Promoting Human rights- Moked celebrates 10th anniversary
Asylum seekers demonstrate against deportation
It’s not everyday that the workers and volunteers of the Moked, hotline for migrant workers based in Tel Aviv can be found away from their offices, but Monday morning found nearly all of them at the Gay community center in Tel Aviv celebrating their 10th annual report and ten years of promoting human rights in Israel. A well deserved celebration.
If everyone who received help from the Moked in the past 10 years would have shown up, the Gardens around the center, several acres of them. would have been packed by tens of thousands of people who received legal and physical assistance and hundreds of campaigns and petitions.
It is hard to imagine one NGO that has touched the lives of so many of Israel’s less fortunate in the past decade.
As we sat through the press conference and presentation, over 100 journalists, volunteers, diplomats and migrant community leaders, I ran in my head the past 5 years I have been involved and following, sometimes covering, the Moked’s activities. Than later on as we sat outside, a colleague asked me what I considered to be Moked’s greatest achievement. I had many but perhaps the one I admire most is the significant ( not to say crucial) part they played in cutting down on human trafficking for prostitution into Israel.
In early 2002, it was the Moked who alerted the USA state department to the ongoing trafficking of women into prostitution in Israel, Israel was placed on Tier 3 in the Department’s annual report on trafficked persons and warned of economic sanctions if
immediate action was not taken to improve the horrid situation, Israel gave in. Police were suddenly doing the work, a shelter for trafficked women was opened and some traffickers were even arrested.
Darfuree refugees at' Yad Vashem' Holocaust memorial
In 2006 Israel was put on the US State Department’s Tier 2 watch list and has been described as a “prime destination for trafficking” by both the State Department and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). in 2008 an entire ring of traffickers was discovered and prosecuted.
Women are still being trafficked into Israel but it is nothing like the masses brought in the 1990′s and abused like commodities, not human beings. I am grateful that the GOI has done its duty but I know it wold never have happened without the Moked.
The Moked has a long list of struggles and success, looking at the publications list and pictures I can’t help but remember things I’ve tried to forget and put aside.
It is not easy to come to terms with the gaps between Israel as I, a white Israeli woman, experience it and the hell that many times falls in part of the migrant workers, trafficked persons, asylum seekers and refugees living only meters away from the trendy coffee shop I now it in.
Moked received its share of harassment on behalf of the Israeli public and the GOI over the past years but slowly I can feel the winds of change blowing (in this beautiful weather in Tel Aviv) and I hope I’m not just being over optimistic.
Once the small party was over and Moked’s staff was done clearing the dishes( yes, they did that) they rushed back to their HQ to try and fight this new unbelievable proposal:
An infiltration law passed first draft at the Knesset is up for approval in the next weeks despite efforts by NGOs to stop it, if approved, the law will regard any infiltrator as a criminal regardless of his background, will allow a sentence of up to 7 years on any asylum seeker who is a resident of an enemy country(Sudan,Somalia, Iraq) and incriminate assisting NGOs and volunteers.
All in a day, or decade’s, work.
