Between Universal Human Rights and Ethno-National Values: Israel's Contested Adoption of the Global Anti-Trafficking Norm

Earlier studies on Israel's combat against human trafficking largely focused on United States pressure as the key factor that led Israel to change its attitude and adopt the global anti-trafficking norm. This article, instead, highlights the consistency of Israel's stand in the face of international pressure. Drawing on Knesset protocols, our analysis demonstrates that throughout the translation process, Israeli lawmakers unfailingly modified the anti-trafficking norm to make it compatible with the Zionist value of Jewish-only immigration. Although transnational advocacy networks urged states to view trafficking as a human rights abuse and to prioritize protection of survivors, Israel chose a different path—it promoted a crime-fighting approach that emphasized the primacy of prosecution of traffickers and prevention of trafficking while marginalizing protection of victims. When the United States and the UN began to advance a crime-fighting approach, congruence with local policies and practices emerged, but protection of trafficking survivors remained a contested issue.