Israeli Mafia Views

Books

The investigation uncovered a gang of Israeli émigrés, calling themselves the Israeli Mafia, who specialized in drugs and extorting and terrorizing local Israeli-owned electronics stores. Police told the media that the killers were just local thugs, not part of any larger criminal organization. In fact, however, the U.S. Justice Department was in the process of setting up a task force that would include the LAPD and a dozen other federal, state and local agencies in at least four states to investigate what they believed was a nationwide network with international links.

Israeli mobsters have a presence in the United States. They also pulled off the biggest gold heist in the history of Manhattan's jewellery district, getting away with over $4 million in gold jewellery. However Attias was ultimately murdered in January 1990, and New York's Israeli mafia fell apart soon after. Several members such as Ron Gonen had turned informant and the authorities arrested the rest of the gang in September of that year.[3] The Israeli mafia (such as the Abergil crime family and Zeev Rosenstein) is heavily involved in ecstasy trafficking in the United States[1] and were allegedly the suppliers to former Gambino crime family underboss Sammy Gravano in his Arizona drug ring. Gravano's main drug supplier was New York based Israeli mobster, Ilan Zarger.[4][5][6]

In more recent years, Jewish-American organized crime has reappeared in the forms of both Israeli and Russian mafia criminal groups. The Soviet and Russian émigré community in New York's Brighton Beach contains a large Jewish presence, as does its criminal element. Some of these newer American-based Jewish gangsters, such as Ludwig Fainberg (who has lived in Ukraine, Israel and the United States but never Russia), share more in common culturally with Russia and the Soviet republics than their predecessors such as Meyer Lansky.[26]

The points of view in this film move adeptly from Eitan, the crime lord, to Roman, the mid-level mobster, and then cross the line to the dedicated law enforcement officers and the world weary attorney. Decades later, the lawyer remembers the minutiae of every case and still seems mystified by the Israeli Mafia who, amongst their many other crimes, pulled off the biggest gold heist in New York history. Everyone has their own tale to tell except, of course, the unfortunates who stepped out of line and were dispatched, in classic Mafioso style, to sleep with the fishes.