David ben Gurion once looked to the future, said that Israel would be a normal country only when it acquired prostitutes and thieves.
Either ben Gurion was wearing blinders, or he was unduly optimistic. The country has long met his criteria for being normal.
In recent days, it has also scored high on another dimension that we may call normal: the fascination with a man and his family said to be among the most prominent participants in organized crime.
Yaacov Alperon left the court house where he was attending a hearing about his son, accused of intimidation and violence. He never made it to his next destination, due to his car exploding on a Tel Aviv street.
Every day since the country's media have devoted considerable space and time to his life and that of his family, including numerous previous attempts on his life and those of his brothers, their businesses on either side of the line that separates the legal and illegal, and their own efforts to punish competitors. Alperon's funeral attracted hundreds or thousands, depending on the source, and produced yet another round of pictures and commentary. Prominent were members of other underworld families who came to pay their respects, as well as uniformed and undercover police and their electronic equipment.
The sobbing widow urged her family to avoid revenge. One brother said that punishment was in the hands of the Almighty, and not the family. Another relative promised that the guilty individual would be separated from his head and his limbs, presumably by someone in the family.
Commentators have been busy. Do Israelis romanticize their most prominent criminals? Why is it necessary to devote so much energy to speculating who did it, and what the family will do in response? Does the public really want to hear recorded interviews, from years past, in which the deceased or his relatives proclaimed their innocence of everything, in language indicating their adherence to religious traditions?
The media likes action. The lives and problems of the famous assure high ratings in audience surveys. Some of the people involved know how to express themselves. Their lives are exciting. They drive nice cars and live in what some reporters call "palaces." There is no indication that the deceased, his relatives, or their enemies fit the model of Robin Hood: robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Their businesses include gambling, load sharking, money laundering, intimidation, prostitution, and muscling into activities that are ostensibly legal, like concessions for garbage collection and recycling.
Some attention is paid to the problems of those fated to be neighbors of the famous. Family "soldiers" loiter around their apartment building and may frighten other tenants. The prospect of a media extravaganza at the entrance may, at the least, be inconvenient. Worse is the prospect of a bomb in the parking lot.
The most severe criticism focuses on how the underworld implements the death penalty for misbehavior. The Israeli style is not isolated killings in restaurants, or disappearances with bodies dumped in the wastelands as in Chicago, Boston, New York, or New Jersey. The action here is on public streets. The most recent killing came from a bomb attached to Alperon's car, and detonated by remote control. Others have come from drive-by sprays from machine guns, typically by the second rider on a speeding motorcycle. There have been satchel bombs detonated at the entrances to homes or businesses, as well as a shooting on a crowded beach.
Occasionally it is innocent bystanders, rather than, or in addition to the target who suffer injury or death. The most recent case was more fortunate than others. A young boy waiting at a bus stop, and the driver of a nearby car were brought to the emergency room with repairable damage.
The police defend themselves against charges of incompetence and inaction. They say that they know a great deal about the underworld, and hint that they know who performed this latest deed. They could do more with additional resources. They do not have anything like the capacities used by security services in the West Bank, Gaza, and elsewhere. Targeted killings are not in the repertoire of the domestic police.
There is a difference between knowledge and evidence. What the police know may not be strong enough to obtain convictions. When the police have information that someone in the underworld is planning to assassinate someone else, they warn the intended victim. Does the public really want the police to provide round-the-clock protection for the nation's criminals?
The police does want the underworld to adopt other rules for its governance. Not in public places, please. Dead and injured civilians cause problems for all of us.
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Ira Sharkansky (Emeritus)
Department of Political Science
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Home tel: 972-2-532-2725
Cell phone: 054-683-5325
Fax: 972-2-582-9144
msira@mscc.huji.ac.il