The majority of migrant workers in Israel are exposed to disgraceful exploitation by their employers. The employers do not act in vacuum – the State of Israel, with its laws and degrading attitude towards the rights of migrant workers, gives a clear message to job brokers and employers that the workers are nothing more than tools.

One can charge exorbitant amounts of money from workers simply for bringing them over. Basic rights to family life and childbirth are denied. It is legitimate to “bind” workers to their employers, and rarely would the authorities come to enforce or check the conditions in which workers are employed.



These issues have been discussed many times in the media, and I estimate that the public is aware of the large scale of exploitation and humiliation. But what happens when a worker tries to find out what his rights by law are and demand them? The worker is detained! That’s what happened to N., a worker from Nepal who was detained by the Oz unit.



During the trial the visa expired



After five years of working in Israel, N. decided to find out what his rights were and approached Kav LaOved. The investigation revealed that his employer imposed even more disgraceful conditions than common: workers received wages much lower than the minimum and the right for days off and holidays was denied. Frequently workers were forced to work dozens of consecutive days, more than 16 hours a day. Some were fined when they were five minutes late to work, and the hands of one worker were seriously hurt as a result of overexposure to chemical substances.



Immediately after collecting N.’s testimony and the documents in his possession, Kav LaOved decided to take N.’s case to court. But during the few weeks that it usually takes to file a case, N.’s visa expired. From that point, the way to the Ramle jail was short.



While in custody, N. presented to the Oz unit inspectors a letter from Kav LaOved, clearly stating that the organization was representing him in legal proceeding against his employer, for which he should remain in Israel a few more weeks. The inspectors were probably inspired by Tsiki Sela, the commanding officer at the time, who believed that organizations providing aid to migrant workers were interested in the destruction of Israel. With much “sensitivity and compassion”, they carried N. in the detainee’s van. Now he is waiting in his cell for the Court decision on whether he can be released on bail.



Years of disgraceful abuse and exploitation



Four months ago, following a complaint by Kav LaOved, the economic unit of the immigration police started an investigation against N.’s employer. Within a month, charges of exploitation and fraud were made against the company owners.



But this is of no concern to the Israeli Minister of Interior Affairs, the Oz commander or inspectors. From their point of view, N.’s stay in Israel is illegal, because his visa expired two weeks ago. What about his rights to severance pay, fair wages for years of hard labor, denied days off and holidays and other social benefits denied him during all those years? How can a person exercise his legal right to sue his employer for years of disgraceful exploitation under the threat of detention and deportation? Minister Eli Yishay may has the answer.



When I heard about N.’s arrest, I recalled my trip to Nepal ten years ago, and how enthusiastic I was about the hikes I took there, the views, the excellent food – but mainly about the generous and smiling people. In contrast, it will be interesting to see what N. will have to tell his family and friends about Israel and its citizens, after his many years of exploitation and humiliation.







by: Tom Mehager, nrg
Tom Mahager is Coordinator of migrant farm workers project in Kav LaOved.

Many of their paychecks are withheld arbitrarily, with debt to the brokers a heavy burden. There is widespread seizure of employees' passports as collateral, according to Kav LaOved.Workers typically are not paid for or do not receive vacation days, with many only getting a single day off per month.Ten percent suffered on-the-job injuries in the past year.



"The aggressive way agricultural employers push to receive more workers is the same aggressive way they behave toward their employees: withholding pay, failure to pay the minimum wage, and forcing workers to work with dangerous pesticides," Kav LaOved manager Hanah Zohar said.Authorities must act against exploitative employees, including revoking work permits for employers who violate labor laws, Zohar said.
She also called for greater education of workers about their rights, and for law enforcement authorities to set up a hotline for worker complaints.

By BEN HARTMAN
jerusalem post

 "Treatment of the matter is insufficient, due primarily to a lack of awareness that this is a serious criminal offense," she said. "A failure to locate victims shows only that the unit is disconnected from what's happening on the ground, and when someone doesn't know what he's supposed to be looking for, it's no surprise that he doesn't find it." Since the Oz unit was founded four months ago, to replace the Interior Ministry's Immigration Administration, it has not provided police with any information that could lead to a criminal investigation, making it difficult for the law-enforcement authorities to bring to justice those responsible for human trafficking. However, things may begin to change shortly. Starting next week, Oz unit members are scheduled to undergo training in how to identify victims of trafficking.


For now, though, the unit may be ignoring human trafficking even when its inspectors do come across it. "It's not just that they didn't find anyone, but that they even ignored a clear case of trafficking when they raided an escort service, arrested the women and deported them to Moldova," said Yonatan Berman, a lawyer for the advocacy group Hotline for Migrant Workers. "We offered to give the unit workshops on this issue, but we haven't received any response." Berman said his group alone receives dozens of complaints concerning human trafficking every year, adding, "It's clear that the situation is actually a lot worse than that." Indeed, the numbers may be on the rise. Ben-Israel said Kav La'Oved has recently been receiving more complaints than usual about human trafficking, which includes forced prostitution or sexual exploitation as well as what the U.S. State Department describes as "forced labor, including the unlawful withholding of passports, restrictions on movement, non-payment of wages, threats, and physical intimidation."


"We have recently encountered an uptick in complaints on the matter," she said. "It's a serious phenomenon, especially in agriculture. We recently dealt with a series of serious incidents involving laborers who were working 18 hours a day, their passports were taken from them, they were threatened, they worked without protection - really modern-day slavery." This year's State Department report on human trafficking classified Israel as a country whose government does not fully comply with the minimum standards required to eliminate human trafficking, but is "making significant efforts" to comply with those standards.

"Israel is a destination country for men and women trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation," the report says. "Low-skilled workers from China, Romania, Turkey, Thailand, the Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and India migrate voluntarily and legally to Israel for contract labor in the construction, agriculture, and health care industries. ... Women from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Belarus, and China are trafficked to Israel for forced prostitution, often by organized crime groups across the border with Egypt."

The report recommends that Israel significantly increase "prosecutions, convictions, and sentences for forced labor offenses, including the unlawful practice of withholding passports as a means to keep a person in a form of labor or service; increase investigations, prosecutions, and punishments of internal trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation; and extend comprehensive protection services to victims of forced labor."


While the Oz unit has 160 inspectors and a NIS 50 million annual budget, it has "focused solely on locating illegal aliens and dealing with them," said MK Orit Zuaretz (Kadima), who heads the Knesset subcommittee on trafficking in women. "Even though the unit was supposed to replace the Immigration Administration, including in everything related to locating and identifying trafficking victims, that hasn't been done," said Zuaretz. "Law enforcement in the field of fighting human trafficking requires the active inspection of employers," said Kav La'Oved lawyer Anat Kidron. "Such inspection is not being done to a sufficient extent, and therefore a significant number of the victims of trafficking are not being found." by: Dana Weiler-Polak, Haaretz

A Filipina caregiver came to Israel in order to take care of an old lady, a diabetic whose leg was amputated. Five years ago, when the nurse came to Israel, the patient's condition was relatively well. Her second leg was strong, as were her hands. When she had to get up, she could assist the caregiver, who had to help her move from one chair to another. Part of the caregiver’s duty included escorting the patient to the hospital in order to receive dialysis treatments. It wasn’t easy, but as long as the lady was strong enough to help the caregiver, it was possible to help her get into the cab.


In the last 6 months the lady got weaker, so it was harder for the caregiver to help her move from one place to another. The patient couldn’t help the caregiver anymore, so the caregiver had to carry the patient to move her from the wheelchair into the cab, than from the cab back to the wheelchair, and later into her home and bath. More than once the patient accidentally fell to the floor. The most difficult part was driving to the hospital. The weak patient was thrown helplessly onto the cab seat. Moreover, getting her out of the cab became practically impossible. Moreover, the caregiver started suffering back problems. Her doctor told her not to carry heavy loads.


The caregiver asked the patient and her son to use an ambulance to travel to and from the hospital, so she will be able to keep caring for the patient. The answer of the patient and her son was that ambulance transfer is too expensive, and that if the nurse can't take care of the patient anymore, she is more than welcome to pick up her stuff and leave. They will find someone else. At first they thought of hiring a man, who would have the strength to carry the patient, but the man stayed for two days and left. He couldn’t deal with the burden.


When the working relations between the patient and the caregiver ended, the caregiver asked the son to pay her severance pay. The son told her that since she quit, she doesn’t deserve any. He claimed that the fact that his mother's condition got worse is not relevant.


The number of old people in Israel is 708,000. Among them, 679,680 live in their community. 14% of those who live in a community, about 95,000, can't move by themselves, and are actually grounded to their homes. These people need someone to turn them over in their beds, to wash them, to escort them to the doctor and to push their wheelchair. When the treatment is done by a foreign caregiver, he or she is doing all this by themselves, often handling a weight higher than their own. In care institutions such activities would be performed by two people.


Hauling heavy burdens is a well known cause of work related accidents. Many countries have limited the burden which a person is allowed to carry, be it by picking it up with his or her hands or by pushing it. For example, following the instructions of the ILO, the maximal weight allowed to be picked up by hands is half of the carrier's body wait. The American standard is stricter, and doesn’t allow one person to carry more than 16 kilos.


In the work contract drawn by agencies dealing with bringing and assigning caregivers, no reference to the subject was found, although some of the agencies do recommend the use of machines. But that’s simply a recommendation, and it's not enforced. In the old diabetic lady’s case, domestic machinery would not be of any use. The back pains that caregivers suffer due to picking people up are another symptom of our disdain for their quality of life. They will probably keep on suffering from back problems for the rest of their life. They came here to work, and that’s what they should do! We wouldn’t agree, of course, that an Israeli worker will carry a burden heavier than his body weight. No one would agree to do that. But migrant workers are willing to do it. If not, they are asked to pack their stuff and leave. We have no more interest in them.


by: Irit Porat, Kav LaOved

Jewish volunteers see a different side of Nepal
By Nurit Wurgaft

"Namaste," the Nepali youngster said to his compatriot, Priya Sharam Chitrakar, who was sitting on a bench in South Tel Aviv's Levinsky Park, next to two young Israelis. The three had been going over a document detailing workers' rights, which they translated into Nepali. Chitrakar was correcting spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

Namaste," the three replied. Then one of the Israelis asked the youth, in Nepali, what his name was. Ram Krishna, he answered in surprise, looking in bewilderment at Chitrakar and her two companions.



"You must have thought there were no Israelis who speak Nepali," she laughed. "At first it surprised me, too, because I have never heard foreigners speak my language. Now I am used to it."

The two Nepali-speaking Israelis are graduates of a unique course organized by an NGO called Tevel b'Tzedek (The World With Justice). They spent four months in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, where they studied Nepali, familiarized themselves with local aid organizations, learned about the effects of globalization on Nepal's economy, environment and society - and combined the entire experience with studies in Judaism, focusing on the idea of tikkun olam ("repairing the world"). In addition, they also volunteered on behalf of several environmental and social welfare-oriented projects.



The idea behind the program was to offer an alternative to the usual post-army trip, says founder Micha Odenheimer: "I figured that among all the Israelis who travel to Nepal, there might be some who don't want to relate to the place as just one big amusement park, where they can do bungee-jumping, rafting and mountain climbing, and see all sorts of tourist attractions."



Odenheimer, 50, is an ordained Orthodox rabbi who works as a teacher and a journalist. In setting up the program, his aim was not to turn participants into observant Jews: Indeed, most participants are as secular when they finish as when they enroll and that's fine by him.



"I was particularly interested in reminding people that Judaism is not just a matter of dietary laws and the Sabbath," he says. "It is also a whole world of social norms and a vision of social justice."



Aya Navon, 28, a secular woman who attended one of Tevel b'Tzedek's first courses and is now director of the organization, notes that, "You learn to appreciate the Sabbath in a place where there is no law requiring employers to give their workers a weekly day of rest. There are people in Nepal who, except for holidays and a few days of leave a year, work day after day, every day of their lives, until they cannot go on any longer or until they die."


courtsy: shyam rokka



Navon recruited participants for the first course by email and through notes posted on bulletin boards, both in Israel and abroad. Gera Tsalihin, 25, arrived straight from India, after seeing such a notice in one of the guest houses where he stayed.



"I was looking for a way to travel and at the same time also get to know the people - a place that would provide me with the opportunity to do voluntary work. The course intrigued me," he says.



Upon returning to Israel after the course, Tsalihin and his friends contacted the growing number of Nepali who work in Israel in agriculture and nursing. They met a Nepali dance group that performed in Levinsky Park to try and raise money for the community. During one of the performances, the NGOs' members joined the musicians. Once the group's members overcame their shock, they invited the Israelis to a party afterward.



Since then the Israelis have become a permanent fixture - as friends, partners and volunteers in organizations that help migrant workers. Because most Nepali migrant workers in the country are women, Tevel b'Tzedek has organized a study group on women's rights, under the auspices of the Mesila Aid and Information Center for the Foreign Community in Tel Aviv. In the wake of this course, participants have founded an organization called Kol Ha'isha Hanepalit (The Voice of the Nepali Woman). Last month, members of this group attended a lecture about sexual harassment, with the Israeli volunteers translating when necessary.



"Sometimes there are incidents of harassment during our work, and many women do not know it is forbidden," says Chitrakar. "In Nepal it is forbidden as well, but people do not take it seriously."



Notes Laxmi Giri, 32, chairwoman of the Nepali women's group: "One of the problems is that Nepali women are very shy. Usually they will say nothing, even if someone takes advantage of them and behaves badly toward them."



Giri has lived in Israel for five years, speaks surprisingly good Hebrew and uses her knowledge and capabilities to help her countrywomen. "They tell me things they do not tell others and when I call and tell employers, 'Shalom, I am a volunteer with the Mesila aid organization,' they listen to me."



Tsalihin blames the Israeli government for failing to enforce the legal prohibition on levying a service charge for visas. The commissions that Nepali middlemen collect for arranging visas range from $8,000 to $10,000, he says. "Such a situation virtually constitutes a type of slavery and also provides fertile ground for abuse. Until they repay the loans, the women are scared to complain about anything; anyone can take advantage of them and do whatever he wants."



Among other things, Tevel b'Tzedek arranges monthly outings. After they gathered for the lecture last month, the women passed around photos taken a week earlier during a trip to Tiberias and Lake Kinneret. "Nepali men also come and so we get to know the country and one another," Chitrakar says.



The groups Israeli volunteers also participate in Nepali celebrations and occasionally in other social gatherings, too. About a month ago they all met at Jerusalem's Sacher Park, both men and women, to mark the opening of a branch of the women's organization in the capital. Giri addressed the group, while Tsalihin and Navon translated for the Israelis. Some Israeli women wore traditional Nepali garb for the event, although most Nepali showed up in jeans and T-shirts. Said one participant, "Each one loves what is new for him."

Yael Branovsky
Some 200 people protested in Tel Aviv Wednesday evening against the plan to deport Israeli-born children of illegal foreign workers and the government's "revolving door" policy, whereby foreign workers are deported and others are brought into the country to replace them.

A young woman from Nepal works as a caregiver for an elderly man. About two years ago she met a young Israeli man and became pregnant by him. She hid her pregnancy from her employer and his son, fearing that they would send her away as soon as they found out. She hung on until the end of her pregnancy, and when the time to give birth came, she went into the toilet and delivered her firstborn son, alone, in a foreign country.


She did not say a word to her family in Nepal since they would banish her if they knew about it. She succeeded in giving birth by herself, but did not know what to do with the umbilical cord. I don't know who called the ambulance. When she phoned the father of her child and asked him to take her to the hospital, he answered that he could not afford to order an ambulance. The only people who embraced her when she returned from the hospital were her employer and his son who took her to their hearts and enabled her to continue working with them and to raise her son in their home.



A year has passed since the birth. The child's father refuses to recognize his paternity. He has since left the country and does not want anything to do with the girl or their son. Her family does not hear from her. The Nepalese community is suspicious in her eyes of gossip and slander, and she therefore keeps her distance from them. Indian women that work as caregivers in her area usually help her with her son. Today when she came to see me, she left her son in the care of one of them. She showed me his picture - a handsome, chubby child. She is waging a campaign with the help of a lawyer and is trying to compel him, the fugitive father, to recognize his paternity and in this way receive Israeli citizenship for her son.



At present all her energy and strength are devoted to the cute smiling child who is waiting for her in the old man's home. Only during those moments when she tells me about the birth does she weep. She does not want her tears to be seen, and sits with her back to the others in the room. What strength is needed for a woman coping alone!



by: Irit Porat
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