation of Israeli women in prostitution.
The situation in the year 2004 was more complex and exemplified in the problematic approach of the Israeli authorities to tackle the phenomenon.. Although the Knesset investigative parliamentary committee for TIP issues, headed by MK Zehava Galon, was successful at bringing this issue as top priority in the Israeli political platform, there is still much to improve in terms of the government and official representatives awareness understanding and approach regarding the complex phenomenon of women trafficking. One of the most acute problems is the lack of following up on the process of implementation. Government conclusions are not fully, if at all, carried out and crucial decisions were completely ignored and have fallen between the cracks of internal affairs and interministerial politics. We would like to emphasize one problematic issue that might jeopardize the whole Progressive State Plan of Action which, for more than a year, exists only on paper. The important and very necessary post of Inter-Ministerial Coordinator, that was decided upon by the government (decision No. 1248 announced on December 2003), which was carried out by Adv. Rachel Gershoni, Head of the Penal Department in the Ministry of Justice, has been terminated because of lack of funds. A letter dated from the 30th of January 2005, notified the NGOs and the Committee that the post was terminated due to the fact that the necessary funds to run it were not forwarded by the Ministry of Finance in spite of repetitive requests from the Ministry of Justice. (see the integral report of Isha LeIsha and Machon Toda`a in Annex 3)
In the beginning of 2005 the Knesset decided to shut down the Parliamentary investigative committee. Although the issue will still be handled by a sub committee of the state control committee chaired by MK Zehava Galon the protocols of the meetings of a subcommittee are probably not going to be published in the Internet and the work of the committee is not going to get adequate attention this issue deserves in the Israeli society.
[1] Excerpt from the final statement of the 33rd International Conference of the International Abolitionist Federation - Tel Aviv , October 2002 " Prostitution, Pornography, War"
[2] Prof. Yaffah Berlovitz,, Dep. of Literatures of the Jewish People,Bar-Ilan University, Speech during the 33rd International Congress of the International Abolitionist Federation held in the Tel Avi Cinematheque in October 2002. Acts of the Congress, Pages 14-16
[3] Excerpt from the intervention of Prof. Deborah Bernstein, Haifa University - 33rd International Conference of the IAF, Tel Aviv , October 2002
[4] Said Bouamama, L`home en question- Le processus du devenir -client de la prostitution, Mouvement du Nid, October 2004
[5] Donna M. Hughes, Best practices to address the demand side of sex trafficking.
[6] Poverty report for 2004 published by the Social Security Institute. 20/04/2004
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