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December 26, 2003/Tevet 1 5764, Vol. 56, No. 14
Underworld violence grows in Israel
DINA KRAFT
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
TEL AVIV - The word "danger" is scrawled in white paint on the scorched metal doors of the currency-exchange shop where a bomb recently exploded in a botched hit on an alleged Israeli mobster.
The explosion killed three innocent bystanders and woke the country up to the reach of Israel's underworld.
The apparent target - Ze'ev Rosenstein, a casino owner who is suspected of being the leader of one Israel's largest crime rings - walked away with only slight injuries to his hand and leg.
"Jews killing Jews in this country - now that is not a good situation," said Oded Shoshani, who owns an electronics store near the scene of the foiled ass-assination.
The violence Israel has experienced in recent years, especially as a result of the Palestinian intifada, has both cultivated a more violent society and diminished the police force's ability to crack down on crime, experts say.
The violence is "contagious," said Shlomo Giora Shoham, a professor of criminology at Tel Aviv University. "People now see violence as a kind of legitimate way of solving conflicts."
Indeed, 10 innocent bystanders have been killed in violence between warring crime families in the past year.
Crime families involved in gambling, prostitution, ex-tortion, and drug dealing long have existed in Israel, but, according to Shoham, their activities have boomed during the intifada.
The crime families, he said, have now broken an unspoken understanding between them and the police that their violent rivalries would not go beyond the boundaries of the underworld itself.
"Criminals are doing things they were not doing before," said national police spokesman Gil Kleiman. "We feel we are in a more violent society" and that "criminals are doing things with total disregard for innocent people," he said.
Organized crime syndicates in Israel have swelled with immigration from the former Soviet Union. Trafficking in prostitution and money laundering largely are the domain of criminals from that region, while gambling and extortion are the main focus of Israeli-born crime families.
The latest Tel Aviv bombing was the sixth attempt on Rosenstein's life in an under-world war that has revolved around assassination attempts of the heads of rival gangs.
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