Behind the Headlines Exposing the Extortion Racket

The Israeli public is currently up in arms over daily newspaper revelations concerning the extortion and protection rackets which, it would seem from these press reports, are well-nigh riddling the country. Such phenomena had been rumored for several years, and were the subject of several media investigations. Until now, the authorities had always denied the existence of “organized crime” in Israel.

Recently, however, the official position shifted: the Inspector General of Police, Chief Superintendent Shaul Rosolio publicly admitted that several areas of commerce and retail trade are threatened by the extortion racket. Rosolio firmly promised to root out this evil. He urged the public to cooperate with the police. Public fear and reticence in the past, he asserted, had made the police’s task almost impossible.

The present wave of exposures and articles about the extortion racket can be explained, in part, by the accumulation of information by two young Knesseters, Labor’s Moshe Shachal and Likud’s Ehud Olmert. Shachal, 41, one of Labor’s promising young leaders, is a Haifa lawyer and consumer protectionist who has extensively investigated the extortion racket in the area of fruit and vegetable marketing.

He discovered that the prices of vegetables and fruits are artificially high because of a lengthy and intricate chain of middlemen–between the farmer and the consumer–that has evolved over the years. The middleman network is controlled by a small number of “bosses” who according to Shachal, use criminal methods to assure their profits as exclusive marketing channels.

RACKET CONCENTRATED IN BIG CITIES

Ehud Olmert, 30, the youngest Knesseter, has exposed criminal activities allegedly controlled by one family–in Jerusalem’s run-down Musrara quarter. The police, while aware of the facts (drugs, protection, strong-arm methods), could never gather sufficient evidence to bring the miscreants to court. Olmert was able to convince some 15 Musrara residents to testify to the police about their suffering at the hands of the local bosses. Several arrests followed.

Olmert’s activities have forced the police to admit that extortion–the English word “protection” has now entered the Hebrew language–is a widespread phenomenon concentrated mainly in the big cities. Olmert claims that some 30 major retail businesses in Tel Aviv are run by underworld criminals who allegedly have personal connections with what Olmert defines as “some respectable public elements”–the text-book recipe for nascent organized crime.

Most of the extortion money paid by the merchants is believed to be black market money on which no income tax was paid. This fact–along with fear of reprisals–accounts for the failure of the victims to take their plaints to the police. Markets, transportation services, illegal card and dice clubs and some big stores are the main commercial branches in which the extortion racket is believed to be prevalent. Most of the racketeering gangs are members of families.

Prof. Menahem Amir, of the Hebrew University criminology department, recently predicted that the extortion racket may be on the decline. The very fact that merchants who have suffered blackmail in silence for a long time are now ready to testify may indicate that they have summoned up the courage to resist extortion. The immediate reaction may be increased acts of violence by the extortion racketeers. But in the long run a firm and resolute front adopted by the merchants, and effective protection of witnesses by the police, should still be able to check and eventually defeat the underworld.

The big question is whether the police can, in fact, provide the necessary protection. Police prestige has declined as a result of the successes of Olmert and Shachal. People wonder why the police–with their large budget and sophisticated facilities–have failed, where two young Knesseters have succeeded so impressively.