Then M. heard from a woman in the village about a line of work in which a lot of money could be made by convincing men to drink a lot of alcohol. This work is done overseas, she was told. It's easy work, and yields hundreds of dollars in profit - sometimes $1,000 a month. Where M. comes from, a villager who earns $20 a month is considered well off. With her family on the edge of dire poverty, she agreed to try the line of work, even though her oldest son was still a child, and the younger one was just three months old. Her plan was to work for a short time, and then return to her children.

When she arrived in Moscow, from where she was to depart to work in Israel, she was imprisoned in a room and raped. She was informed that she would be brought to Israel to work as a prostitute. Later, M. testified that when she discovered what was happening to her, she urinated in her pants out of fear. After arriving in Israel, she refused to comply with clients' requests, and wept constantly. She fled several times, only to be found in each instance and returned to work; in the end, her captors gave up on her, and put her out on the streets. She turned to the police for help, and was detained for illegal residence in the country. Recently, after several months of detention, she was deported back to Uzbekistan.

During the past year, some 20 women from Uzbekistan managed to escape from slave traffickers, or were detained by immigration police; all 20 await expulsion from the country. At the Isha L'Isha Haifa Feminist Center, which is sponsoring a project on the struggle to end sex trafficking in Israel, experts believe that some 300 sex slaves who were brought from Uzbekistan currently work in Israel.

"Based on meetings with women in the field, we have found that in recent months a new export route has opened up, running between Uzbekistan and Israel," Isha L'Isha project director Rita Heiken says.

Using women for recruitment

Sex traffickers in Israel use a number of import routes. Every few months, a route originating in a new country opens up; suddenly a number of women from the same country who never before set foot in a brothel turn up in Israel. Policemen and social activists have monitored these import lines, particularly since Israel passed an anti-trafficking law in 2000. "After the anti-trafficking law was passed, and after we started to enforce it, we found in Tel Aviv massage parlors a large number of women who had been brought here from Russia and Ukraine," says police superintendent Pini Aviram, who heads a police unit that deals with crime originating in Russia. A year later, the import route was altered, Aviram explains - a large proportion of sex workers in Tel Aviv, particularly in the area of the old central bus station, came from Moldavia.

Isha L'Isha's Heiken continues: "Starting in June-July 2002, we started to find Muslim women from Uzbekistan. It has become clear over the past year that this is a very busy import line." In recent months, activists from Isha L'Isha and police officers have started to notice sex workers who have been brought here from Georgia, Kazakhstan, and other countries. "Wherever there are economic troubles, sex traffickers will find women who agree to do this sort of work," says Heiken.

Police officers claim that most of the women who are brought to Israel know why they have been brought here. Yet it is very difficult to support a theory holding that the sex workers labor by consent, the policemen admit, "in view of their intolerable conditions and the horrific exploitation."

While social activists have agreed that many of the sex workers are aware of the purpose of their arrival in Israel, all concur that the situation is different with the women from Uzbekistan. "In the case of women from Uzbekistan, there is a higher percentage of women who really didn't know why they were brought here," concludes attorney Naomi Levenkron, who coordinates a Hebrew University of Jerusalem program for the struggle against trafficking in women. "This is probably the reason why the Uzbek women represent a large portion of the women who dare to escape from the pimps, and turn to the police." According to a survey sponsored by the Isha L'Isha project, some 50 percent of the women from Uzbekistan did not know in advance that they would work in prostitution in Israel. One woman close to the issue of trafficking explains that the "women from Uzbekistan are not suckers; when they discover that instead of working as waitresses or as domestic servants, they are to be used as prostitutes, they struggle against this fate with all their might."

"Uzbekistan is still virgin ground from which one can import women easily," explains attorney Levenkron. "Economic distress there is acute, and organizations which in other areas lead the campaign against trafficking are not very active in Uzbekistan." Many of the women from Uzbekistan are recruited from remote villages that lack exposure to modern ways; recruiting in these village circumstances relies largely on word-of-mouth. "It's a conservative, religious country, and so this system [of recruiting by rumor and false promises] is very effective there," claims Heiken. "The conservatism is the reason why most recruiting in Uzbekistan is done by women."

Coming from a pious, conservative background, women from Uzbekistan are often overwhelmed by their encounter with the sex industry in a foreign country. As if their brutal treatment as sex workers were not enough, those who manage to escape are forced to endure long waiting periods in detention before being sent back to their home country. Until recently, the government of Uzbekistan showed little interest in expediting bureaucratic steps involved in this expulsion/repatriation process, and so the women often had to wait four months before receiving papers needed to return home, the Ish L'Isha experts relate. For the right to return to their homes, they are forced to pay $25, a sum equivalent to a monthly wage in Uzbekistan.

Thanks to the intervention of Isha L'Isha, the waiting period for these detainees has been shortened somewhat.

No problem obtaining visas

Police officers say that it is their own success arresting sex traders which has caused the traffickers to change import routes so frequently. Policemen who work in superintendent Aviram's division that deals with Russian crimes have in recent years apprehended some of the leading sex traffickers in Israel. Recently, one major trafficker, Naom Schneiderman, was arrested; in addition to trafficking, his gang was involved in other types of criminal activities. Schneiderman is originally from Moldavia.

Police officers believe that major traffickers continue with their work after they are arrested and imprisoned. However, one top police officer states, "you can definitely feel that importing from Moldavia has slowed down." Alluding to the arrest of Schneiderman, the officer adds: "We're not fooling ourselves by thinking that we've delivered a fatal blow to the traffickers. Prices for the women haven't changed; and that proves that there's no shortage [of sex workers]. The result of the arrests and imprisonment of the traffickers is that new lines of import open up, and new traders arrive on the scene."

Moldavia, police sources explain, became two years ago a major supplier of sex slaves largely because major traffickers who were born there immigrated to Israel. Several other traffickers spent prolonged periods in Moldavia, and made contacts there.

Today, a number of social organizations are active in Moldavia, and lead the fight to put an end to the sex trafficking. These organizations maintain ongoing contact with Israeli human rights and feminist organizations. Public officials in Moldavia have over the past two years made an increased effort to stop the export of women to Israel.

Recently a new import line originating from Kazakhstan has opened up. Two women who were sent to work as prostitutes in Israel were detained last summer. It turns out that unlike many other women who were smuggled into the country via the Sinai Peninsula, these two were brought over by plane. The two told Isha L'Isha that they had no problems obtaining visas to Israel. They related that their handlers gave them instructions about what to tell officials; and so the visas were issued without a hitch. The Haifa Feminist Center's experts are surprised by the ease with which the two obtained visas, especially in comparison to the difficulties encountered by young women from the CIS who ask for permits to enter Israel.