Stop protecting pimps

Every year, thousands of women arrive here to see their rights being stripped from them along with their passports. They are fully exploited, regularly raped and threatened, forced to engage in prostitution day and night, and at times receive nothing from the money given to them by the client.

The protest passed through the streets while attracting little attention among passerby and shoe store owners. At one point it reached the corner of Levinsky and Rosh Pina streets, where a neon heart declares the existence of a brothel.

At that point, the rally leaders chose to stop and use a megaphone to speak to the prostitutes, pimps, and customers inside. The two police officers who secured the protest stood next to the brothel's door while protecting both those inside and outside.

The police officers performed the task they were given that day very well, and still, the sight was depressing – cops who are familiar with the law are standing at the entrance to a building, where it is clear that endless crimes are taking place: Exploitation, rape, violence against women, and who knows what else. They did not open the door and did not do a thing.

The night before I saw two police detectives at the nearby Florentin neighborhood charging at a young guy who dared light up a marijuana cigarette at a public place and screaming at him that should he fail to get rid of it, he'll find himself with a police record. Yet this time – nothing. Not even a warning.

It was clear that even after we leave, a well-armed police unit would not be storming the site. I have no doubt it is teeming with action at this very moment.

That's ok, I comforted myself, after all there's logic to those things – these pimps are used as police informers. We cannot just storm their business as long as the intelligence system relies on them. Top officials obviously did a sophisticated calculation here: Maintaining the brothels will provide more security to a larger number of people than raiding them and shutting them down.

Laws should be enforced

Yet this week I was forced to rethink the issue. The disappearance of serial rapist Benny Sela revealed that the Tel Aviv police lack adequate intelligence information. Sela himself apparently arrived at the vicinity of the central bus station on the day of his escape and visited his mother's home, which is located there.

The police chose, for some reason, not to deploy officers at the mother's residence so they were late in discovering the wanted criminal's appearance in the neighborhood.

"In recent years," wrote Buki Naeh in Yedioth Ahronoth, "the police ruined with their own hands the intelligence they had at the central bus station, so they have no clue as to what's going on at the sewage pit in the lowest place in Tel Aviv."

If indeed the Tel Aviv police's system of informers among mob figures has crumbled, it must be reestablished in order to prevent such failures in the future. Yet first we should exploit this period to raid brothels and bring their operators to justice.

Many pimps in Tel Aviv are walking around with complete immunity that is unjustified. It is indeed possible that we cannot completely rid ourselves of prostitution, and it may be very difficult to safeguard the health and wellbeing of abducted, tortured women – yet the State justifiably legislated strict laws against this phenomenon and today authorities have no excuse not to enforce them.