The Justice Ministry, police and voluntary organizations are looking into the possibility that Israeli women are being recruited to work abroad as prostitutes. The suspicion has arisen from advertisements published in the Russian- and Hebrew-language press, and from reports from women and their families.

The Woman to Woman organization told police last week about a girl who had planned to fly to London but changed her mind and remained here. However, she told the group that her friend who had gone there at the end of June found that the work conditions were very different from those she had been promised.

Sharry Aharoni of Woman to Woman spoke to one such girl by telephone after she had been treated very violently. She said the Israelis are put up in shoddy quarters, not in luxurious houses as promised. Their movements are restricted, they are under video surveillance and their telephone calls are monitored. They get one or two clients a day and their photographs are on the Internet.

Aharoni said that the women are taken to London by Israeli intermediaries with the intention of serving Jewish clients. "We call on Israeli women not to be tempted and not to answer these ads," Aharoni said.

Aharoni said some of the women are veteran Israelis and others are new immigrants. The girl who changed her mind was told she would earn 70 pounds for every client but in fact they receive far less.

An ad was published on July 2 in a Haifa-region local newspaper in Russian, inviting women aged 18-35 to work in a club in London. Last year Rita Haikin, who is in charge of combating the white-slave trade at Woman to Woman, sent the police similar ads.

Haikin herself called one of the numbers and presented herself as a new immigrant with financial problems. She said the woman who answered told her she would have two or three clients a day and they would ensure her good health.

"She told me to come for a photograph. I told her I'm ugly but she said it was not important and I should come because I would earn a lot. She said I might even find myself a businessman there. She sounded very convincing," Haikin said.

Last year another ad appeared in a daily Hebrew paper offering a strip-tease course at a Tel Aviv sex club. Those who excelled, the ad promised, would be sent abroad, says Yehudit Ilani, director of Ta'ir, which operates a center for victims of sexual abuse .

Ilani asked someone to telephone the number in the ad, and she was promised work in London as a stripper and that she would earn 400 pounds per day. The man who answered the call - an Israeli, judging by his accent - asked the applicant for the size of her breasts and said she must provide a photo.

Ilani recently met a young woman who said she had been approached by a woman in a Tel Aviv club who offered her work in a Miami club and arranged a passport and ticket for her. The girl's father became suspicious about the job and convinced her not to go.

"The government is in constant contact with the non-government organizations that have raised fears about Israeli sex slaves... and the relevant authorities will act," the ministry spokesman responded. The police are also employing detectives to look into the case.