To Haifa By Train

We’ve begun to pierce through the bubble of Tel Aviv to points beyond---Haifa, Jerusalem, Netanya and Kfar Vitkin. As our friend Atar’s husband Gil put it, “There’s the country of Tel Aviv and there’s the rest of the country.” To start the tour….

Recently I made my first solo trip by train to Haifa, departing from the station near the university for the hour-long ride up the coast. I checked the timetable and waited for the announcement of the train’s arrival on platform #1. A number of trains came and went near the expected departure time but I waited until I heard the right destination. Just to be sure, when I entered the train I looked for a friendly face and queried, “Haifa?” “Keyn” (yes), answered the solid looking older woman with gray hair, her gold teeth gleaming. She motioned me to take one of two open seats facing her across the table. The train started up and almost immediately her cellphone blasted the Torreodor Song from Carmen. She answered, “Da, Da” in Russian and continued to talk for a few minutes, a scene that was repeated periodically during the trip. Next to her sat a quiet young woman in jeans, while behind her lounged a gregarious group of young men listening to Arabic music and bantering alternatively in Hebrew and Arabic. One member of the group spent a good deal of time speaking in Arabic into the cell phone plastered to his ear beneath his hoodie. About half way through the trip he stood up and it was then that I noticed he was wearing army khakis and carrying a rifle. Possibly he was one of the many Druze youth who serve in the army traveling home to a village near Haifa. Across the aisle sat two young men in casual attire wearing kippot and in front of them two secular Israeli guys carried on a spirited exchange in Hebrew. A polyglot microcosm of Israeli society. There are three stops in Haifa. As we neared the first stop at Hof Carmel, across from the beautiful beach a forest of high rise buildings suddenly appeared sporting the logos of familiar high-tech companies- Microsoft, Siemens, Phillips, Google,etc. As the train pulled into in the port area hesitated slightly, wondering if this was the central Haifa HaShmona stop I needed. My Russian friend piped up, “Haifa, Haifa”, so I quickly made my way to the exit.

Arriving a bit early for my meeting at the Shatil offices, I wandered up and down HaAtzmaut (Independence), the main boulevard in the port area. The Shatil office is located on HaAtzmaut directly across from the train station in a building that also houses other social change organizations such as Economic Empowerment for Women and Mahut, a hotline and employment training project for women workers. Shatil, an empowerment center connected with the New Israel Fund, provides training and support for social change organizations in Israel. With branches throughout the country, they support projects that address human/civil rights, democracy, religious tolerance, women’s issues, socioeconomic equality and environmental justice and they promote coalition building to address these issues. I had an appointment with Liora Asa and Fathi Marshoud, the director of the Haifa office. Liora, a woman in her 40’s, wearing brown jeans with a flowered pattern and a colorful top, greeted me warmly with an Anglo accent. While we were waiting for Fathi to become available we started playing Jewish geography. It turns out we are connected by less than six degrees of separation. We discovered that Liora’s mother graduated from Hamilton High School in Los Angeles, my alma mater, eight years before me. And, she lived on the same street as my grandparents! Liora grew up in Fullerton (Orange County) where her father was the rabbi at the Reform synagogue. Like me, she also went to UC Berkeley for her undergraduate degree. It’s hard to beat that for coincidence. Liora and Fathi filled me in on the various projects or organizations they support or know about that are doing good work on sex trafficking, migrant workers’ rights, domestic abuse, women’s economic development and employment discrimination. Fathi and the director of the Jerusalem Shatil office are working on a proposal for a project to increase Arab women’s participation in the Israeli labor force. From Liora I got some good suggestions about folks to contact to see if they could use some volunteer help.

As we finished and I reached for the door handle to leave, it swung open and Elana Dorfman entered. A woman of my generation, she was a founder of the Battered Women’s hotline and shelter in Haifa, and more recently, started Mahut, a hotline and support project for women workers. She is a longtime member of Isha L’Isha (Woman to Woman) a pioneer feminist organization in Haifa. We hit it off immediately and found a lot of common interests. Serendipity struck when she remembered an online presentation on sex trafficking which she thought might be happening that afternoon. She invited me to return after lunch to participate in this online event.

I spent about an hour strolling through the nearby German Colony at the foot of the impressive Ba’hai Gardens that rise up the steep hill from the port. As I made my way back down Ben Gurion, a street lined with interesting looking restaurants, I spotted a sign in Hebrew in front of Fattoush, a restaurant with a lovely patio and appealing menu: “Forbidden to enter with weapons.” Although I supported this request, I didn’t have enough time to linger over my lunch so I enjoyed a toasted cheese and vegetable sandwich, Israeli salad and olives, and a cappuccino at a small café a few blocks from the Shatil office. I returned to Shatil where Elana and I signed in for the webinar on “The Jewish Response to Sex Trafficking,” organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council and the New York/Jerusalem Experts Exchange. The first speaker was Rita Chaikin, the Anti-Trafficking Project Coordinator at Isha L’Isha . She is a vibrant young woman who has been instrumental in raising public awareness and prodding the Israeli government to adopt policies to combat sex trafficking and assist victims. Sex trafficking had become a big problem here with Eastern European women being trafficked into Israel through Bedoin trade routes (guns and women are profitable commodities). Rita, the Israeli Women’s Network and a coalition of 15 NGO’s and human rights organizations began working on this issue over ten years ago in 1997. Finally in 2000 the government passed a law against trafficking for the purpose of prostitution, but only after a U.N. report put Israel in the third (worst) tier of countries for trafficking in persons. The situation has improved due to the coordinated effort of the women’s organizations and Isha L’Isha is still working to get more legal and financial assistance to the women who want to escape the business but fear deportation. They are also working with Eastern European organizations and consulates to facilitate safe return without deportation for those who want to go home. They want to make sure that the women have access to rehabilitation and compensation after they return home. Another big effort is being made to distribute leaflets in public places to make potential clients aware of how they can help the women and to ensure that punishment of traffickers is enforced. Currently the flow of women trafficked from Eastern European countries has declined but the traffickers have become more sophisticated and buy private apartments to reduce visibility. Also, there has been an increase in trafficking from China and trafficking of Israeli women within the country and to Europe. Rita’s presentation gave me a lot to think about.

I was glad I had the chance to meet Elana and hope to return to Haifa to visit with her and meet more folks from Isha L’Isha. The return trip to Tel Aviv on the train was uneventful except for the fact that I sat across from another Russian woman, this time blonde and middle aged, wearing an eye-catching pair of black leather pants with a design cut into them with alternate strips of see through material.