Deaf Victims of Human Trafficking in Israel

Deaf News: Police crack ring that smuggled Deaf Eastern Europeans into Israel to work as beggars.

JERUSALEM, Israel -- Six human smuggling ringleaders arrested on suspicion of trafficking, forced labor, assault and rape. Police arrested six people on Monday suspected of smuggling Deaf people from Eastern Europe into Israel, forcing them to work as beggars and confiscating their earnings.

The six are suspected of serious offenses, including human trafficking, false imprisonment, forced labor, assault, rape, withholding passports and conspiring to commit a crime.

Police said they were detained in a “swift, professional and covert investigation,” based on information from the Population, Immigration and Borders Authority. The trafficking in Deaf people was first revealed by Haaretz almost two years ago.

Three of the suspects are from Rishon Letzion, with the others from Ashkelon, Netanya and Bat Yam. They are believed to have brought Deaf people from Eastern Europe into Israel on tourist visas, forcing them to work as beggars, often treating them violently and extorting and threatening them.

Police say the ring provided the beggars with housing, took away their passports and confiscated a significant portion of the money they earned. One of the victims is believed to have been sexually assaulted, police said.

The beggars come from relatively poor countries, like Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and Estonia, population authority officials said. The ring also used Deaf Israelis and Palestinians. Ten beggars who were being held in an apartment in the Netanya area were brought to a shelter for victims of human trafficking.

The beggars carried notes enabling them to interact with bus drivers, taxi drivers and passersby. They also carried receipt books bearing the international symbol of the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing, along with dolls they would give to anyone giving them a donation. The population authority said the beggars worked places like the Azrieli Mall and Tel Aviv Port, the Gold Mall in Rishon Letzion, the Herzliya Marina and the Malha Mall in Jerusalem. During the summer they were even sent to Eilat.

They were forced to work 14-16 hours daily and each would take in an average of between 1,500 shekels ($397) and 2,000 shekels ($529) a day, of which they were allowed to keep only 200 shekels. The rest went to their handlers, ostensibly to pay for their plane tickets and accommodation.

The population authority said that dozens of beggars had been arrested, questioned and deported to their countries of origin in recent years. The administration’s enforcement division noted that it had given real-time information about the trafficking ring to the police and the Justice Ministry.

The authority said it first heard about this type of human trafficking three years ago, when two Deaf people from Eastern Europe were deported after being caught soliciting funds in Be’er Sheva for a fictitious organization. Their arrest spurred an investigation that revealed they were part of a ring of hundreds of beggars.

Yossi Hadad, who is responsible for the authority’s intelligence office in the south of the country, told Haaretz two years ago that the ringleaders would lure their European prey to Israel through dating websites for the Deaf.

SOURCE - Haaretz

Philistine Cemetery May Solve Biblical Mystery

Ancient philistine cemetery in Israel could solve one of the Bible’s biggest mysteries in the history of mankind.

ASHKELON, Israel -- The Independent News: One of the Bible’s deepest and most important mysteries may be about to be solved.

Archaeologists appear to have found a cemetery belonging to the Philistines for the first time ever, along with the remains of 200 people who were buried there. And together they might help shed light on one the Bible’s most mysterious people.

The scientists have said that the members of the Biblical nation didn’t appear to be “philistines” finding the people buried alongside jewellery and perfumed oil. They will now conduct further tests that could shed yet more light on the maligned people. Those discoveries might be enough to make us rethink today’s use of the word philistine, which tends to refer to uncultured people who don’t know enough about the arts.

"The Philistines have had some bad press, and this will dispel a lot of myths," said Lawrence Stager, an architect who has led the expedition that found the cemetery since 1985. "The Bible's Buried Secrets" from the KPBS.org TV show.

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Until now, most of our understanding of the Philistines came from the things that they have left behind. But now for the first time we have found their remains.

"After decades of studying what Philistines left behind, we have finally come face to face with the people themselves," said Daniel M. Master, professor of archaeology at Wheaton College and one of the leaders of the excavation. "With this discovery we are close to unlocking the secrets of their origins."

The discovery was finally unveiled Sunday at the close of a 30-year excavation by the Leon Levy Expedition, a team of archaeologists from Harvard University, Boston College, Wheaton College in Illinois and Troy University in Alabama.

The archaeologists kept the discovery a secret for three years until the end of their dig because of a unique hazard of archaeology in modern-day Israel: they did not want to attract ultra-Orthodox Jewish protesters, Mr Master said.

"We had to bite our tongues for a long time," he said.

In the past, the ultra-Orthodox have staged demonstrations at excavations where human remains are found, arguing that the remains could be Jewish and that disturbing them would violate a religious prohibition.

Mr Stager's team dug down about 3 metres (10 feet) to uncover the cemetery, which they found to have been used centuries later as a Roman vineyard.

On hands and knees, workers brushed away layers of dusty earth to reveal the brittle white bones of entire Philistine skeletons reposed as they were three millennia ago.

Decorated juglets believed to have contained perfumed oil were found in graves. Some bodies were still wearing bracelets and earrings. Others had weapons.

The archeologists also discovered some cremations, which the team say were rare and expensive for the period, and some larger jugs contained the bones of infants.

"The cosmopolitan life here is so much more elegant and worldly and connected with other parts of the eastern Mediterranean," Stager said, adding that this was in contrast to the more modest village lifestyle of the Israelites who lived in the hills to the east.

Archaeologists and biblical scholars have long believed the Philistines came from the Aegean region, based on pottery found in excavations of Philistine sites.

But scholars have debated where exactly in the Aegean region the Philistines came from: Mainland Greece, the islands of Crete or Cyprus, or even Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey.

The bones might hold the answers, said archaeologist Yosef (Yossi) Garfinkel, an Israeli expert on the period who did not participate in the dig. He called the cemetery find "a very significant discovery indeed."

The excavation of the cemetery has also shed light on Philistine burial practices.

The Philistines buried their dead with perfume bottles, placed near the face. Near the legs were jars that likely held oil, wine or food. In some cases, archaeologists found the dead were buried wearing necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and even toe rings. Some were buried with their weapons.

"This is how Philistines treated their dead, and it's the code book to decoding everything," said archaeologist Adam Aja, a participant in the dig.

Finds from the cemetery went on display Sunday in an Israel Museum exhibition held at the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem.

SOURCE - Independent

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Deaf EMT Better Than Some Hearing Staff

Deaf EMT 'better than some hearing staff' with ambulance company.

BETHLEHEM, Israel -- Chad Grabousky, Global Medical Transportation Services' first ever Deaf EMT, sits in the back of an ambulance last week at the company's Bethlehem headquarters.

Global Medical Transportation Services Ambulance Capt. Don Burslem didn’t know what to think when the person on the other line told him he was on the phone with a Deaf person.

How could he hire a Deaf emergency medical technician for the Bethlehem-based ambulance company? EMTs need to communicate with their patients, with their partners, with hospital officials over the radio.

But Burslem decided to take a chance on hiring Chad Grabousky, and more than two months later, he’s very glad he did.

“His patients love him, our staff loves him, and he actually does a wonderful job in back of the ambulance, better than some of my hearing staff,” Burslem said.

Grabousky, 22, is glad Burslem took a chance with him. He became a state-certified EMT almost four years ago but has struggled to find paid work. He lives more than an hour north of Bethlehem in Lackawanna County but had little luck finding work up there... Read The Full Story.

Israel’s First Deaf Flight Attendant

Drama teacher seeking to become Israel’s first Deaf flight attendant.

TEL AVIV, Israel -- The 51-year-old has been trying to persuade El Al to hire him for two years, but the airline has balked due to safety concerns. A 51-year-old man's quest to be Israel's first Hard of Hearing flight attendant fell on deaf hears this week after the Civil Aviation Authority refused to intervene.

Deaf drama teacher Shuki Assouline has been engaged in active talks with El Al for the past two years to convince the airline to hire him as flight attendant. However, the airline determined that it could not employ him as an attendant due to safety concerns.

The CAA declined a request to weigh in on the matter this week, saying that according to regulations a Deaf person could not serve as a pilot, but that it does not maintain any medical guidelines for flight attendants. Instead, the CAA said commercial airlines were free to set their own standards and that Assouline should contact the airlines directly.

"I want to make history and become Israel's first Deaf flight attendant," Assouline said in an interview conducted by email. "For 51 years I have known that I am meant to be an El Al flight attendant."... Read The Full Story.