“She was sleeping and he woke her up and dragged her brutally to his room,” said Olga Udovichenko, whom Svetlana later contacted for help at the Ukrainian Refugee Volunteer Aid Center in Haifa. Here you may just get a little help from the authorities. Instead of help, he ran into a maze of bureaucracy and lost all motivation to hold the guy accountable and seek justice.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is estimated to have killed more than 40,000 civilians and displaced another 30 million. With a war that exceeds three hundred days, 17. 7 million Ukrainians worldwide are in need of humanitarian assistance and protection, according to the United Nations.
Svetlana is among more than 47,000 Ukrainians, the vast majority of whom are women, who have traveled to Israel since the invasion began and are still not eligible for citizenship under Israel’s Law of Return, according to Israel’s Ministry of Social Affairs. Of these, only about 15,000 recently remain in Israel, and the rest have decided to leave. Not a single Ukrainian fleeing war has received prestige as a refugee in Israel.
An investigation through The Times of Israel documented cases of rape, sexual harassment, labor exploitation and other abuses suffered in Israel through those Arrays, many of which saw their homes destroyed and lost their livelihoods. At least one of them ended in death by suicide.
Many of those abuses remain at best under the government’s radar or, at worst, are deliberately ignored, leaving victims in a cycle of violence and poverty that only compounds the trauma they have endured so far. The perpetrators are still on the loose to commit more crimes.
When the war began, volunteer Udovichenko, originally from Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed to Ukraine in 2014, decided to do anything to help his fellow Ukrainians.
“My center was torn apart by my homeland,” says Udovichenko. A graduate student in criminology, Udovichenko to help those suffering cases of sexual abuse and harassment. He saw that social facilities were not readily available to Ukrainians arriving in Israel: “at least, not as far as is known,” he adds.
“The refugees told us that even if they contacted the police, they only spoke Hebrew. The same with social media: it’s a closed circle,” Udovichenko says.
When Svetlana approached her, Udovichenko was surprised to hear what she had endured.
“This guy [who protected Svetlana and her son] constantly threatened to throw them out on the street, deport her, tell all her friends and her circle of family that she was a bad user and dated a lot of men,” Udovicchenko explains. .
According to Udovikenko, the guy “would denigrate her, emphasizing that she is worthless, that she is nobody. “In an attempt to isolate her, he called his friends and family and spread rumors about her.
“In this way, I think he tried to make sure that she had nothing and that she felt isolated, helpless, so that she could completely depend on him and not tell anyone,” Udovichenko says.
The alleged rape happened at night, after weeks of obscene comments, innuendo and outspoken advice about sex.
“She was stunned, helpless and fearful for her and her son who was sleeping in the next room. I didn’t fully perceive everything that was going on. She told me it was as if everything was sinking into a kind of nightmare, as if she passively watched what happens for herself,” Udovichenko says.
It took Svetlana a long time to admit that she had been raped. “He felt a dissonance. He tried to rationalize rape,” Udovichenko says. It was just a payment for their hospitality and that was completely justified.
Svetlana moved in to stay with a friend. Udovichenko helped her with medical assistance and begged her to go to the police. Long interrogations followed. For weeks, he knew nothing. Later, he won a text message telling him the case had been closed because police had uncovered insubstantial evidence.
When Svetlana asked why, with former MP Ibtisam Mara’ana, police said they were being asked to appeal the ruling by offering more evidence. At the time, Svetlana, severely traumatized, said she no longer had the strength to continue the investigation. He has since left Israel for “a country that accepts refugees,” according to Udochenko.
“The guy made a lot of other people oppose her,” Udovichenko said. “When he tried to tell a mutual friend what had happened, he said, ‘What can you imagine?'”
Today, Svetlana’s alleged rapist is on the loose, and the case is isolated.
Statistics on crimes against Ukrainian refugees are difficult to obtain. A report released earlier this year by the Tel Aviv Center for Ukrainian Refugees noted that between March and August 2022, 3 other rape cases involving Ukrainian refugees were reported to police. There were also 18 instances of sexual harassment under police investigation and 12 instances of sexual harassment reported to volunteers but not reported to police, the report said.
Some main points of the alleged crimes were reported in the local media. In May, an Ashdod resident in his fifties arrested and charged with the alleged rape of a 19-year-old Ukrainian woguy who had fled the war. The guy allegedly showed up to help the woguy locate a task as a cleaning girl (Russian language) and, under the guise of providing to take her to work, instead took her to a hotel where he is accused of raping her.
In March, an Israeli boy arrested on suspicion of breaking into the apartment of a Ukrainian woguy in Jaffa, raping and robbing her (in Russian).
Activists say the real numbers are likely to be much higher, as many Ukrainians would never report the alleged abuse to police.
One of the biggest obstacles preventing Ukrainian women from obtaining redress and justice for such abuses is “the lack of available data on their rights and the difficulty of knowing them for themselves,” says Liora Turlevsky, a lawyer who handles many cases. for foreign women pro bono in parallel with their immigration law practice.
“The Israeli government shows a no for the plight of Ukrainian women and treats their demands with wonderful distrust. Even when there is transparent evidence of their claims, the truth shows that there is no will to move the wheels of justice and ‘waste’ public resources to obtain the advantages of a foreign woman,” she says.
Another thing is money. ” Naturally, such women have monetary difficulties and, since they are foreigners in Israel, they are not entitled to free legal aid and must pay thousands of shekels to personal lawyers for the realization of the fundamental maxim. rights,” Turlevsky said.
“The Israeli government shows a no to the plight of Ukrainian women and treats their demands with wonderful distrust. “
In some cases, the dire economic situation of women, coupled with the trauma of war, snowballs with the worst imaginable outcomes.
This summer, a Ukrainian woman who had fled the war committed suicide. According to others familiar with the matter who did not want to be named, she suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and economic anxiety in Israel, and had a pre-existing medical condition. She spoke several times with a psychologist through the government hotline* 5130. (The Ministry of Social Affairs says it comments on this express case. )
In a separate case, a Ukrainian from northern Israel who had fled the war attempted suicide this year when Interior Ministry officials accused him of promoting documents attesting to his Jewish roots to others who used them to gain the right to immigrate, says Leah Aharoni. founder of Our People, an organization that helps absorb Russian and Ukrainian Jews who have recently arrived in Israel.
“There are so many other vulnerable people who survive in desperate conditions and don’t get help,” an NGO employee who did not wish to be met told The Times of Israel.
Temporarily walking the short distance from her bus to reach the space where she works, Marina enters the construction as temporarily as possible, closes the door and looks through the curtains at the symptoms hiding outside.
“Every time I communicate about him, I have panic attacks,” she told The Times of Israel, speaking by phone on condition of anonymity about the guy who helped her come to Israel in June and who she says has been operating on it ever since.
Earlier this year, desperate to flee the war in Ukraine, Marina, whose deceased father was Jewish, attempted to officially immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return, which states that anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent can obtain citizenship. Chaos of the Russian bombing, you may simply not find the applicable documents and qualify. Already looking for the right evidence and filling out the paperwork, she will come to Israel anyway.
At the time, the Israeli government banned Ukrainians from running in Israel, a scenario she knew was untenable for her.
“I arrived here alone, with no savings. I knew Israel, a beloved country, so I needed to locate the paintings somehow,” Marina says.
A friend told him about Amir, an Israeli who had strong business connections in Ukraine, and said maybe just him.
“I talked to him and he said he would invite me to come, give me a job, an apartment, health insurance, everything, and he could lead a decent life,” she said, referring to the requirement for Ukrainians eligible for immigration to have an invitation letter from an Israeli citizen.
Instead, upon arrival, Amir placed Marina in a room shared with another woman in a small apartment covered in mold and mildew that also housed two other families. He told her he would do two five-hour cleaning shifts a day, one and both days. At the end of the shift, Marina overlooked her salary and Amir kept almost half, paying him the rest at the end of the month or “when it suited him,” she says bitterly.
The task of cleaning up hard physical pictures that Marina, at fifty years old, found too strenuous.
“We were passing squares in a minibus without air conditioning because of the summer heat. When we arrived, we had to run around the apartment, clean, dry, scrub everything as temporarily as possible,” says Marina. “I was drenched in sweat when the minibus arrived here to pick me up and the others. Many times, I almost vomited on the way home, so weak and exhausted that I was.
She says she has deteriorated drastically since arriving in Israel and now suffers from debilitating migraines and anxiety attacks.
When she told Amir she wanted to leave and find work, he threatened her.
“He got furious and said, ‘I’m a great guy, but I’m becoming a Satan for the one who turns his back on me. ‘He said if she left him, he would report her to the government and she would. “be deported “within 48 hours. “
Marina tried to flee once and find a lawyer, “but he charged me NIS 1,000 ($285) and then disappeared. “
All Ukrainians living in Israel, including those who arrived before the war, are deported, a right that has been renewed month by month through the Interior Ministry.
Marina tried to flee once and sought out a lawyer, “but he charged me 1,000 NIS ($285) and then disappeared. “.
While the other people exploiting them aren’t new, “the real challenge is politics,” says lawyer Anat Ben-Dor, a professor at Tel Aviv University’s Refugee Rights Clinic.
Non-Jews fleeing war in Ukraine are granted tourist prestige in Israel, a visa category that does not allow them to paint. I still don’t offer them with an official painting permit.
“The ministry announced on its online page that if an employer employs a Ukrainian, it will not be sanctioned for it. But it is too ambiguous. I communicate with employers and they find it very difficult; They become suspicious and end up providing the task. “As a result, many tasks are undocumented, giving workers a minimum wage and no rights if their employer decides to take credit for it.
In July, Israel imposed an impediment to earning a living for Ukrainians: a geographical limitation on where they can work. Unless they work in construction, agriculture, institutional nursing or hospitality, they are now prohibited from operating in 17 cities, adding primary centers such as Tel. Since most Ukrainians locate housing near relatives, relatives or friends, this is a serious problem, Ben-Dor says.
“I find it very abusive. It’s like having a two-sided policy: yes, you can work, but at the same time, he does everything he can to prevent them from doing it. I think the Home Office is blamed first for leaving. “those other vulnerable people,” Ben-Dor said.
In response, the Interior Ministry showed that other people who stay in Israel on a tourist visa cannot enter by law. However, due to the war in Ukraine, “the minister allowed them to enter Israel before September 30, 2022 and had to remain. “here to the paintings,” Sabin Hadad, spokesman for the Interior Ministry’s Immigration and Population Authority, told The Times of Israel. To come to Israel. La resolution to allow them to paint is official and published. So they can paint. “
On the move, outgoing Israeli Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked announced that as of January 1, 2023, Ukrainians who have arrived in Israel since October will no longer be able to paint.
The Times of Israel has heard many stories about how, due to ambiguous regulations and geographical restrictions, office exploitation is common. a higher percentage of an already meager salary.
“You have to fight with your teeth to get the money you earned,” Olga says. “Living as a Ukrainian in Israel is sugar and honey. In Ukraine, I kept trying to lose weight. Here in Israel, through all the stress, I lost 12 pounds [26 pounds] without even checking out,” he laughs bitterly.
Vika, a single mother with a 9-year-old daughter, escaped Kharkhiv with a suitcase and lately lives in Ashdod.
“It’s very difficult with paintings and not knowing the language. I presented paintings in a factory warehouse, without a contract because they said we had no rights, and then they didn’t pay us,” she says, adding that in the house in Ukraine she painted like a lawyer.
In the meantime, he is unable to take out health insurance, which imposes high costs for essential procedures. “Last month, my daughter had a toothache and needed a filling. He charged more than NIS 450 [USD 130],” he says.
“I need to go home, my parents are here. But Russia is bombing our power plants, they are all without light, without electricity. So, maybe in the spring,” says Vika.
Yulia, originally from eastern Ukraine, works as a caregiver 24/7. Her 8-year-old daughter accompanies her to work every day, taking online categories at her Ukrainian school.
“There are jobs that are advertised, like ‘come work at my massage parlor,’ but I try to avoid them. “
“I feel like the Israeli government hates us here. It’s like we smell or something,” Yulia says, describing her interactions with Interior Ministry officials.
Their assignments are temporary, all undocumented, and last a few weeks at a time. “Once a passerby saw me with my daughter on the street with a suitcase and presented us with a task cleaning a space for a few weeks. That’s how that’s sale. de,” says Yulia.
There are also many WhatsApp and Telegram teams offering jobs, without a paper trail, he says. “There are weird jobs that get advertised, like ‘come paint in my massage parlor,’ but I try to avoid them. “
Israeli government officials say they did what they could for Ukrainians in Israel, and then-Social Affairs Minister Meir Cohen said in August that they had won “a big hug from us and adequate and just civil and governmental assistance. “
“Israel will continue with Ukrainian citizens until the end of the war, either with the aid here in Israel or with the humanitarian aid we send to Europe,” he said.
Since it began operating in March 2022, the Tzav Hashaa Ministry of Social Affairs’ humanitarian aid program has spent NIS 110 million (more than $31 million) on aid to Ukrainians in Israel, such as offering another 12,000 people food stamps, as well as offering psychosocial offers for those who request it. comprehensive health insurance for people over 60, as well as emergency medical assistance. It also provided transitional accommodation to some 120 Ukrainians who had nowhere else to go.
However, in the case of a Jerusalem hotel, this took a dangerous turn.
Katya Chehova arrived in Israel in the spring of 2022 in a desperate attempt to save her left leg after shrapnel from a Russian missile prevented her from walking. When he returned home, doctors told him amputation was his only option. just to save her leg, but also to make her walk again, with the evacuation and arrival of Chehova broadcast by Israel’s Twelfth News Channel.
But after the hospital stay, along with 15 other Ukrainians, Chehova was placed via Tzav Hashaa in a Jerusalem hotel. He soon discovered that he rented rooms by the hour and threw wild parties almost every night, with sounds from others. People having loud sex that is too transparent through the thin walls of windowless rooms. Unable to walk and with no other choice, Chehova spent nearly two months there.
One night, amid deafening music, screams and moans coming from the nearby pool, Chehova heard someone knocking on the door and trying to enter his room. , felt absolutely helpless. ” There is no one at the front desk, no one to call for help. “
“At night, I closed my room as best I could from the inside,” he says, describing the hotel as located on a cul-de-sac of warehouses and next to a construction site. “He was unlikely to rest. I complained to the control and all they gave me was cash to buy earplugs.
Drunken parties and attempted break-ins were just some of the events.
“At that time, the ministry would bring the refugees and house them wherever it could,” Aharoni says. “We went to see it and it was literally a disaster. There was a hot tub that other people would close for a few hours and throw a crazy party. “– and now there were children [from Ukraine] there.
Along with the holiday, the hotel presented jobs to Ukrainians who stayed there.
“A Ukrainian refugee has become a masseuse,” says the former Chehova resident, adding that she didn’t know what kind of massages she had been asked to do. “Once there was a refugee assembly and we asked this woman to do a massage for a couple. She told them no, that the gathering of refugees was more important. Therefore, the hotel withheld part of the salaries of its previous jobs.
It took just two months to move the refugees to a safer and more suitable place.
“We made a lot of noise,” says Aharoni. Se a social employee from the Ministry of Social Affairs introduced. She said, “Yes, we knew [this hotel like that], but we had no choice. “It was the only post that would respond to the tender.
Just days after the story appeared in the Israeli press, the government discovered another hotel and displaced everyone.
The Ministry of Social Affairs says it is helping to locate housing for Ukrainian war refugees in emergency situations when they have nowhere else to go.
“As soon as we saw that it was not a suitable place, we took other people out and found a better solution for them,” said Naftali Yawitz of the Ministry of Social Affairs, confirming that the refugee motion took “a month and a half. “to two months maximum. Yawitz is director of the public affairs branch of the Ministry of Social Affairs and former director of Tzav Hashaa.
“Of course, no one knew what kind of hotel it was,” said Gil Horev, spokesman for the Ministry of Social Affairs, referring to the fact that several Ukrainian refugees in wheelchairs were housed in the hotel, which had no provision for others. people with disabilities.
In response to accusations that the hotel is a brothel, the Ministry of Social Affairs said it did not yet know if that was the case. “That’s what other people say, but we don’t know for sure,” Horev says.
“It’s a short episode, but I think it’s eye-opening: the formula rarely works well,” Aharoni says.
The hotel is now under new management. The Times of Israel visited twice in December and was banned from viewing cinemas once. Several flashy cars were parked outside, in a part of Jerusalem populated by building workers and wholesalers.
Local women running nearby exchanged suspicious glances when asked about the hotel. “There are ‘that kind’ of women coming in,” said one, while the others nodded when asked if the stall rented rooms by the hour.
Unlike in Europe, where Ukrainians who escaped the war are granted refugee status, language classes, limited access to public transport and social assistance, Israel has rarely identified them as refugees. However, those who come to Israel do so only because they have no choice. selection or because they may have a circle of family or friends here, says Zoya Levitin Pushnikov, Ukraine reaction coordinator for HIAS Israel, a nonprofit.
“In recent months, this has become a vulnerability issue,” she adds, explaining that women are at risk, especially because they rely heavily on others to survive.
“Once a woman is so absolutely deficient, it’s a bad idea, it can end badly,” she says, adding that in some of the volunteer centers HIAS is in contact with, one in 3 women seeking help talk about sexuality. harassment and/or exploitation they have suffered, occasionally on those who depend for their housing and/or sustenance.
Valerya Tregubenko, a psychologist who works privately and for public fitness provider Clalit, and who has also provided treatment to Ukrainians in Israel, says the assistance is far from a precedent for most who have fled the war.
“I think the state wants to perceive that right now, and in the next few years, they want mental because their total life is broken. They want support. It’s not enough to let them come here. We want to place them mentalArray data about fitness services,” says Tregubenko.
Their total lives are shattered. They want support. It’s enough to let them get here.
The Ministry of Social Affairs claims that the government’s Tzav Hashaa program includes mental treatment and that since operations began in March 2022, 428 Ukrainians have obtained such assistance, with 1,728 hours of personal in-person treatment.
“Treatment is presented to everyone, but everyone is willing to follow it,” says Yawitz of the Ministry of Social Affairs.
“We even tried texting our entire database providing loose intellectual aptitude in their language, but it wasn’t very successful,” he says.
Some are forced to turn to the sex industry to survive.
Naama Sabato, of the non-governmental organization Lo Omdot Me’negged, painted at Ben Gurion Airport as a social painter for women suspected of being trafficked to Israel for prostitution. Its main objective is to provide rehabilitation and shelter to these women in Israel. She began her paintings in October 2022, and has been called for such interviews several times a week.
“Since the beginning of the war [in Ukraine], it has become less difficult for Israel and women are more desperate,” she said. “Women tell me, ‘There are so many Israeli men on Instagram, it’s so easy. ‘»
“Most of the time, women know they’re sex paintings, but even when they do, they don’t know. “
“Women hear about those jobs basically from Israeli men posting on Telegram and other social media channels, jobs that look glamorous with fantastic salaries. Most of the time, women know they’re sex paintings, but even when they do, they don’t know, Sabato says, explaining that most of the women she talks to are 19 or 20.
“Often, his mother is worried [about his trafficking],” he says. “Prostitution, you come from a trauma and you create a new trauma. “
She shares with Ukrainians and knows some of the stories of trafficked women who are now in shelters: “The truth is that you are locked in a room in the middle of Israel and you have to paint a lot. You are illegal here, your paintings are illegal, your permanence is illegal, and your landlord maintains full control. He can’t do anything.
According to a segment on Israel in the U. S. State Department’s 2022 Human Trafficking Report. According to the U. S. , “the [Israeli] government’s efforts to investigate and criminally hold hard-working traffickers accountable have remained insufficient. “In 2021, police opened only 3 sex trafficking cases and investigated 118 crimes related to sex trafficking. All were “prostitution-related” offences.
Resources available to women who have been trafficked upon arrival in Israel are scarce.
Sabato is the only user who makes these paintings in all of Israel. While it was founded at Ben Gurion Airport, another airport (Ramon in southern Israel) operates many cheap flights from Eastern Europe and is close to the coastal city of Eilat, which is an infamous center for sex painters.
“We still don’t know what to do about it: the government isn’t that focused on it,” Sabato says.
Today, some Ukrainians in Israel expect the new government to do more for them.
Back in her task as housekeeper, Marina has again made the decision to cut all ties with her employer Amir. He saves money and searches for his own cleaning clients, adjusts his SIM card, locks numbers and moves.
“I have to do everything in my power to make sure he doesn’t locate me,” he says. “I can’t continue to work for him in this way, but I also can’t move from home to Ukraine. there. “
Many others have given up and are leaving Israel.
After deciding to appeal the police’s decision to close her case, Svetlana felt she could no longer stay in Israel and raise her son close to the guy who raped her, Udovichenko said.
Ella Udovichenko: “God will be your judge. “
(Some names in this article have been for coverage of individuals. )
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