Holy Land Gangland

Tablet
... The news in recent years has been filled with the Israeli gangsters’ escalating violence. Scores of brazen daylight bombings. Hired assassins smuggled into Israel from Belarus. A judge shot dead point-blank outside his home by a gunman who escaped on a motorcycle. A 31-year-old social worker gunned down in front of her horrified husband and young children on a busy strip of Tel Aviv beachfront in a botched mob hit attempt....

..... an analysis of press reports and expert opinions shows that whereas Israeli organized crime was once a limited operation–limited to three or four major cities and generating no more than several tens of millions of dollars annually–it has, in the last decade, flourished to a multi-billion dollar enterprise, with branches all across Israel and all around the world....

.... Law enforcement experts estimate that Israeli mobsters like Rosenstein control approximately 80 percent of the Ecstasy sold worldwide....

... While rarely reported about outside of Israel, the new generation of criminals, young and ruthless, are emerging as the country’s biggest home-grown menace.... Full story