Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Pimping, Prostitution and ... and the pro-Israel camp?

I am going to go out a limb here but, as my veteran readers know, I am willing to go that extra step.

I skimmed the following story, and then went back to read it and made the decision to propose to you that its subject is a paradigm of sorts for Israel's less-than-staunch so-called 'supporters'. It deals with runaways who get ensnared in selling themselves for sex. Somehow, I sensed a resonation.

I'll select some excerpts and maybe you'll agree with me (but bear with me for a while):-

She ran away...grew so desperate that she accepted a young man’s offer of a place to stay. The price would come later.

They had sex, and he soon became her boyfriend. Then one day he threatened to kick her out if she did not have sex with several of his friends in exchange for money.

She agreed, fearing she had no choice. “Where was I going to go?”...

...explaining why she did not cut off the relationship once her first boyfriend became a pimp and why she did not flee prostitution when she had the chance [she said] “I’d also fallen for the guy. I felt trapped in a way I can’t really explain.”

...[his] task was to get Roxanne to consider leaving her pimp without forcing her to admit she had one. He needed to push hard enough to break her from her rehearsed script, without descending into a frustrating game of wits, a contest in liar’s poker. And he had to do all this at exactly the wrong time and place — at the police station after an arrest for solicitation, when the girl felt most panicked and most angry about being treated like a criminal.

A runaway’s relationship with a pimp does not occur by accident. It takes work...pimps described the complicated roles they played as father figure, landlord, boss and boyfriend to the girls who worked for them. They said they went after girls with low self-esteem, prior sexual experience and a lack of options.

“With the young girls, you promise them heaven, they’ll follow you to hell,” said Harvey...“It all depends on her being so love-drunk off of me that she will do anything for me."...Built of desperation and fear, the bonds they form with their pimps are difficult to break. Some girls continue working for pimps even after the pimps are incarcerated.

“My job is to make sure she has what she needs, personal hygiene, get her nails done, take her to buy an outfit, take her out to eat, make her feel wanted,” said another pimp...Wayne...wrote that the girls have to be convinced that the pimp is best equipped to handle their clients and finances.

Runaways are especially attractive recruits because most are already engaging in survival sex for a place to stay...Controlling girls through beatings or threats was common, but coercion was not an effective basis for a lasting relationship, most pimps emphasized.

“Everything about the game is by choice, not by force,” said Bryant

Okay, if you've reached this far, sit back and consider: renegades from Israel, Zionism and Judaism and move into the 'anti-' camp, do they display any of the characteristics you read above? Do they seek to comfort of those that exploit them? Do they refuse, despite their pain, to release themselves from a situation that harms them and harms Israel?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

BTW, the J street folks has made their choice

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1256557968276&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

J Street's university arm has dropped the "pro-Israel" part of the left-wing US lobby's "pro-Israel, pro-peace" slogan to avoid alienating students