The COVID-19 pandemic has had a collateral effect on marginalized populations, including individuals in the sex trade (IST). In addition, the literature of the past year has documented a significant impact of the pandemic on healthcare providers. However, there is a lack of research on the new challenges and existing hardships facing aid organizations working with IST populations. This naturalistic qualitative study used semi-structured interviews with 33 IST aid organization workers in Israel between May and July 2020 to capture their perceptions and experiences within broader social-relational contexts. Data analysis revealed that the pandemic impacted three different arenas: The assistance systems and the quality of care; The relationship between aid organizations and state authorities; and The intra-organizational and inter-organizational relationship. These findings add to the knowledge about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on aid organizations, particularly the need for greater collaboration between aid organizations during health crises and governmental support for these organizations. In addition, the study highlights the opportunities that a global and local health crisis can create advancing new knowledge and practices used by aid organizations in their work to assist IST populations.  

In this article, I analyze the role of the Israeli online arena in attempts to challenge attitudes toward sex work and the sex industry. By exploring the short history of the "feminist sex wars" that are being conducted on public feminist Facebook pages, I ask whether online activism can really avoid being drawn into the realm of conventional offline politics. The article argues that while the various Facebook pages aimed to alter the landscape of political and public discourse around sex work and the sex industry, they were in fact sucked into the vortex of the existing public discourse surrounding sex work in Israel, forcing them to choose sides in the dialectic sex wars. I conclude that they nonetheless succeeded in establishing a "narrative of influence" which should be analyzed beyond the disappointment of specific policy outcomes. Online activism thus becomes a key platform for both the construction and contestation between different narratives within the sex industry. 

KEYWORDS: Feminist sex wars; sex work policy; social media; feminist activism 

In this article, I discuss the unique masculine repertoire of Israeli clients of street-based sex work. In doing so, I aim to reveal the deep meaning of sex consumption on the street while reflecting on the way in which universal and local masculine repertoires are negotiated and contested. Based on a discourse analysis of online sexual reports, the article focuses on clients' metaphoric language of themselves as hunters when describing sexual encounters on the street, arguing that the hunting metaphor has become a channel through which a community of "warriors" has been built. The sexual script of the hunter is a mixture of intersecting characteristics from the universal dominant repertoire of hegemonic, heteronormative hyper-masculinity with characteristics from the two Israeli masculine hegemonic repertoires: the combat soldier and the Halutz (pioneer). The sexual script of the hunter thus functions as a platform on which other relations of power, especially between men themselves, are played out and contested. 

Keywords Masculinity · Hegemonic masculinity · Street-based sex work · Clients · Online communities · Israeli society 

For centuries, prostitution was perceived as a normative masculine identity marker, part of the male adolescent's sexual education, something "men do", while the youngsters are taught to remain silent about it. Israeli sex clients who are consumers of prostitution services in Israel and who develop online communities with their peers, have violated the silence surrounding the topic. This article focuses on the unique jargon produced by the clients, who encompass three characters: the consumer, the hunter, and the addict. By means of these three characters, I show how a multiplicity of textual voices is created and serves to consolidate the various dimensions of male identity. This was made possible as a result of the online sphere being used as a carnival space (Bakhtin, 1984 [1968]), thereby enabling the sexual act to become the heart of the debate. The screen carnival reveals rather than conceals the deeper layers of the complex phenomenon of commercial sex consumption, which has remained hidden and marginal in Israeli academic research until now. 

An extensive literature addresses various subcultures in language, but there exists little research into language use by populations involved in prostitution. This paper contributes to knowledge about prostitution by investigating the connection between language, culture and sexuality among young women involved in prostitution in Israel. Based on qualitative research including two years of fieldwork, the paper presents a "pussy language" – a linguistic sexuality which constitutes an ambiguous space and linguistic testimony to their life course. The "pussy language," I argue, is a unique languaculture consisting of a vast variety of intersecting, contradicting and complementary meanings. Although this "pussy language" has a limited vocabulary, their myriad ways of pronouncing just a few words reflects an intellectual richness and linguistic virtuosity. 

This study seeks to contribute to the existing body of knowledge pertaining to the interrelations between power, class, ethnicity, and nationality, by using Hapoel Bnot Sakhnin as a case study.  This research applies qualitative methodology and was carried out during 2004-2007.  The guiding question addresses the manners in which an excluded female citizen is transformed into a 'good' citizen in a unique national, gender and local context.  The study shows that football plays an important role in shaping the women's gender and ethno-national identity and in creating an intimate connection between the two discourses.  It further reveals that the women's complex placement forces them to position themselves as 'good Arabs' vis-à-vis the society in Israel and as 'good women' whilst faced with the local, masculine Arab surroundings.  They therefore become 'good Arab women' in an attempt to refrain from threatening both groups.  The football team thus demarcates the 'correct' borders as well as the meeting points of the various identities.  The team generates a uniform identity relevant to the 'approved' form of femininity and the 'proper' manifestation of womanhood of Arab nationality-ethnicity.