WUNRN
ISRAEL - BILL AGAINST PROSTITUTION
BUYERS MOVES FORWARD
By JERUSALEM POST EDITORIAL 02/12/2012
By Edgard Garrido / Reuters
Prostitution is
violence against women. Everything should be done to diminish, if not
completely eradicate, this horrible phenomenon, dubbed inappropriately “the
world’s oldest profession,” as if its long history somehow gives it
respectability.
The Ministerial Committee on Legislation took an important step toward
achieving this goal Sunday when it unanimously passed a bill by MK Orit Zuaretz
(Kadima), who chairs the Knesset Subcommittee on Trafficking in Women.
If ratified, Zuaretz’s bill would make it illegal to buy sexual services but
not to sell them. The legislation’s eminently reasonable underlying assumption
is that prostitutes – mostly women – are victims of an industry said to
generate revenues of $2 billion a year in Israel, while those who solicit, pimp
or facilitate sexual favors – primarily men – are the ones guilty of
exploiting, raping and abusing those who are weaker and more vulnerable, and
therefore, deserve to be singled out for punishment.
Critics of the bill argue that targeting prostitutes’ clients will make an
already dangerous work environment even more hazardous. Those who disregard the
new law will tend to be more dangerous, violent types. The decrease in the
number of clients will lead to cutthroat competition among the remaining
prostitutes, who will earn less and might be put under pressure to have sex
without protection. And the entire industry will go underground.
But thousands of prostitutes are already working in horrid conditions, forced
to maximize profits by working long hours with as many as a dozen clients a
day. Some prostitutes live under constant physical threat. Others are addicted
to heroin or other drugs, while still others were victims of sexual abuse as
children and found their way to prostitution due to low self-esteem or other
psychological problems.
Legalizing prostitution and regulating the industry to protect women from
exploitation is not an option. Experiments in
While critics of Zuaretz’s legislation might be right that in the short-term
the situation for some prostitutes might get worse, in the long-term the
inevitable decrease in demand – assuming the law is enforced by police – will
gradually force many women out of prostitution.
The new shelter for prostitutes built in
So will the number of social and psychological support givers and job training programs.
Kayla Zecher, Project Coordinator for ATZUM – Task Force on Human Trafficking,
an organization that helped Zuaretz draft her bill, estimates that there are
15,000 prostitutes – a third of whom are minors – currently working in
Critics also claim that before a law can be passed, a public education campaign should be launched to teach
the public about the dark side of prostitution. But we believe there is no
better way of conveying the message that prostitution – and the criminal
sub-culture it sustains – is morally reprehensible than by criminalizing it.
Indeed, the sort of callous men who frequent prostitutes – particularly those
held in sub-human conditions – need the added incentive of a possible prison
sentence to improve their learning curve.
Prostitution has existed since
Logic dictates that if demand for prostitution can expand, it can also
contract. Zuaretz’s bill is designed to do just that. Let’s hope the Knesset
passes it.