By Leah Finn, Special to JTNews
A year ago, University of Washington International Studies major Talya Gillman was looking forward to spending her junior year abroad taking classes at Tel Aviv University in Israel. Now back in Seattle, the rising senior has slightly larger concerns, such as how to continue her fight against Israel’s illegal sex trafficking industry, a battle she was involved with in Tel Aviv for the past six months.
“A lot of Jewish people feel like Israel is home, and I just wanted to spend time there,” said Gillman about her choice to study in Israel. “It felt like it was the right thing to do.”
But when Gillman enrolled for fall semester at Tel Aviv University, the experience wasn’t exactly what she expected. “The Overseas Program…was completely separate from Tel Aviv University itself, so that stifled our ability to meet Israelis around our age,” said Gillman. “I wanted to see different aspects of Israel, rather than just staying in my American group of friends.”
Gillman dropped out of her program at the university after her first semester and instead sought an internship through the Jewish Agency for Israel, an international organization that provides new immigrants to Israel with job opportunities, housing and language lessons. Through the Jewish Agency’s Stagerim Professional Internship Program, Gillman was matched with a semester-long internship with the nonprofit organization Avodot Tzedakah U’Mishpat (ATZUM), meaning Justice Works in Hebrew.
ATZUM is a nonprofit activist organization that addresses social problems in three different spheres of Israeli life, explained Gillman. One part of the organization provides financial, medical and psychiatric support for victims of terror; another part assists “righteous gentiles,” or non-Jewish people who have helped Jews during the Holocaust and are unrecognized by the Israeli government; and the third sector, called the Task Force on Human Trafficking, works against the prevalent problem of human sex trafficking in Israel. It was this area of the ATZUM in which Gillman worked.
Sex trafficking in Israel “follows a pattern of human trafficking and sex slavery all over the world,” said Gillman. “Women are taken in either through false promises of jobs, or they’re actually just kidnapped.”
Sex trafficking is the illegal transportation of immigrants, usually female, into a country where they are enslaved as sex workers and “sold” out of brothels or private operations. The U.S. State Department’s 2005 Trafficking In Persons report estimates that between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year. In Israel, government sources estimate that over 3,000 women have been trafficked into the country, according to the TFHT Web site. Other sources estimate that number to be much higher, the Web site said.
Gillman worked with the TFHT as a liaison between the organization and North American communities. Working out of her apartment in Tel Aviv, Gillman contacted synagogues and Jewish organizations in the U.S. and Canada, encouraging them to support the fight against human trafficking by lobbying the Israeli government.
“Lobbying from America is so important, because Israel really values what America thinks of them,” said Gillman.
Part of Gillman’s job was to compose and distribute the 2007 version of the Pidyon Petition for Rabbis and Cantors, a petition designed specifically for leaders of the American Jewish community to be sent to Israel’s Prime Minister. Last year’s Pidyon Petition contained more than 1,500 signatures.
Many Americans that Gillman talked to already had an interest in the cause against human trafficking, said Gillman.
“I talked to a woman from Canada that has actually developed a whole program that works to fight sex slavery,” Gillman said. “I also talked to a woman from Boston who leads a group for young Jewish adults who agreed to start a group solely committed to fighting human trafficking.”
Though most of her American contacts were supportive of the fight against sex trafficking, Gillman was surprised by some of the responses she received.
“I got a lot of positive responses, saying, ‘Thank you, this is so important,’” said Gillman. “A lot of people just sign the petition and don’t respond. And I got some people saying, ‘Please take me off this e-mail list.’”
Though it was tough to hear, Gillman said she learned to understand, on some level, why American Jews might respond this way.
“Israel is a really complicated place, and inspires so much passion on all sides that it’s easy for American Jews to kind of turn a blind eye to what’s going on,” said Gillman. “When reports about this do come out, it doesn’t help Israel’s image.”
Still, ATZUM has made significant advances in the fight against sex trafficking in Israel in the past several years. In 2005, the Task Force launched a full-scale campaign to lobby policy-makers about the issue of human trafficking. They sent hundreds of letters to members of the Knesset to “educate them about trafficking and demand important policy changes,” according to the TFHT Web site.
In 2006, ATZUM presented Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with a proposal that specified what each ministry of the government needs to do “to contribute to a joint, government-wide campaign against human trafficking,” wrote Roni Alloni-Sandovik, a press representative for ATZUM. Olmert responded by establishing a Committee of Directors General from every ministry, which would use the proposal as a guide to combat human trafficking.
“The problem is enforcement,” said Gillman. Because individual prostitution — not prostitution for the profit of another party, such as in organized brothels — is legal in Israel, she explained, it is often difficult to tell which prostitutes have been illegally trafficked and which have not. However, most trafficked sex workers operate out of brothels, which are often ignored by police.
“It’s all very well and good if brothels are illegal, but then you have to shut down brothels,” said Gillman. “What ATZUM hopes to see is a continued diligence in enforcement down to the police force. There has to be continuity between the government officials who make the laws, and the police officials who have to carry them out.”
Gillman, who returned to Seattle in July, plans to continue the fight against human trafficking in Israel by raising support in the U.S. “I’m really hoping to meet with people in Seattle and get an initiative going,” said Gillman, who plans to speak with people at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle about the cause. “This is a really terrible problem, and it needs to get exposure.”
Gillman hopes to continue her association with ATZUM, but she said it is difficult to do so because “I’m so far away, and everything they send out is in Hebrew. I know I’ll go back to Israel, but I just don’t know when.”
In the meantime, Gillman plans to finish her degree in International Studies at the UW, and hopes to write her qualifying paper on the issue of sex trafficking.
Gillman said she wouldn’t change anything about her experience in Israel over the past year. “I recognize that Israel has a lot of developing to do, in terms of living up to what it represents to so many people all over the world — Jews and non-Jews who identify with the history and spirituality associated with Israel,” said Gillman.
Yet rather than affecting her love for the country, Gillman’s experience made her want to work to solve its problems.
“To somebody that really does care about Israel, how can I continue to advocate for [Israel] if I’m not proud of what it’s doing, or not doing?” said Gillman. “That’s why this work is so important — we’re working to make Israel worthy of her name.”
Leah Finn is a student in the University of Washington’s Newslab.