Police in Tel Aviv got a warrant to close one of the city's brothels for 30 days, following the suicide of one of the prostitutes who worked there.

The police and the courts had secured warrants to temporarily close the brothel in past years, but the brothel, which had been functioning for about a decade, remained open for business. The police will now begin to investigate the establishment on suspicion of pimping and other crimes.

About 600 people demonstrated Saturday night near the brothel the daily Haaretz reported Sunday.

During the protest, Meretz party Knesset member Michal Rozin said she would call on State Comptroller Joseph Shapira to investigate why it had not been closed down.

Naomi Ze’evi-Rivlin, who directs the Saleet program for the rehabilitation of women who have worked as prostitutes, told Haaretz that the protest was the first demonstration on behalf of such women in Israel. “Jessica brought us onto the streets, if not during her lifetime then with her death,” she said, adding that Jessica’s was the 31st case of the death of a prostitute in Tel Aviv alone since Saleet was founded seven years ago, an average of a death every three months. The women’s average age at death of 40.

"Women in prostitution are the punching bag of consumers, fulfilling momentary gratification and fantasies and perversions for which they would never dare ask at home."

Some demonstrators carried signs saying “As long as a woman’s body can be bought, no woman is protected” and “All prostitution is rape.” Others carried signs with copies of death notices for Jessica and other women who died while working as prostitutes. The death notices were printed by Atzum, a group fighting human trafficking.

“Look at the death notices, at the initials of all of these women. Who would choose to die at such an age?” Zionist Union Knesset member Merav Michaeli asked the crowd rhetorically at the demonstration. “How can one speak [of prostitution as] a choice?” She said she would continue to pursue efforts to criminalize clients, as well as legislation to provide rehabilitation services for women who worked as prostitutes.

As demonstrators went to the building to post death notices and light memorial candles in Jessica’s memory, a man was escorting prostitutes to the second floor of the building.

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