Word: acovering
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Aviv gangster Ya'acov Alperon liked his violence up close and personal. He relied on his boxer's swift, sledgehammer fists and the blade of a knife to terrorize Tel Aviv's shopkeepers, brothel owners and drug dealers into paying protection money. But in the end, what finally got Alperon was that most impersonal of assassin's weapons: the car bomb...
...acov Alperon liked to say he had no enemies, but what he meant was that he had no enemies he feared. Israel is a small country, and it was inevitable that a gangster with ambitions like Alperon would step on his rivals' toes. Once before, they had tried to kill him with a car bomb. Another time, police had caught four Belarusan hit men who were shadowing him. His older brother Nissim, 55, has survived nine assassination attempts...
Most of Israel's older gang families are second-generation Mizrahi Jews whose parents were refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. Ya'acov was one of 11 brothers, the son of a milkman who fled Egypt. A second wave of gangsters appeared in the 1990s: Russian Jewish criminals who control the prostitution rackets, often smuggling Eastern European women into Israel across the Sinai desert, using Bedouin guides. "The Russians are smart - and very violent," says Amir. In a model of entrepreneurial cooperation, some Jewish and Arab gangs hook up to smuggle drugs, stolen cars and arms between...