The oldest profession in the world is rapidly being taken up by the newest immigrants to Israel, according to newspaper reports. While no official report has been issued on this very unofficial subject, one owner of a large Tel Aviv escort service estimates that Soviet women constitute some 10 to 15 percent of the total number of women in Israel working in the sex industry, be it in massage parlors, escort services or street prostitution.
His view was echoed by Yuli Kosharovsky, a well-known former prisoner of Zion who now lives in the religious kibbutz Alon Shvut in the Etzion Bloc, southeast of Jerusalem.
While the phenomenon is already common in the center of the country and in the North, the southern parts of Israel still lag behind. But one escort service office in Beersheba was found to have a Russian woman working for it. Patricia is a year-old childless divorcee who arrived in the country only three months ago. Other women have not fared as well as Patricia. In Carmiel, near Haifa, which has one of the highest percentages of new immigrants from the Soviet Union, there are stories circulating about Soviet prostitutes who have been severely beaten up by men trying to be their pimps.
According to reports, the clients of these Soviet prostitutes in the North seem to be mostly Arabs, something which police consider to be a security risk. In different interviews given to newspapers, the women all claimed to have been working in other professions while in the Soviet Union. One was an architect, another an engineer. But all said they had been unable to find work in their professions in Israel and had only turned to prostitution as a last resort.
Both the Jewish Agency and the Absorption Ministry place only the slightest importance on the phenomenon. The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from to By submitting the above I agree to the privacy policy and terms of use of JTA.
