ISRAEL AND STRIP CLUBS. DID WE WIN?

By Luba Fein, Coalition of Women's Organisations against the Sex Trade

The sudden closure of the Tel Aviv strip clubs shocked everyone. Even the activists of our anti-prostitution coalition hadn't expected it. On the 10th February in the afternoon, I received a message from Liat Bar Stav, a feminist journalist and fellow activist. "The Israeli police have just closed the last five strip clubs. Have you heard anything about it?" She asked. "Just now, from you," I replied. At no point did I see it coming so quickly. 

Credit: Adi Lavy

You could say the inscription was on the wall. For twenty years, a coalition: individual feminists, grassroots groups, and NGOs - has been in the field. Its members and concrete goals have been changing, but the vision remained the same: to eliminate the sex trade. The coalition had started its formation in the late 1990s - early 2000s, when Israel got flooded by sex trafficking, mainly from Eastern European countries. The disintegration of the communist bloc, followed by a severe political and economic crisis, appealed to the traffickers. Two decades ago, the aim of the struggle was to eradicate international sex trafficking, not prostitution in general.

After the success of the campaign, which led to a significant reduction in the volume of trafficking in women in 2006, activists and politicians decided not to stop here, and continued to fight for the Sex Buyers Act. Our models were Sweden, which passed the Sex Buyers Act in 1999, as well as Norway and Iceland, who were, at that time moving towards similar legislation. In 2008, the MP Zehava Galon proposed a bill that sought to incriminate the buyers of so-called "sex services." A decade later, the law was passed, although in a limited version.

About six months ago, I started working on a book, which documents the Israeli feminist community's struggle to eradicate the sex industry. I tried to understand how we were able to make this achievement, despite being a moderately egalitarian country. Reuma Schlesinger, former director of the Prostitution and Sex Trafficking Task Force, explained her strategy to me: "We realised that we could not pass this law in the short term, so we promoted other laws, a little bit less controversial. That kept the topic a part of public discussion."

Credit: Adi Lavy

Among the laws that were enacted before the Sex Buyers Act were, among others: The Telephone Number Blocking Law (2018), and Website Blocking Law (2017), which allowed the shutting down of virtual brothels. Only the legislation prohibiting the strip clubs is still missing in Israel. In 2015, the clubs were closed in the north of the country due to the associated criminal activity, such as prostitution services. In 2016, an intense campaign against the strip clubs began in central Israel as well. First, the efforts were focused on the "back rooms," where "classic" prostitution services were provided by the strippers to the punters. The public, the police, and the feminists have known about the rooms for a long time. In 2016, the rooms were finally ordered to close, and the strip clubs' business licenses were conditioned on the fact that no paid sex services were offered.

Credit: Adi Lavy

In 2017, Judge Michal Agmon-Gonen gave an unprecedented ruling that strip clubs should be closed in the city of Ramat Gan (next to Tel Aviv) because a city-building program for the complex allows entertainment clubs to be run there but strip shows are not considered "entertainment" because they involve "looting, objectification of women and denying their dignity." In 2019, State Attorney Shay Nitzan ruled that sexual dancing (lap dancing) at strip clubs would be considered prostitution. Club owners in Tel Aviv, the last bastion of the strip business, have pledged that every type of dance, including the "private," will be performed without physical contact. Has the promise been fulfilled? It is unclear, as there is evidence here and there. Following the pledge, the business licenses for the strip clubs were recently renewed by the Tel Aviv Municipality. In light of this, the closure of the clubs on February 10 was particularly surprising.

Did we win? Have the strip clubs disappeared forever? Not sure. The first closing order was issued, as is customary in such cases, for one month. One of the activists in the anti-prostitution coalition told me in a private conversation: "The clubs will probably open and close again and again. But the order to close the clubs was given by the State Attorney. Hence strip club owners are unlikely to win this war." On the other hand, the Tel Aviv municipality in which the clubs operated does not yet have a coherent policy against such "businesses." As mentioned, only one country in the world bans the operation of strip clubs by law, and this is not Israel but Iceland. One of my interviewees, Marin (pseudonym), who was employed at one of the clubs until recently, thinks that the shutdown may be unrelated to the fight against the sex trade: "The clubs' earnings are not based on stripping. They profited from narcotics, selling women was just a cover. Easier to run an illegal business in a club where cash is flowing like a river. "

Imagine your core business to be so violent that you need the sex trade to cover it.

Israeli women were quick to celebrate the shutting down of the strip clubs, yet right now, the future is uncertain. The fortune of the strip club owners is at stake, and they will not give up easily. But we try to be optimistic. Ten years ago, as we embarked on a fight to ban prostitution, the odds were much worse. We were called “hallucinates,” “fanatical feminists,” and even within our community, we were considered extremists. Today, we are endowed with extensive anti-sex industry legislation, support of media and politicians, a state attorney's order, full backing within the feminist community, and partial backing among the general public.

And we will be here until the last of the brothels is forced to close its doors.

Credit: Task Force on Human Trafficking and Prostitution