Four
die in Tel Aviv brothel attack
The Guardian
Suzanne
Goldenberg in Jerusalem
Wednesday
August 16, 2000
Police in Tel Aviv
are hunting a serial arsonist attacking the city's sex industry after
the horrific death of four women, locked inside a brothel which was set
on fire overnight.
The attack, said by
social workers to be the sixth of its kind in a week, added to the
debate on the increasing traffic in women for prostitution by Russian
and Israeli gangs, and the appalling treatment they suffer.
Social workers
believe the dead women came from Ukraine,
where most of those brought from the former soviet Union for
prostitution are from.
The police said
they were investigating the possibility that the fire might have been
started by ultra-Orthodox Jews opposed to the sex industry.
"We are
pursuing a number of courses of inquiry, both the possibility of a
dispute between operators of these businesses and ... that extremist
ultra-Orthodox Jews are responsible," the chief of police, Shlomo
Aharonishky, said.
Earlier this year
Amnesty International reported that 10,000 women from the former Soviet
Union had been virtually enslaved in Israel in the past 10 years.
Many have forged documents identifying them as Jewish immigrants.
Promised earnings
of $1,000 (£665) a month, they are routinely confined to flats,
deprived of their passports, beaten and threatened with arrest as
illegal immigrants.
Women's
organisations say the police have become more aware of their plight in
the past six months. Until recently the authorities have been
reluctant to prosecute the men involved, although 400 women are detained
and deported every year.
Although most of them know they are coming to
work as prostitutes, about 30% of the women arrive in response to job
advertisements in Russian papers for waitresses and nurses, the Israeli
Coalition against Trafficking in Women says.