Residents of the Neveh Sha’anan neighborhood in south Tel Aviv could hardly believe their eyes on Sunday afternoon (March 12th)  when police cars turned up at 11 addresses from where brothels were being operated and announced that the establishments were being shut down immediately. The officers showed the women and men working at these brothels administrative closure orders signed by the commander of the police’s Tel Aviv District, Deputy Commissioner Ami Eshed, which ordered their immediate closure for 30 days. After that, the police intend to have them closed down permanently.

This unusual police activity comes less than two weeks after Shomrim and the N12 website published a report which found that no fewer than 31 brothels,  that police were aware of their existence,  have been operating openly in the neighborhood – alongside drug dealers selling their wares in broad daylight.

Dozens of officers were involved in the raid on these brothels and representatives of Tel Aviv Municipality and volunteers from the Saleet NGO, which helps women in prostitution. These are the people who are responsible for  helping the women, who worked in the closed brothels, find new accommodation and aiding them to break out of the  prostitution ring.

“I spoke to the commander of the local police station, Chief Superintendent Moshe Avital, and I thanked him for being true to his word and making good on his promise to close the brothels,” says Moti Katz, the head of the local residents’ association. “We are still a long way off celebrating, but after decades of police indifference and inactivity, yesterday we saw significant enforcement operations in our neighborhood for the first time and we can breathe just a little bit easier.”

In the days before Sunday’s operation, workers at the brothels in question were subtly informed that police were planning to crack down on them. The Shomrim/N12 report, coupled with a petition to the Supreme Court filed by residents last August, which has been scheduled for a hearing in May, apparently gave the police and Tel Aviv Municipality the push they needed.

On Sunday afternoon, armed with closure orders signed by the district commander, officers from the Sharett station arrived in the neighborhood and announced that 11 brothels in Neveh Sha’anan neighbrgood were being shuttered. In a conversation with residents, Avital said that additional establishments would be closed in the near future. “This operation was not sudden,” says Yoav Ben-Artzi, the head of Tel Aviv Municipality’s welfare department that deals with addicts, homelessness, and rehabilitating former prisoners and women in prostitution. “The women realized that this was going to happen and we, as the municipality, prepared a welfare response to the police operation and drew up a plan offering therapy, treatment and rehabilitation. The police raided the main establishments in Neveh Sha’anan and we know all the women working there. We offered them all a place to stay, rehabilitation and financial assistance in the form of food stamps and initial help.”

Following  the raids, authorities now know that 38 women were working in the establishments in question, the vast majority of whom did not live in the brothels but had different residential addresses. On the morning after the raid, when municipality officials came to the brothels that had been closed down, the women were nowhere to be found, even though some were sent by the municipality for treatment and to overnight shelters. Not one of them showed up and their whereabouts are currently unknown.

Katz: “We are still a long way off celebrating, but after decades of police indifference and inactivity, yesterday we saw significant enforcement operations in our neighborhood for the first time and we can breathe just a little bit easier"

‘There are Written Orders and Verbal Instructions’

For decades, the Neveh Sha’anan neighborhood was Tel Aviv’s crime center, drawing in most of the prostitution, drug dealing and crime in the city – while the police remain almost helpless and limited to sporadic operations at best. Neighborhood residents who spoke to Shomrim describe a situation of neglect and crime that they are forced to endure because of the lack of enforcement. The original report included an exclusive recording from a meeting between local residents and Chief Superintendent Avital, shortly after he was appointed to the Sharett police station. In that conversation, Avital admitted that there was a shortfall of officers for regular enforcement operations and explained that, as a result, only a handful of streets in the neighborhood were being dealt with.

Residents were furious that the police were doing nothing. For years, the explanations that residents received from the police and Tel Aviv Municipality made them suspicious that selective enforcement was being employed in the city and that in Neveh Sha’anan there was apparently a policy of turning a blind eye to crime.

One former senior police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity told Shomrim, when it comes to enforcement in Neveh Sha’anan “There are written orders and then there are verbal instructions”. The officer added that when the police cracked down on crime in the neighborhood, there was a noticeable uptick in crime on streets in the city center. According to Katz, “Senior officers told us in the past that if they were to close brothels in Neveh Sha’anan, there would be more rapes in north Tel Aviv. It’s nothing short of scandalous that the police and city hall admit that anything goes in our neighborhood.”

As mentioned, the police activity located the woman working at these brothels and, according to Tel Aviv Municipality, only a fraction of them were drug addicts with no fixed address. Neveh Sha’anan residents have mixed feeling about the authorities lack of sufficient assistance  to these women. “You have to remember that, on the other hand, there are female residents, normative women who live in this neighborhood and are frequently subjected to sexual harassment and assault by men looking for sex services, who see any woman walking in the street as a prostitute,” says Katz. “These women can breathe a little easier now and we want to thank the commander of the local police station for promising to act and making good on his promise. He did something the police refused to do in the neighborhood for many years.”

Tel Aviv Municipality said in response that it would continue to monitor the women who worked in the brothels that were closed down by police and would continue to help them find a path out of prostitution.