 In the battle for the winning narrative about Israel, a huge amount of information and disinformation goes back and forth between the two sides. But one of the most intriguing examples I've come across, at least in recent memory, was this page from the Light of Messiah Ministries, which is a Christian organization which tries to convert Jews to Christianity. The page in question is entitled, Prostitution is Legal in Israel. If the organization decides to delete the page you'll just have to take my word that the screenshots were real. And if they sue me then please chip in with the legal expenses. The page is pretty funny and it opens with, Prostitution is Legal in Israel. This might come as a shock to you, but it's true. Then it goes on a sort of long religious crusade about how bad this is that I'll spare from repetition. The Light of Messiah Ministries is an organization whose mission statement is to take the message of Jesus back to the Jewish people. That's an actual quote from our Vision page. It organizes tourists to Israel quite regularly and according to its website at least it has a pretty packed schedule and store for 2024. However the information it presents about Prostitution in Israel is completely inaccurate. When it comes to regulating Prostitution countries tend to take a few approaches. Wikipedia has an interesting map documenting these by jurisdiction. Some countries ban the selling of sex or associated activities like operating brothels but turn a blind eye to the customers or at least don't punish them. Other countries target both the buying and selling of sex but target the organizers of Prostitution rather than individual sex workers. This regime is generally considered more progressive because it aims to reduce the pressure on sex workers who may have been trafficked into the trades. Finally there are of course a couple of jurisdictions where selling and buying sex is as legal as buying a croissant from your local cafe which is to say that it's totally permitted. In the grand scheme of things Israel actually had a pretty lack stance towards Prostitution until 2018. While organized Prostitution was banned there were enough workarounds that it could pretty much happen in broad daylight by simply finding creative names to describe a brothel. Due to the geography of Jewish immigration to Israel the country has historically attracted lots of immigrants from Russia and the Ukraine. In fact as I just shared in my last video more than 10% of Israelis speak Russian as a native language. This combination of a lax legal regime around selling sex and the otherwise innocuous connection to Eastern Europe together made Israel sort of a hotspot for human trafficking and sex work. Years of campaigning resulted in that changing. In 2018 Israel criminalized buying sex thereby becoming the 10th country to adopt the so-called Nordic model. The Nordic model seeks to take a more compassionate approach to sex work by shifting the legal risk away from their prostitutes and onto their clients. Simultaneously sex workers are helped to leave sex work while their livelihood is jeopardized by the authorities targeting buyers. The legislation came into effect in 2020 although it's debatable how well it's really worked and what kind of difference is made on the ground. This subject may be one for a future video. But in theory at least outlawing the buying of sex is a lot more effective than buying the selling of it. So it's assumed to have helped to at least some extent. It's naive to think of course that in the year 2023 closing down a brothel or two will just get rid of prostitution. Instead it will simply shift from out in the open and into the privacy of online fora and private apartments. But targeting the buying of sex undoubtedly provides authorities with a lot more leeway to target sex works no matter what kind of guys it operates under. Before Israel changed its approach to sex work it used to be pretty common to see certain streets in Tel Aviv strewn with flyers advertising the services of call girls especially around big hotels. I wasn't doing youtube videos back then but anybody who used to walk down a Yorkeen street before that year knows exactly what I'm talking about. This changed after that legislation was introduced and enforcement was stepped up. Although how effective it has been and how effective measures to rehabilitate prostitutes have been is very much an open-ended subject worthy of exploration. All this is to say that prostitution is definitely not legal in Israel. To the contrary since 2020 Israel has been stepping up its effort to combat it through both making buying sex illegal and trying to improve the social services it offers to sex workers. If you enjoyed this video and would like to receive more in your youtube feed about socioeconomic issues in Israel then please consider subscribing to this channel.