Israel is the holy land from the old times and in this era, there are many things being associated with the land of Jesus’ birth.
Despite the fact that Jesus was anointed by a prostitute before His death, the possibility that the oldest trade would thrive in Israel mostly would have been almost nil. Wrong!
In a government-commissioned study, there were up to 12,730 sex workers in 2014, each with approximately 660 clients a year. Tel Aviv is the centre of Israel’s sex industry.
According to the Haaretz, outside the old bus station in Tel Aviv, the average age of the girls entering prostitution is 13 to 14 years. Imagine that.
The survey into prostitution found that annual payments to sex workers were estimated at 1.2 billion shekels which is an equivalent of $308.2 million that year. In Kenya shillings, this is a mind boggling Sh30.8 billion. This is several Thika Road-like projects equivalent.
Social affairs and public security ministries conducted the survey and found that Israel had between 11,420 and 12,730 prostitutes that year. 95 percent of them female meaning there is also a clientele that is catered for by male prostitutes.
These numbers show that each sex worker had approximately 660 clients a year.
Sadly, as many as 1,260 minors were employed as prostitutes or they were at risk of prostitution in 2014. On the brighter side, the Social Affairs Ministry has a current budget of 22 million shekels to combat prostitution with about two-thirds of this money earmarked for dealing with minors.
Israel is famed as the land of milk and honey but the survey sampling some 600 female sex workers revealed economic hardships as the reason many joined the trade.
The women surveyed said they took an average of 5 clients daily and that they normally worked two and a half days a week. Some women said they took more than seven clients a day.
To make this trade even more accessible, there were 670 adult sex websites in 2014, including erotic pictures of women and men offering to pay for sex. There are also apps for these purposes.
The findings show a change in the sex industry in Israel where in the past it was an underworld one dominated by pimps.
For male sex workers, 68 percent provide sex exclusively to men while 23 percent serve only women. Nine percent provided sex to both men and women.
41% of the men said they were sex workers because they were attracted to the profession while 40 percent said economic hardship drove them into the trade.
So just in case, now you have another view of the land and milk land.
Photo: A sex worker. Tel Aviv is the centre of Israel’s multi-billion shilling sex industry. (Huffington Post)