On many of the critical issues facing the State of Israel, reasonable minds can differ. End the war or do not end the war? Draft the Haredim by force or let their evasion continue? How Jewish should the public square be, and how do we ensure that it remains Jewish while safeguarding Israelis’ individual rights? There are hundreds of such issues.
But it would be hard to argue that prostitution, and particularly the pimping of young, vulnerable girls from broken homes, is not a violation of some of the most fundamental values that ought to reside at the heart of a Jewish state—protecting the weak, guaranteeing women dignity and control over their own bodies, belief in the rule of law….
Which is why the scourge of prostitution, particularly by highly vulnerable young women, is such a stain on the soul of a Jewish state. For more than two decades, the Task Force on Human Trafficking and Prostitution (TFHT) in Israel has been fighting the battle against prostitution, using a variety tools. Among those tactics was adopting the “Norwegian law,” which makes the consumer of prostitution services (and not the provider) the one who violates the law.
For a while, as we’ll hear, it made a difference. Things started to get better. But what’s happening now? What is the present government’s attitude to prostitution and the police’s role in enforcing the law? And how has the trauma of an entire society as a result of this war affected prostitution the young, vulnerable women on whom it preys?
We hear today from Moria Rodal Silfen, a long time Israeli activist newly appointed to the position of CEO and Task Force Director of the Task Force on Human Trafficking and Prostitution (TFHT) in Israel.
Before we get to our interview with Moriah, or after you’ve heard her, you might want to listen to her discuss the issue in these two quick videos below.
With these as background, you’ll have a better appreciation of the guts, determination and intelligence of the woman now tasked with addressing this issue in Israeli society.
Moria Rodal Silfen is an Israeli activist and leader in the fight against human trafficking and prostitution. She currently serves as the CEO and Task Force Director of the Task Force on Human Trafficking and Prostitution (TFHT) in Israel. Rodal Silfen previously worked as a spokesperson and communications advisor for former Defense Minister and IDF Chief of Staff, MK Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon.
In her role at TFHT, Rodal Silfen leads efforts to reduce prostitution consumption in Israel, prevent exploitation, and support victims of trafficking. She oversees initiatives aimed at raising public awareness, advancing policy changes, and expanding rehabilitation services for those affected by prostitution and trafficking.
To learn more, see the The Task Force on Human Trafficking (TFHT) English website. Should you wish to support the fight against human trafficking and prostitution in Israel, you can click here. To join the Task Force’s mailing list click here.
The link at the top of this posting will take you to the full recording of our conversation; below you will find a transcript for those who prefer to read, prepared for our paid subscribers.
My guest today is Moria Rodal-Silfen, who is the relatively new CEO of a very important organization in Israel, the Task Force on Human Trafficking and Prostitution. Not a subject that we wish we would have to talk about when we talk about Israeli society, but it is actually an issue that has long been issue in Israeli society. Israel has actually taken an approach, which is unlike the approach of some countries in the West to try to address this, which we're going to hear about, which is called the Norwegian Law. It's been in place. It's worked in some ways. It hasn't worked in other kinds of ways. We're going to hear about how the war has exacerbated the problem of prostitution, specifically, and violence against women more generally. It's not hard to figure out why. Men come back from the battle, obviously with a lot of PTSD, tremendous amounts of anger, and so on and so forth, and it just leads to where it leads. There's obviously economic hardship, and there is fear, and there's stress, and there are sirens in the middle of the night. None of this is good for anybody, and it's certainly not good for families where there's a background of violence. It's definitely not good for people who are working in the field of prostitution who themselves largely got into it because of PTSD. Then they meet a consumer who's got PTSD and there's a clash there, which is really terrible for human beings of all different sorts. Moria is probably doing the most important work in Israel on this issue right now. And I'm very grateful, Moria, for your taking the time to talk to us about this. It's not an easy subject, it's not a pleasant subject, but it's a critically important subject for those of us who care about Israel and who want Israel to be as good as society and as decent and moral as society as it possibly can. Before we talk about that, let's just start with you. You give us a little bit of background about yourself, where you grew up, and all of that, how you got to this work, what you did before, and then we'll jump in.
Thank you, Danny, for this opportunity. I'd like to start and open, reminding us all that we have hostages in captivity for the past 462 days, and we all pray for their return home, safe as soon as possible. About myself, while I was born and raised in Petah Tikva in an ultra-Orthodox family that left Bnei Brak, so I went to a Zionist school, to an Ulpana.
Ulpana, if you know, is a Zionist religious girls' school. It's more religious than a regular old religious girls high school in the middle of the city, but it's not ultra-Orthodox. It's somewhere in the middle.
For my father, to be honest, it was definitely not religious enough and too Zionist.
Because he was hardcore religious and hardcore anti-Zionist.
Definitely.
Anti-zionist or non-Zionist?
Well, it's a tough question. Somewhere in the middle. But he thought a rabbi looks only one way. He's a man and he's dressed in black. All kinds of other rabbis for him- Were not real rabbis. Yeah.
Okay, so you grew up like that?
Yeah.
You graduated the Ulpana then what?
Then I really wanted to join the army, but that was too for my family. I did my national service in a hospital, actually, in a hospital in Kfar Saba for a year. I always knew that I want to do things that help other women. For me, it was a must. First, when I studied gender in Hebrew U, and I first heard about gender and feminism, for me, it was like a new light in my life. Obviously, I have to do something about it. In the past 10-15 years, I was mostly in the Crisis Center for helping women after rape or sexual Assault. I did the Israeli Women Network for three years, and now I'm here in the Task Force.
You have a background in the Knesset also, right? I mean, so that was just a tiny bit of what you did in the Knesset?
So the gender thing was always voluntarily. And my profession in the past almost a decade was to be a spokesperson in the Knesset. And for ministers, I used to work with a whole few. I worked with ministers and Knesset members, always on media, always as a spokesperson. So I know the Knesset really well. And I know sometimes the best way to move things is lobbying, is when the right person is lobbying, not only rehabilitation after the violence occur, but the prevention, the systematic change. And this is why I came to the Task Force and not a rehabilitation organization.
Because you want to prevent the problem rather than only fix it.
It's a really important job, avodat kodesh (holy work) of to help women once the violence occurs. But I want to be there before it starts. I want to change.
Let's talk, obviously not all the prostitution that takes place in Israel is by women. There are some men, there are some trans, but the overwhelming majority, probably like what, 95% or so is women?
Actually, yeah, 95% of prostituted and trafficked people are women. We do have to say that there's men and also trans that can be abused and trafficked and in prostitution, but the majority are women. I will use the woman as a pronoun to describe the survivors. We do have to say 99% of the consumers are men.
99% of the consumers, right. Okay, so let's just talk about the women for a second. Who are they? The story used to be in Israel, I don't know how true it was, but the story used to be that they were mostly foreigners. There were all these stories in the press about people from Ukraine and the former Soviet Union that were brought in. Sometimes they knew what they were getting into, and very often they did not know what they were getting into. There was a bait and switch with the job. They would get here, somebody would take their passport, so they really couldn't go anywhere. Then they were basically trapped, and they were forced to ridiculous amounts of sexual activity and prostitution and all of that. The rumor, at least as I understand it, and you're the expert, is that it's much less foreigners now, and it's more actually Israeli women who grew up here. Tell us a little bit, first of all, about just population-wise. Who are these people? And it's probably not that different from other societies, but still, how did they end up in this life?
It was correct, mostly in the '90s, where a lot of women from the Ukraine and Russians were brought to Israel to be trafficked. This is how the Task Force started more than 20 years ago to fight trafficking. But today, we know that there's a lot of Israelis caught in prostitution, young girls, high-risk girls. They come from dysfunctional homes and young women that have, first of all, post-trauma. We know that the first reason to enter prostitution is not poverty. It's either they have been sexually molested from childhood over and over again, something that causes post-trauma that drags you into prostitution.
Why? I just understand psychologically, what's the... I mean, it's obviously very complex, and we can't do the whole thing in detail now, but just to try to understand on the simplest lay level, psychologically, you've been abused. You could imagine a world in which a girl, horribly, has been abused, taken advantage of, whatever, that anything having to do with sexuality be the last thing that she wants it. She would run away from it, that she would ever want to be seen near a man or anything. But you're saying there's an opposite dynamic also that a girl who's been abused will actually, not because of the money or not only because of the money, find her way back in this. Why? What is the psychological process there?
You think, obviously, she wants to do everything to be recovered. But when you're extremely young and the first thing you experience is that the only thing that matters is your body. Sometimes when you're younger than 10, then this is what you know about yourself. It's like a chronic disease. You keep coming back to where the violence occurred, and you keep doing it again and again because that's the only way you know yourself. We hear that. We heard it from prostitution survivors telling us that once the violence secure when they were so young, there was no way out.
Okay. They are very often the products of violence, PTSD, sexual abuse as young girls, incest... What's the typical age when women are getting into this? Are they young teens? Are they teens? Are they 20s? Do we know anything about this?
We have some research telling that usually they enter- well, it depends what you determine as prostitution. But from what I know, sometimes they start even in the age of 13 to 14, usually under 18, when it's so much easier to make them, to drag them into this world when they have no real ability to consent or to refuse. So it starts really early. The age of death for those who die in prostitution is 34 on average.
How many die a year in Israel from things related to prostitution? Are they murdered or is that what happens?
They either murdered or committed suicide or using so much drugs that usually they end up dying because prostitution is not the thing you can do for a living too long and survive. The age is 34. We don't have the accurate numbers of how many a year, but we do keep the names. When we hear from the aid organization that work with us in a coalition that we hold, we get the names. When one of them dies, we remember her.
Do we have any sense? Is it singles? Is it tens? Is it hundreds? How many women would you guess, even if you don't know, just from your knowing the field so well, how many women are dying a year in Israel? Rough. Just as we say, what's the rough?
I would say between one and two a month. One and two a month. That we know of. And I would say approximately, well, the official numbers talks about 14,000 women and men in prostitution in Israel. But we know from the aid organization that the actual number is more like 20,000 women, mostly in prostitution in Israel. Some of them in the streets, some of them in houses.
Let me just ask you a question, which is, it doesn't make anything better, but I'm just curious, how does that compare 20,000 people in a population of about 10 million? How does that compare to, I don't know, Scandinavian societies, the United States, other Western countries? I mean, not that it doesn't make any difference, really, because it's horrible no matter what. I'm just curious, do we know whether Israel has a worse prostitution problem than other Western developed countries, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, England, or is it better? Do we know anything about that?
We do know that after the '90s, were so many olim hadashim (new immigrants) from the Ukraine and Russia came here, there was really a rise in the amount of women in prostitution, unfortunately. I don't really know about what's going on in other countries, but it's really hard to tell because prostitution is well hidden. So the numbers that we know of, we only know half of the truth. There's so much more.
Tell us a little bit before we get to the whole Norwegian Law and what Israel's approach was and how this came about and when it came about and who pushed this through the legislative process and all of that. It's obvious that the war has had a huge impact in Israel on violence against women in general, and as a result, an increased use in prostitution, and the combination of the two is increased violence against prostitutes. So tell us what we know about this, the numbers, the rate of increase, something about the dynamic of why this happens. I mean, some of it's obvious, but I'm sure you have much more to say.
Once the war started after the horrible October 7th, the worst war ever happened to the Jewish life since the Holocaust, we heard about so many prostitution survivors coming back to the streets because of financial stress. We have research just from last August, pointing that so many soldiers post-traumatized, carrying PTSD from the war, are consuming more prostitution, and the prostitution became more violent because we know after every war, when there is violence in the front, soldiers in the front, there's also violence back home in the civil society, either domestic violence, either violence against prostitution. We suffer on the front and back home as well. When post-trauma meets post-trauma, then the violence is doubled.
Tell me something about the Israeli police before this whole war period and during this war period. You and I have a mutual friend who was involved in setting up this Task Force even before you were involved with it. The stories that I would hear from him is that, he really, as he told it, couldn't get the police to care very much. I don't know how true that was right before the war, because this goes back many, many years, and I don't know how true it is now. We have a whole issue, obviously, in Israel with the police, with Ben Gvir, who's the Minister of the Police, who has a very specific agenda for what he cares about that the police do.
Not prostitution.
Correct. Not prostitution. Where is the Israeli police and the judiciary on this? How helpful are the courts and how helpful are the police?
When Levi Lauer, Rabbi Levi Lauer, starts the task force almost 22 years ago, it was mostly trafficking, and they did an enormous job regarding fighting trafficking. But we have a severe problem with the enforcement of the police. It's actually ridiculous. The police doesn't enforce the law.
Because?
Well, because they don't care, I think. Because they don't care enough.
Or the police establishment doesn't care? Are they told not to enforce it?
They're not told otherwise. They're not familiar enough with the subject. You know what? Even when they do enforce, even when they do come to a brothel or to the streets to help, the first thing that will happen is probably for the woman to be inside the police vehicle. The first one to be taken. Even now, even though it's forbidden, even though the woman is the victim and we should help, the first one to be under police violence will be the woman. So we have a severe problem with the enforcement.
So the women are suffering violence at the hands of the police also?
All the time.
What is it? Are they beating them or just shoving them around? I mean, what's the-
Either giving them a fine for smoking a cigarette or a fine for not having a mask during the Corona. And instead of giving the fines to the pimps and to the consumers who are the criminals, sometimes the woman in prostitution will be the first one to be violated.
But that's not actual physical. Is there a physical violence of police against women?
Also, I wish the police will open and give us the numbers of how many police officers are taking criminals through their job against women in prostitution and women in general. But we hear. We hear from the testimonies, we hear from them. The meeting with the police officers, it's never on their side. There's so much work we have to do in a matter of enforcement, so much work left to do.
Okay. We've talked a little bit about who these people are, their backgrounds. They're mostly Israelis. It comes from incest, from sexual abuse, from post-trauma. Usually. They're encountering more violence when they're meeting with the clients, whatever they're called. And then they're, in some cases, actually then encountering even more violence when they get into the contact with the police. Now, Israel has what you called before the Norwegian Law. The Norwegians had an interesting take on how to deal with the problem of prostitution, which Israel then adopted. Tell us a little bit about what this Norwegian Law is. What's the logic behind the Norwegian Law? When did Israel adopt it? And how has it worked? Has it had any impact? Has it improved things, made things worse, and so forth?
So five years ago, even more than five years ago, 2018, some sort of a revolution occurred. And for the first time, after lobbying for over 10 years, the law against the consumption of prostitution passed for the first time in Israel through the Norwegian Law, based on the Norwegian Law, saying that the woman in prostitution is the victim, and we should help her, we should provide aid, we should help her with rehabilitation. The one to carry the criminal responsibility is the consumer, the sex consumer, obviously also the pimp, but that was always... That was always illegal. That was always against the law. But since 2020, when the law entered, the consumption of prostitution is illegal in Israel. But you know what? Most men, most people, they don't know. Because when the police doesn't enforce and when the law, unfortunately, is only a temporary law, it ends up in July 25.
Unless it's renewed by the Knesset.
And it will be renewed if it's up to me. We're working on it. But the thing is, people don't know.
Okay, so are men arrested since 2020? We're now in 2025. So it's been four point something years since this law went into.
Well, first of all, they're not arrested. The felony is a criminal felony. But you get a fine.
Okay, so it's not a matter of arrest. It's a matter of fine.
You just get a fine. A 2000 shekels fine. 2,000 shekels fine on your first time, if you come again and you're caught again 4,000 shekels fine, and for the third time and more, 8,000 shekels fine. It's not severe enough.
Okay. Are men fined? Have people been, quote, unquote, arrested and fined for this?
Well, when the law started, then a bit more. Then the police used to enforce more. It was, I remind you, a different government with a different minister.
It wasn't the time of war.
It wasn't the time of war. We did have the Corona. We had some fines, we had some enforcement of the police. Unfortunately, in the past two years, almost nothing. Even though we hear that the consumption rises and the war causes more violence, well, the police enforce less.
So the man who in Israel decides that he's going to go seek prostitution and pay for it and all that really has nothing to worry about from the police, basically, for all intents and purposes.
Nothing to worry about. First of all, they don't know. Second of all, they don't care. And we should really do a process, an educational process with the men. They're not our enemies. We don't see them as enemies. We see them as a part of the change we should do together. And the normative law is just a start. We start with the law. This is our root of change, and then we start the process.
Okay, so you're the CEO of the Task Force on Violence Against Women and Prostitution in Israel. Prostitution is one of the things. Tell me, you're relatively new in the position, a little bit less than a year, eight months or so. You clearly have a strategy in your head. You know what you want to get done in the first couple of years. You know what you want to get done beyond that. How does one in your position sketch out for themselves on a large canvas? Here are the things that my organization, in partnership with other organizations, of course, needs to take on so we can solve, or at least address, not solve, but address the problem of violence against women in Israeli society, of which prostitution is a form, but not the only one. There's domestic violence, there's all sorts of things. What's the Task Force now going to try to do?
So the strategy for five years and for the next year is that we are the only one, the Task Force is the only organization in Israel that fights the sexual abuse in advance, that wants to do the prevention of prostitution, the prevention of sexual abuse and violence. We are the only one working systematically in the Knesset, in the government, try to work with the police on enforcement, educating the public, changing the public minds. This is our strategy for the next five years, how we tackle the industry of sex, how we tackle it, how we fight it, how we prevent the next girl to enter this world.
What are we doing? Are we working in schools? Are we working with Are you working with police forces? Are you teaching police? What are the various ways in which you have a mimshak, interaction within Israeli society? High school kids, soldiers, police, lawyers, judges? Who are the various populations that you're actually trying to work with?
Our work is mostly in the Knesset these days, and we have to say we can have a strategy for the next five years, but the most urgent thing that we have to do is to make sure that the law passes, not as a temporary law, but as a permanent law in the next few months. Because if we don't have the law, then we don't have enforcement, then we can't do education, then we cannot talk to the public. The law is the In the face of everything. We make sure these days we're in the Knesset almost every day talking to Knesset members, talking to ministers, especially the Minister of Justice, Yariv Levin, to make sure the law will pass. Once it does, there's other laws should be taken in consideration.
Where is Levin on this issue? Is he supportive?
From what I hear, he is supportive of the law. But the open question is, what kind of a law? Will it be another temporary law or will it be a permanent law?
Why would he not want it to be a permanent law? I mean, even if one doesn't agree with his whole judicial approach and he wants to do judicial reform and he wants to cut back judicial review and he wants to change the appointment of justices, all of that, whatever one thinks about it, should have really no bearing on whether or not you want to protect the weak members of society. This is not a Jewish-Arab thing. It's not an Israeli-Palestinian thing. It really shouldn't be political. So why would somebody like Yariv Levin, who is a lawyer, who is the Minister of Justice, what would be the argument against making it a permanent law?
Well, there's all kinds of technical pragmatic answers for the differences between temporary law and permanent law. Sometimes when you do a temporary law, then there's a research following it where you can see what happens in the field. But my moral answer is that the law is the base, and the permanent law must pass these days, particularly in light of the war. My answer is that there's only one moral answer, and it's a permanent law. Prostitution survivors or the ones that are still in the street, they are looking at the legislator, they are looking at the Knesset, waiting to hear what the Knesset tells them about the violence that occurred in their life almost since they were born, what the state of Israel has to say about the consumption of prostitution. It's different when you say it's forbidden to murder or when you say it's forbidden to murder, meanwhile. It's a whole different line, right?
For the time being, it's forbidden to murder.
You can't rape.
And we'll let you know if we renew the law.
You can't rape or you can't murder, but just in the meanwhile. So no, prostitution is violence, and violence should be illegal for good.
What are the chances of the law passing as a permanent law, do you think?
I'm optimistic. The chances are actually up to me. So I do everything I can every day. Not only myself, we have a brilliant staff that are working every morning in the Knesset to talk about prostitution out loud, to make sure that the Knesset members know all about it, pressuring the minister. I'm optimistic that it will happen as it should be.
Has there been a public campaign to try to make this into a public Israeli subject of discussion? It's obviously expensive to put ads on busses and to put ads on radio and all of that. It's obviously a subject people don't really want their kids seeing on those sides of busses when they're driving around the Ayalon in traffic. I understand that it's very complicated. But has there been an attempt to try to raise the awareness of the Israeli public in general about this problem and the work that you and the task force are doing?
Actually, we just started a new campaign in light of the war. First of all, we understood that the only thing that matters this this day is soldiers in the front and the war going on, and we're all so worried about the war in Gaza. But we know that the PTSD soldiers are more and more suffering, and it's a whole big issue in Israel, actually being more talked out loud. Right.
Even the army is acknowledging it now and talking about it.
It's new days for this issue because usually it was definitely unspoken. We're trying in a new campaign to take soldiers, soldiers that are traumatized and suffering from PTSD, talking about the post-trauma of prostitution survivors, making the audience aware that the post-trauma is just the same one, calling on them to please do not consume. We're trying to get more more and more people in the Israeli public, and I wish we can do a larger campaign, and we need so much help with getting to more and more audiences.
We're going to talk in a minute about how people can help because I'm sure a lot of people will want to. There's this public campaign, there's the Knesset campaign. Let's say things go the way that you would like it to go, and we hope and pray that it will, and the law gets passed in the next few months, re-passed, and now as a permanent law. We've made a social statement to those people who are following and watching. It's not that you can't murder for now, and it's not that you can't rape for now, because those things are always 100% unacceptable. Now, what we're saying is it's also 100% unacceptable to be the consumer of prostitution services because what you're doing is you're contributing to the continuing victimization and traumatization of these women. Let's say we get over this legislative hurdle, and we can make, as we say make a checkmark next to that part of the list. What's the next major agenda item that you and the task force would want to take on to keep addressing a problem, which is obviously not going to go away just because the Knesset passes a law.
Well, we have a few agendas once the law passes. First of all, start a process with the police on enforcement, workshops for police officers, making sure they know the importance, the violence, and they enforce in a right way.
Have you done this before, by the way?
We have.
What's the response from policemen? Are they sitting there thinking, Okay, I got to sit through this because it's an obligatory seminar? Or are they actually taking it seriously when you and others are presenting?
When we bring a prostitution survivor and they hear her herself talking, explaining what she's been through, then their world changes. The only thing is to to get to them, to make the police matter. Once we get there, they listen.
Are the police units open to your bringing people in to talk to them?
Well, at the moment, right now, no. Because of the war, because of the police, because of this government, because of the financial manner.
Before this government, was it easier to get into the police and teach?
Things were much better. Things were much better when the law started. Now, I believe that once the law will pass again, hopefully as a permanent law, we can start again. We can proceed the change and to work with the police, that's one. We have so much more work we can do in the Knesset on other laws. For instance, we have strip clubs that it's only up to the municipality if they're open or closed and they're completely legal in Israel. It's allowed.
But the municipality Tel Aviv or Jerusalem could just shut it down with the passing of local law.
Well, Tel Aviv did. She shut the whole thing down. A few of them were shut down, but they're still legal in a matter of legislation. It's allowed in other cities.
If it's legal, how does Tel Aviv have the right to shut it down?
It's up to the municipality if she gives the approval or she doesn't give the approval for the place or the building. For the use of the location. And Tel Aviv decided to say no, to refuse all the requests, or there's no strip clubs in Tel Aviv, but they're trying. Same people, same men are trying in other cities since it's legal. Sometimes We do. Sometimes it doesn't, but we should make it start. We should make it illegal because we know strip clubs and prostitution is the same. What happens inside the strip clubs is definitely prostitution and definitely illegal.
Okay. Okay. It's illegal because it's prostitution, and prostitution, no matter where it happens, is illegal. Definitely. Okay, so we want to work with the police. We want to try to take on the whole strip club problem.
We want to work with the public a bit. Other laws.
Is there any attempt to work with soldiers for getting out of combat issues? The army is doing a tremendous amount with these soldiers. They've never done in any other war. We know this from friends who are officers and friends who've had kids who've been in these discussions. When they take them out, certainly at the beginning of the war, I don't know if it's going on so much now, but at the beginning of the war, they were doing a lot of seminars about transitioning from the battlefield and the tank and the whatever you were in to now you're going back to the home front. They did all kinds of things. They met with Holocaust survivors to talk about the resilience of the Jewish people. They met with psychologists in some cases. They met with soldiers who'd been in '73 who talked to them about what it was like to come back from the front in '73, Egypt and Syria, and what they went through. I know the army tried all sorts of things. Has the army been open to, and if you guys tried to meet with soldiers who are leaving the battlefield, mostly in Gaza now, but also in the north? Before you go back, this is something you should understand about Israeli society and your own rage, your own anger, your own PTSD. Have you been able to meet with soldiers?
Well, we are meeting with soldiers, and we did the campaign with soldiers that wants to help us to make sure the PTSD they suffer from is not repeating itself over and over again. But we should work with the army once they get in, not even once they get out, because we know from young women telling us their testimonies, we know that the army for young girls at risk, 18 years old, is a place where you can be dragged into prostitution prostitution, and many of them started this life, experiencing violence, being dragged into prostitution when they were soldiers. And the army should know and should deal with that. And we're trying and we're doing our best to get to the officers, to get to the professionals..
Yeah, the officer is at the major officer training camp.
My goal actually is to get to where they train the professionals. They need to have a workshop about prostitution in the army so they know to take care of their female soldiers. Make sure that won't happen. We should work with the army once they're in, even before they get out. Definitely.
Moria, our listeners are probably not a giddily happy hearing this conversation. It's a painful one. It's a hard one. The people that listen to this podcast, typically, are people that care very deeply about Israel. They're left, they're right, religious, secular, young, old men, women, Israelis, not Israelis. But what they have in common, I think, is that they care deeply about Israel. If you care deeply about Israel, this is a hard conversation. This is not part of the Israeli society that you can take great pride in, except the work that you're doing, obviously, people can be enormously proud of. If they want to help, what can they do?
We definitely need everyone's support. We're a small organization, an independent organization. We are not getting any support from the government at all, only from warm-hearted human beings that wants to help. We need a support on our efforts to pass the law before July 25 occurs. We need support with our 22 members of the Coalition Against Prostitution in which we build and hold. We definitely need to support our effort to combat sex trafficking. We have all kinds of initiatives and the new campaign we're just going, we're really trying to get to more and more population. Just because, especially now, after everything we've been through and the sacrifice, the enormous sacrifice that Israel is doing in the battle, soldiers losing their lives and being wounded and suffering, we should, as a society, be worthy of the suffer. The way to be worthy goes exactly through this weakened woman. We cannot be a moral society worthy of the sacrifice they have made, the one who lost their lives, if we don't go through the most weakened women and remember them, this is the only way we can be in full freedom as a moral society in the state of Israel.
It's unbelievably important. The work that you're doing is what you said before. I mean, it's really avodat kodesh. It's really sacred work. I mean, avodat kodesh is actually a classic Jewish category, and it is It's a-tikkun olam, repairing our world and our little slice of this world where we really need to do it. I think your point that the enormous sacrifice that young people are making mandates, it's a command to all of us that we have to be a society that's worthy of the sacrifice that they are making. Even as you and I are sitting here, there are battles raging a 30 minutes drive from here, basically, and we have to be worthy of it. For what you and your colleagues do, the gratitude of all of us who care about this country very deeply. To you personally for your time today to explain to us what's going on, to give us the opportunity to know how to support you and your work. And we're going to put links and all the information people need in the notes for today's episode so that they can follow through. I'm really very grateful. I hope that the next time that you and I sit down for a formal conversation, we can talk about how the law did become a permanent law, how the police attitude began to change, how the numbers are still problematic, but less problematic than they were, and that maybe one day we'll become one of the leading societies in addressing the issue of the weak people in society in general, weak women in society, more particularly, and specifically, weak women who have been dragged into the sex industry, which is by definition, as you pointed out, a form of violence in and of itself. So thank you for what you do.
Thank you, Danny, for this amazing opportunity. And I would like to finish with a quote with a prostitution survivor quote, saying that now, once she's not in this world again, and she was going through a rehabilitation process and got all the help she could get. And she's saying... I do have a choice now. I choose who I'm intimate with and how, and I'm lucky to have a partner who understands that prostitution has had a lasting impact on me. There are still times when my body doesn't fully feel like it belongs to me. It shuts down sometimes because it doesn't want to remember some of the things that have happened to it. But now I have hope.
Od lo avda tikvatenu (our hope is not yet lost). And we're a country in the business of making hope. And with these people, but for these women also.
And with this hope, a minute before Shabbat here in Israel before we go home to Shabbat meal with our loved ones and our family and children. My only request, other than to support the organization, my only request is to remember, to remember all the ones who made their sacrifices for this state, to remember the weakened women that still don't have the freedom to rest in Shabbat, and they're in the street waiting for us to reach out. And this is what we do. And thank you, Danny, for this incredibly beautiful opportunity to talk about such a difficult subject.
Thank you for the work that you do. Thanks for taking the time. Good luck with everything that you do for the sake of the people that you work for, and frankly, for the sake of all of us.
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