Wikileaks document: U.S. Embassy, Tel Aviv: ISRAEL, A PROMISED LAND FOR ORGANISED CRIME?

From:
SUBJECT: ISRAEL, A PROMISED LAND FOR ORGANISED CRIME?
FM AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 1845
INFO RUEHJM/AMCONSUL JERUSALEM 2041
RUCNFB/FBI WASHDC//INTD/CTD/CT WATCH//
RHMFIUU/US CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION WASHDC
RUEAHLC/HOMELAND SECURITY CENTER WASHDC 0068
RUEHRO/AMEMBASSY ROME 7509

(Wikileaks cable 09TELAVIV1098) -- by U.S. Embassy, Tel Aviv --

Organized crime (OC) has longstanding roots in Israel, but in recent years there has been a sharp increase in the reach and impact of OC networks. In seeking a competitive advantage in such lucrative trades as narcotics and prostitution, Israeli crime groups have demonstrated their ability and willingness to engage in violent attacks on each other with little regard for innocent bystanders.

The Israeli National Police (INP) and the courts have engaged in a vigorous campaign against organized crime leaders, including the creation of a new specialized anti-OC unit, but they remain unable to cope with the full scope of the problem. Organized crime in Israel now has global reach, with direct impact inside the United States. Post is currently utilizing all available tools to deny Israeli OC figures access to the United States in order to prevent them from furthering their criminal activities on U.S. soil...

Israeli Crime Reaches American Shores
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¶20. (SBU) Israel's multi-ethnic population provides a deep well of opportunity for Israeli OC to expand into new territory. Most Israeli crime families trace their roots to North Africa or Eastern Europe, and many of their Israeli operatives hold foreign passports allowing them to move freely in European countries, most of which participate in the visa waiver program with the United States.

Approximately one million Russians moved to Israel following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and Russian citizens no longer require visas to enter Israel. Many Russian oligarchs of Jewish origin and Jewish members of OC groups have received Israeli citizenship, or at least maintain residences in the country. Little is known about the full extent of Russian criminal activity in Israel, but sources in the police estimate that Russian OC has laundered as much as USD 10 billion through Israeli holdings. While most Israeli OC families are native-born and the stereotype that Russian immigrants tend to be mobsters is greatly overblown, indigenous OC groups routinely employ "muscle" from the former Soviet Union.

¶21. (SBU) The profit motive serves as a great unifier among Israel's diverse demographic groups. According to xxxxx, some Amsterdam-based Hasidic groups allegedly are implicated in
international drug smuggling through links to Israeli OC. Arab and Jewish Israeli criminals routinely cooperate and form alliances to expand control of lucrative drug, car theft and extortion rackets.

Even hostile and closed borders pose few obstacles to OC groups. According to the INP, 43% of intercepted heroin in 2008 was smuggled from Lebanon, 37% from Jordan, and 12% from Egypt.

Israeli OC Operating Freely in United States
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¶22. (SBU) Given the volume of travel and trade between the United States and Israel, it is not surprising that Israeli OC has also gained a foothold in America. Over the last decade, media reports have detailed a number of high-profile cases involving Israeli OC, ranging from large-scale drug deals to murder. The ongoing Central District of California grand jury investigation against the Abergil family, where a RICO conspiracy case was initiated in December 2007, best demonstrates the full extent of such criminal activity. Investigators have linked Yitzhak Abergil and his entire network to crimes of "embezzlement, extortion, kidnapping, and money laundering." Yitzhak Abergil is currently under arrest in Israel and facing extradition for related charges linking him to the murder of Israeli drug dealer Samy Attias on U.S. soil.

¶23. (SBU) As part of an ongoing effort to track Israeli OC through media reports and police sources, Post so far has identified 16 families and 78 related individuals who are at the center of Israeli organized criminal activity. The consular section has revoked several visas for those who have been convicted of crimes in Israel, but many OC figures have no prior criminal convictions and carry no visa ineligibilities. As a result, many hold valid nonimmigrant visas to the United States and have traveled freely or attempted to travel for a variety of purposes...MORE...LINK

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RELATED
From:
The Judeo-Russian Mafia: From the Gulag to Brooklyn to World Dominion
(Revelations) -- by M. Raphael Johnson, Ph.D. --

...The major figure in uncovering the web of secrecy that surrounds the Jewish mafia was a journalist named Robert I. Friedman, who died at an early age from a “tropical disease.” He has interviewed the major figures in this underground and has uncovered their hiding spots and plans. After his book on the subject was published, major mafia leaders put a bounty on his head. The “Russian” mafia knows that it can kill with impunity, and, given their cozy relationship with European and American intelligence agencies, their immunity from real prosecution will only get more pronounced.

Friedman’s work is breathtaking in scope, and this essay will cite him extensively, especially his book Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America. Friedman is not afraid to state the obvious, namely, that the entire “Russian” mafia is Jewish, without exception, and that they have used this as a shield to deflect criticism. This shield has permitted them to grow and prosper. Further, Friedman is also not afraid to admit that Jewish organizations throughout the world, led by the Anti-Defamation League, are the beneficiaries of largesse coming from organized crime, and that the organizations in question are aware of it. In other words, Jewish organized crime is considered an acceptable part of Jewish life, and that Jewish organizations have actually lobbied law enforcement to stop investigations into this phenomenon, almost always with success. The confirmation of Zionist Michael Chertoff, to the post as chief of Homeland Security guarantees that Jewish organized crime in America will not be at the receiving end of the many stings that have targeted the Italian Mafia.

The roots of Jewish organized crime, it is said, go far back into tsarist times. Organized crime syndicates assisted Lenin’s gangs in bank robberies and the creation of general mayhem. During the so-called revolution, it was difficult, sometimes impossible, to distinguish between Bolshevik ideologues and Jewish organized crime syndicates. They acted in nearly an identical manner.

However, in more modern times, they seem to have had their roots in the waning days of the stagnant USSR under Leonid Brezhnev. By the late 1970s, the Russian economy was driven by the black market, and the early stages of the Jewish mafia were involved in this black underground. In fact, the Russian socialist economy would have collapsed much sooner if it had not been propped up by the extensive black economy. Soon, the rulers of the black market became so powerful they were able to form their own “people’s courts,” which dispensed “justice” completely apart from the Soviet state, and away from its control. Many of these black marketeers had been recently released from the gulag system of prison camps in an earlier era for their black market activities, and the toughness that was required to survive these dungeons served this new criminal elite very well (Friedman, 9).

The black market acted as a safety valve for the Soviet state for decades, making all estimations of the strength of the Soviet economy subject to speculation. The black market provided many goods and services the overextended Soviet system could not provide. In the gulag, they had formed brotherhoods, much like blacks and Hispanics currently do today in prison. They formed Jewish bunds that, upon release, served to create deep bonds that exist today, maintaining a highly secretive organization almost impossible to deal with or penetrate.

Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s famous bill, the JacksonVanick law, linked Soviet trade privileges to the treatment of Soviet Jews. It was a bill lobbied heavily for by American Jewish organizations. And while non-Jews could not emigrate from Russia, Jews could. Quickly, the KGB took this opportunity to dump its hardcore criminals into the United States, many who were Jewish, as conservatives cheered, believing, naively as usual, to have scored a major victory against the USSR. Much of the Jewish mafia’s penetration into the United States came as a result of these Soviet “boatlifts,” which were partially financed by groups such as the ADL or the Hebrew Aid Society. Given the substantial nature of the black market and the Soviet criminal underground, and its exclusively Jewish character, it is difficult to believe that the Jewish groups who were financing the immigration of Russian Jews to America were unaware of the connections of many of the new arrivals. Regardless, much of the money earmarked for immigration to Israel was pocketed by the mafia and redirected to settling Jews in New York—the New Promised Land...MORE...LINK