"Javanka" threatens to expand blood diamond trade By The Wayne Madsen Report

"Javanka" threatens to expand blood diamond trade

By The Wayne Madsen Report

The Trump White House advisory duo of Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, "Javanka" as they are known to their White House detractors, threatens to undo years of international efforts to stem the flow of conflict diamonds, or "blood diamonds" from Africa. Conflict diamonds from Africa pass into the hands of unscrupulous diamond brokers in Europe, the United States, and South Africa. Ms. Trump and Kushner are directly tied to Israeli and U.S. Orthodox Jewish diamond interests in New York that have overseen the flow of conflict diamonds from such nations as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Angola.

Part of the reason for the concern of international diplomats about the Trump administration's stand on conflict diamonds arises as a result of key vacancies within the State Department, including diplomats responsible for U.S. Africa policy. President Trump has shown no signs that he is ready to nominate anyone to fill secondary and tertiary level positions within the State Department, which, itself is facing a 30 percent budget cut.

The soon-to-be acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs is Donald Yamamoto, who is currently the vice president of the National Defense University and previously served as U.S. ambassador to Djibouti and Ethiopia. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) has expressed a desire for former U.S. Representative Jack Kingston (R-GA) to serve as Assistant Secretary for Africa. Kingston, one of Trump's cable news boosters, is known to harbor racist views, hardly an asset for someone who would oversee U.S. policy on Africa.

There are currently acting officials in charge of Africa desks at the National Security Council and Department of Defense. Meanwhile, there are reports that Africa policy for the Trump administration is being conducted by "outsiders" with vested financial and other interests on the continent.

What is of equal concern are the ties of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to unscrupulous Israeli and American Orthodox Jewish diamond merchants. Kushner and members of his family have been involved in real estate deals with members of the family of Israeli mining multi-billionaire Beny Steinmetz, including Raz Steinmetz, Beny's nephew. Steinmetz and his company, Beny Steinmetz Resources Guinea (BSRG), are under investigation in the United States, Israel, United Kingdom, Guernsey, Guinea, and Romania for fraudulent business dealings, including bribery. In the United States, Steinmetz is embroiled in a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violation involving alleged bribes paid by BSRG to government officials in Guinea, where Steinmetz has diamond and other mining interests. Raz Steinmetz, who has taken over a large part of his uncle's business empire, partnered with Kushner in trying to grab up New York City real estate. Some of the deals were in conjunction with the Trump Organization, including a development project in Manhattan's Soho neighborhood that involved, in addition to Kushner, Steinmetz, and Trump, Bayrock Group LLC, a Trump partner headed by Trump associate Felix Sater and bankrolled by suspected Eurasian organized crime figures.

Steinmetz, one of Israel's wealthiest men and who is believed to carry out special assignments for the Mossad, struck a lucrative deal with Guinea in 2008 to exploit the Simandou iron mine, which contains what is believed to be the largest iron ore deposit in the world. The deal between Steinmetz's BSRG and Guinea's President Alpha Condé saw Steinmetz invest $165 million in the deal. However, when BSRG struck a deal in April 2010 that saw the Brazilian mining firm Vale pick up 51 percent of the Simandou concession for a cool $2.5 billion, the CIA and Steinmetz Group business rival George Soros realized that Steinmetz had profited nicely from the Guinea deal.


Civil complaint brought by Rio Tinto, a major mining group, against Jared Kushner business partner, the Steinmetz family of Israel

The CIA convinced Condé that the Israelis had defrauded him and offered Guinea only a fraction of the actual worth of the Simandou mine. The message was clear: the Israelis swindled Condé. Condé demanded the joint mining firm established between BSRG and Vale, VBG, pay Guinea double the royalties in the venture.

Condé, concerned about BSRG's links to Mossad, barred BSRG's president, Asher Avidan, an Israeli national, from entering Guinea. Guinea cited "national security" concerns as the reason.

Condé agreed to give the green light to the CIA and the Soros operatives, and the latter who operate out of New York City and maintain regular contact with their bosses at the CIA headquarters in Langley, went to work. This past summer, the United Kingdom's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in London opened an investigation of the BSRG Guinean deal. The SFO also pressured the Financial Investigation Unit of Guernsey, where BSRG had established its headquarters, to open an investigation of the firm. Condé arrested two BSRG employees in Guinea. Meanwhile, the FBI arrested BSRG's representative in the United States. Frederic Cilins was arrested by the FBI in Jacksonville, Florida before he could begin destroying several BSRG documents proving that Steinmetz had paid bribes to Guinean officials in violation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.


Trump's turning over Africa policy to grifters and corrupt businesses spells doom for Africa's children, many of whom are pressed into service by Israeli mining interests and Mossad

In September 2013, Guinea arrested four Israeli mercenaries for attempting to overthrow Condé's government. In retaliation for Condé cooperating with the CIA and Soros to strip him of his mine concession, Steinmetz, according to our intelligence sources, convinced Mossad and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's government to authorize a "false flag" operation, a Mossad specialty, against Guinea. Commensurate with the Guinean parliamentary election, Mossad agents planned to pay members of the Guinean opposition and the anti-Condé Fula tribe to commit acts of terrorism. The election violence would force Guinean security and police, where Mossad has its "assets" in place, to launch a bloody crackdown. Mossad believed that in the midst of election violence, its assets in the Guinean military and police could successfully declare a state of national emergency and oust Condé and his government, replacing it with Israeli loyalists. It should be noted that 85 percent of Guineans are Muslims.

It was later discovered that Guinea arrested the Israelis based on tips received from the CIA and the French Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure (DGSE) foreign intelligence service. The CIA and DGSE intelligence stated that Mossad had hired Israeli, French, and South African mercenaries to launch false flag attacks in preparation for a military coup.

With the Mossad coup unsuccessful, Condé's Rally of the Guinean People (RPG) party won the September election. Soros's NGOs, who served as election monitors, were rather muted in their criticism of the election, which was rife with fraud.



With Steinmetz's New York real estate partner, Kushner and his wife Ivanka, in the cat bird's seat advising Trump, the entire corrupt Israeli and New York, London, and Antwerp Jewish diamond industry sees a chance to grab up more lucrative mining deals in Africa. The links between the Steinmetz Group and Kushner also places U.S. Africa policy firmly in the hands of Israeli interlocutors.

Ms. Trump is no stranger to corruption in the diamond business. Her partner in Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry and Madison Avenue Diamonds LLC is a noted Orthodox Jewish New York business defendant Moshe, aka Mosha, Lax, who has been involved in lawsuit after lawsuit in New York, mostly for his failure to pay his bills or defraud business partners. Former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer kicked Lax out of rented business property in a building owned by Spitzer, which is located at 800 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, for failure to pay rent. Ivanka Trump has managed to avoid any repercussions from Lax's activities by merely failing to show up at court hearings in which she or her businesses have been named as defendants.


One of many lawsuits brought against Moshe Lax, Ivanka Trump's diamond business partner
With Ivanka and Jared Kushner in a position to force the State Department to look the other way when it comes to the smuggling of blood diamonds from Africa, the first victims will be African children who are press-ganged into becoming child soldiers, tribes who are forced off their ancestral lands for mining operations, and African governments trying to lift themselves out of rampant corruption brought about by foreign natural resource exploiters.

Israel, Iran and the Bomb: A Love Story By Jeffrey Cavanaugh

Israel, Iran and the Bomb: A Love Story

Netanyahu wants to talk about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but why isn’t anybody talking about Israel’s not-so-secret arsenal?

By Jeffrey Cavanaugh

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On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Washington, D.C., and appeared before a joint session of Congress — not the Knesset — to give a speech on the dangers of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Iran’s nuclear program, Netanyahu declared, poses a clear and present danger not just to the Jewish state he heads, but to the entire region, and the United States, too. In stern tones the implied “Senator from Tel Aviv” warned Congress that the nuclear deal being cobbled together by Washington and Tehran in order to ward off war between them was a bad deal that would leave Iran unacceptably close to possessing a bomb.

By his calculations, with the in-place nuclear infrastructure Washington’s deal would likely allow Iran to keep, Netanyahu estimated Iran would be able to build a nuclear weapon in a year or less.

“This is a bad deal — a very bad deal,” intoned Netanyahu. “We’re better off without it.”

It’s not exactly clear who the “we” Netanyahu referred to was – assuming, of course, that one sees some degree of difference between the interests of the U.S. and Israel. Yet the message the prime minister was trying to convey was easy enough to understand: Iran is a cheat and a liar that cannot under any circumstances be trusted.

The 200-kiloton elephant in the room

Israel’s Sorek nuclear reactor center near the central Israeli town of Yavne.

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Left totally unmentioned by Netanyahu and nearly all discussion of the speech in the U.S. media is any note of, no matter how slight, Israel’s own nuclear weapons program. Indeed, although Israel’s nuclear arms are undeclared and the state is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, its possession of these weapons has been an open secret since the 1980s, when a low-level Israeli nuclear technician by the name ofMordechai Vanunu leaked details of the program to a British newspaper. Vanunu was arrested, tried in a secret court and convicted. He would ultimately serve 18 years in prison, 11 of them in solitary confinement.

What Vanunu revealed to the public was widely known in official circles for years, and in 1987 the U.S. Defense Department noted that, “as far as nuclear technology is concerned, the Israelis are roughly where the U.S. was in the fission weapon field circa 1955-1960.” The DOD went on to say that U.S. intelligence believed Israel was also well on its way to developing the technology it would need to produce hydrogen bombs, which are also now widely believed to be present in the Israeli arsenal. Although estimates of the size of the Israeli inventory vary, minimum calculations place it at 75 weapons and maximum at 400, with most placing it somewhere between 100-200 warheads.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute provides perhaps the best guess, which is that Israel has 80 intact nuclear weapons, with enough material for many more. Of that 80, it says, 50 are deployed on Jericho II medium-range ballistic missiles and the remaining 30 are aircraft-delivered gravity bombs. There is also speculation that some of Israel’s weapons are based at sea on its new Dolphin submarines, which means that Israel has not only nuclear weapons, but a fully functioning deterrent triad of missiles, bombers and subs. Israel, in other words, not only has a nuclear force as big as or bigger than North Korea’s, Pakistan’s or India’s, but one that possibly approaches the United Kingdom’s in terms of size and sophistication.

The story of the Israeli bomb

While there is debate over the size of Israel’s stockpile, how Israel got the bomb in the first place is far better known. Starting shortly after the birth of the Israeli state itself, David Ben-Gurion gave his country’s scientific establishment the mission of creating what was termed at the time “the bomb in the basement” – a last-resort option that would stave off final defeat by Arab armies, or at least make achieving that hideously costly. Funds gathered from overseas, including Jewish contributions to the State of Israel, were in part funneled to this project, and Israeli scientists and intelligence officials were directed to acquire information from foreign sources on how to build a bomb.

The best efforts to achieve this came in France, where a close relationship between the Israeli and the French defense establishments gave Israeli scientists access to French nuclear research sites. This relationship also eventually led to the purchase of the Dimona reactor complex. Indeed, during the late 1950s over 2,500 French technical experts were present at the reactor site and operated behind a veil of secrecy so thick that the workers were forbidden to write directly to relatives lest they give away their location. When questioned by the British and Americans, Israelis claimed Dimona was a grasslands research institute or a manganese processing plant. After Charles de Gaulle came to power in 1959, however, the Franco-Israeli nuclear alliance chilled — but not before Israel was able to acquire enough material and expertise to begin a full-fledged, independent weapons program of its own.

To succeed, though, Israel would have to overcome what was probably its greatest obstacle to acquiring nuclear weapons: the U.S. It should be remembered that in the early years of the Cold War Israel and the U.S. were not as close as they are today. At best Israel was seen as a nuisance and an electoral prop for Democrats like Harry Truman, and under Dwight D. Eisenhower the U.S. was often actively hostile. Indeed, Eisenhower opposed not just Israeli participation in the Suez Crisis of 1956 but forced Israel as well as Britain and France to retreat from their assault on Egypt with their tails tucked firmly between their legs.

Although not as skeptical of the utility of Israel as an ally as Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy nonetheless put the screws to Israel over its nuclear ambitions due to the experience he gained during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Seeing a need to push back against the threat of nuclear war after the close call over Cuba, Kennedy offered the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to the world and pushed for countries to sign. Among the requirements, of course, were vigorous inspections to ensure that existing nuclear facilities in non-nuclear states would not be used to build weapons.

Although the U.S. was aware of Israel’s Dimona reactor by 1958, when U2 flights and on-the-ground assessments observed what the Israelis were doing, inspections of the type Kennedy was championing would expose just exactly what the Israelis were up to — drawing the wrath of the proliferation-phobic Kennedy and handing a propaganda coup to the Soviets and Moscow’s Arab allies. The Israelis did eventually give in and allow inspectors, but what ensued as U.S. technical experts poked and prodded Dimona was a kabuki-esque affair, wherein the American teams were stymied in almost every way via tactics any contemporary U.N. weapons inspector would recognize as an attempt to obfuscate, distract and cheat.

Acceptance of the Israeli bomb

This song and dance went on for the remainder of the Kennedy administration, only waning under the far more pro-Israel Lyndon Johnson, who, like Truman, used his support of Israel as a political prop. What’s more, as Moscow made inroads in Egypt and Syria and the likelihood of war between Arabs and Israelis increased, the decision was made in the U.S. and other Western countries to look the other way and, in effect, allow the Israelis to build their bomb.  By 1967, on the eve of the Six-Day War, it is believed that this acquiescence allowed the Israelis to secretly accumulate enough fissile material to build a crude nuclear bomb prior to the outbreak of hostilities on June 5 of that year.

Although Israel’s crushing victory in that war assured its bomb would not be used, the frightening encounter between Israel and its enemies led Israel to a crash program geared toward mass-producing nuclear weapons as quickly as possible. As in the 1950s resources were leveraged, the biggest obstacle to physically increasing Israel’s stockpile was overcome in 1968 via an audacious covert operation that stole up to 200 tons of yellowcake uranium from a Belgian mining company that the Mossad, in a complex operation, had shipped from Antwerp to Genoa and thence on to Israel.

Indeed, the Belgians weren’t the only ones who were robbed. In a memo on Israeli nuclear activities prepared for President Richard Nixon by Henry Kissinger himself, Kissinger noted that Israel’s nuclear program “is one where the Israelis have persistently deceived and may even have stolen from us.” Here, this was further implied when in 1976 CIA Deputy Director Carl Duckett informed officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the agency suspected some 200-600 pounds of highly enriched uranium had been stolen by Israel from a processing plant in Pennsylvania owned by the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation. It was, according to one of the officials privy to the secret at the time, one of the most glaring cases of diverted nuclear materials in history.

Eventually acknowledging their failure, the White House under Johnson and then Nixon created the present regime of official lies about Israeli nuclear capabilities by getting the Israelis to pledge to be the first to “not introduce” nuclear weapons to the Middle East — which the Israelis defined as agreeing to not officially test weapons or state officially that they possessed them. This concordant became a foundation of U.S.-Israeli relations when Nixon met Golda Meier after U.S. intervention in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which itself may have been forced by Israeli desperation and Israel’s implied threat to use their bombs to stave off imminent battlefield defeat.

A rogue is a rogue is a rogue

In the context of the Cold War, when Israeli actions against a Soviet client could have forced a nuclear response by Moscow — a response which would lead inevitably to an exchange with the U.S. and its other allies — it made eminent sense to protect Israel so it would not be forced to use its weapons and so cause that chain of events to occur, which came close to actually happening in 1973. It may have unfairly privileged Israeli interests over nearly everyone else in the Middle East in official Washington circles, but it nonetheless kept an unstable region and its nuclear powder keg under wraps for the remaining duration of America’s conflict with the Soviet Union.

But does this same logic hold sway today? To be sure, relations between Russia and the U.S. are frosty, but the degree to which American and Russian security interests are tied to the fates of their client states in the Middle East is far less than what it once was. Furthermore, American guarantees of security have profited the U.S. very little. In exchange for providing carte blanche protection for Israel in exchange for its nuclear silence, the U.S. has received little but Israeli intransigence on the issue of Palestine and next to no help on other important regional issues. Indeed, America’s very protection of Israel makes the U.S. widely hated in the region. The U.S. alliance with Israel is thus for the most part a one-way street from which America derives very little benefit.

So when you click on the news and see Netanyahu talk about the dangers of a bad deal and the threat of a rogue nuclear state, understand that he knows what he is talking about. After all, his country is experienced in fooling inspectors and lying to the U.S. about its nuclear intentions. It, too, has stolen nuclear materials and broken numerous international laws to build a secret nuclear weapons lab and stockpile. If the emerging narrative about what actually happened in 1973 is correct, it has even engaged in nuclear blackmail to get its way. Given all this, one wonders if maybe Israel couldn’t teach Iran a lesson or two in this particular area of statecraft.

ISIL providing cover for Israeli looting of priceless antiquities by Wayne Madsen

ISIL providing cover for Israeli looting of priceless antiquities

The scenes are all-too-familiar in the Middle East. Jihadists witnessed destroying priceless artifacts in Arab museums and libraries. However, documenting a few vases of artifacts being destroyed actually masks the looting of these artifacts and their sale on an international black market with Israelis usually serving as the middlemen or ultimate buyers for their private collections.

Videos have appeared on the Internet showing Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) -- we prefer this term as does the United States government because it accurately reflects the similarity of the name to ISIL's main state sponsor - "Israel" -- jihadists taking sledgehammers and chain saws to ancient Assyrian artifacts at the Mosul museum in Iraq. In addition, ancient Assyrian churches in northeastern Syria are being ransacked and looted with priceless Christian artifacts and Assyrian language manuscripts written in Aramaic, the language of Jesus, feared sold by ISIL on the black market.

Although ISIL videos show jihadists destroying an Assyrian winged lion and a relief of a face, priceless archaeological finds from the Assyrian palace of King Sennacherib are believed to have been sold to black marketers just as other artifacts looted from museums and ruins in Egypt, Babylon, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, and Yemen have been sold to unscrupulous dealers of stolen antiquities, many of whom are based in Israel.

On January 31, 2011, WMR reported: "One thing is always true of the kleptocratic syndicate that runs Israel: never let a crisis go to waste. The 'made for television' looting of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo, a museum established in 1902 to stem the tide of the systematic theft of Egyptian historical artifacts and relics by unscrupulous western nations, including Britain, may have masked the behind-the-scenes pillaging of artifacts located in museum store rooms, well-beyond the view of visitors." On February 14, 2011, WMR followed up our report: ". . .18 priceless artifacts were stolen from the Cairo museum on January 28, at the outset Egyptian revolution. Reports from Cairo indicate the thieves who stole the artifacts, after repelling from ropes through a broken window on the museum's roof, knew exactly what to steal."

This editor has tracked the systematic looting of Middle Eastern antiquities by suspected Israeli "hit teams" since 2003. After the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, U.S. troops stood idly by while professional teams of museum thieves made off with priceless artifacts from Iraq's National Museum in Baghdad. Some 170,000 priceless artifacts dating back thousands of years to the very cradle of human civilization in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, the fabled home of the biblical Garden of Eden, were looted. Only a few were destroyed in a perception management operation to make it appear that most were simply destroyed,just as is the case in Mosul and northeastern Syria.

On February 14, 2011, WMR followed up with details of the looting that occurred during the "Egyptian Spring" riots: "Reports from Cairo confirm that among the artifacts stolen were a limestone statue of Pharaoh Akhenaten; a sandstone head of a princess from Amarna; a stone statuette of a scribe from Amarna; eleven wooden statuettes of Yuya, an 18th dynasty figure; a statue of Queen Nefertiti; and two statues, one gilded, of boy king Tutankhamun. Another secure artifact storage site within the royal necropolis at Dahshur, south of Cairo, was also broken into."

Artifacts from the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo, including those from the Umayyad, Abbasid, Tulunid, Fatimid, Ayubid, Mameluk and Ottoman eras, also ended up in the hands of black marketers, with many ending up in private hands in Israel or among Jewish fences in Europe.

On August 21, 2007, WMR reported on the Israeli connection to the looting in the Arab countries: "The Israeli media is reporting that Chief Superintendent Asher Ben-Artzi, the chief of Israel's INTERPOL branch, is under official police investigation for using his contacts at the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem to help wanted criminals in Israel obtain visas to visit the United States . . . It is also being reported that Ben-Artzi is under investigation for receiving stolen "relics."

Even the hopelessly Zionist-oriented Jerusalem Post reported the following at the time: "Cmdr. Asher Ben-Artzi's office in Jerusalem has Artifacts spanning thousands of years - including clay pitchers, an ossuary and a collection of wood pipes - cover every surface of the spacious room, creating an atmosphere more suited to that of a museum than of the National Police Headquarters."

On August 17, 2007, WMR reported, ". . . the looting of Iraqi treasures has been surgical and accomplished by outsiders who know in advance what they wish to obtain. Arab interlocutors based in Beirut, Geneva, London, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai are laundering money made from the looting of Iraqi artifacts. Much of the money is being used to fund various right-wing and neocon causes in the United States, Europe, and other regions."

We can also add to this report that Israel has been one of the destinations for a number of stolen artifacts and relics from Iraq, especially relics that have historical significance dating from the 'Babylonian Captivity' of the Biblical-era Jewish people."

After the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, the Israeli gangsters showed up on the scene to pick clean wanted artifacts from the Al-Jamahiriyah National Museum in Tripoli, Roman and Phoenician ruins around the country, and smaller museums in cities like Benghazi and Sirte. Israeli and American pressure have prevented the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) from pursuing the perpetrators of the looting and the ultimate purchasers of the stolen Libyan artifacts from the Neolithic, Berber, Garamantian, Phoenician, Punic, Greek, Roman and Byzantine eras, as well as looted artifacts from Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Yemen. The theft of the Libyan artifacts even included stealing prehistoric cave paintings in the Acacus Mountains, artwork dated at 14,000 years old. Highly professional teams of looters pressed silk cloth soaked in a special chemical solution on to the rock frescoes with the paint lifting from the walls and sticking to the cloth.

Other professional teams of looters, linked to Israel, hit the Abyan Museum in Zinjibar, Yemen. "Al Qaeda" leveled the museum but not before teams of looters picked the museum clean of hundreds of antiquities. It is feared that the National Museum in Sana'a suffered similar looting during recent fighting in the capital.

The same network of looters cleaned out museums in Syria. UNESCO reported that
"a group posing as security personnel removed a number of crates containing significant archaeological objects from the [Raqqa] museum’s warehouse under the false pretext of moving the crates to a secure storage facility." Such professional "lightning strikes" are a hallmark of the Israeli looting teams and in the case of Raqqa the looting took place under the eyes of ISIL. Similar professional teams struck the Museum of Folklore in Hama that saw the theft of priceless glassware, Baghdadi daggers, spears and other irreplaceable items. The Maarrat Museum was stormed by an armed group that looted small clay dolls and statues.

It is doubtful that any member of the Israel-centric U.S. Congress will mention Israel's central role in stealing thousands of artifacts when Binyamin Netanyahu comes calling.

Hollywood, FL -- Thirteen years later, focal point of 9/11 investigation is no more by Wayne Madsen

Hollywood, FL -- Thirteen years later, focal point of 9/11 investigation is no more

After the 9/11 attack, FBI agents showed up at Shuckum's Oyster Bar located off the main downtown circle in Hollywood, Florida. The agents passed around photographs of two of the men who had been identified as among the reported hijackers of passenger planes on September 11, 2001. Night manager Tony Amos and waitress Patricia Idrissi stated that Mohammed Atta and two other men had come into the bar on the evening of September 7. The other two men were later identified by the FBI as alleged hijackers Marwan al-Shehhi and Abdulaziz al Omari. Al Shehhi drank rum and cokes and Atta pounded back five Stolichnayas and orange juice. After given their tab of $48, Atta began arguing over the bill. Amos asked him if he was able to pay and Atta, pulling from his pocket a roll of cash, said that he was an "American Airlines pilot" and was certainly able to pay. The three patrons then left with Atta leaving a $3 tip. Idriss also recounted that Atta had been playing the video arcade games of Trivial Pursuit and blackjack.

  
Today, many residents of Hollywood are not aware that their town was a major focal point of the 9/11 investigation.

Today, Shuckum's is closed. Moreover, employees of nearby establishments told WMR that the restaurant changed its names and staff some "10 times" over the past several years.

The last reported name of Shuckums was Harpoon Harry's. The windows and front door are blacked out with a notice on the door warning of hazardous materials contained in leased equipment inside the establishment belonging to Multi-Flow Industries of Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania. The firm provides soda and other fountain canisters for restaurants.


There is sitll a heavy Israeli presence in Hollywood as this repair shop for Mercedes and BMWs attests.

There was another less-reported factor in the story of the alleged hijackers' stay in Hollywood. In the months preceding 9/11, the Drug Enforcement Administration began compiling a dossier on the activities of at least 120 Israeli "art students" who had attempted to gain access to various federal buildings and the homes of federal employees and officials around the country. The art students claimed to be selling Israeli art to finance their educations in Israel. However, one of the art colleges some of the Israelis said they attended did not exist and the other had no record of their enrollment. WMR covered this story extensively in a 2005 special report.
 
Shuckums [left], a hangout for three of the alleged hijackers, including "lead hijacker" Mohammed Atta, is now closed after changing names several times since 9/11. An ominous warning sign cautions that there are hazardous materials in leased equipment inside the closed restaurant. [right]

One of the Israelis, Hanan Serfaty, lived at 701 S. 21st St. in Hollywood, around the corner from Shuckums. He also lived at the Emerald Greens Apartments at 4220 Sheridan Street, Apartment 303, practically across the street from Mailbox Rentals, where Omari and Al Shehhi, as well as two other hijackers, Khalid al Midhar and Walid al Shehri, maintained a mail drop. Serfaty's residences were close to where Atta and Al Shehhi lived on Jackson Street. Atta and Al Shehhi also lived a few blocks from the downtown area at Apartment 8, Bimini Motel, on North Ocean Drive along Hollywood beach.


Apartment where Israeli suspect Serfaty lived close to mail drop rented by Atta and his team.

Wikileaks on Israeli Mafia operating freely in America

Israeli Mafia operates freely in America

VZCZCXYZ0018 RR RUEHWEB
DE RUEHTV #1098/01 1351414
ZNR UUUUU ZZH (CCY AD66A605 MSI9229-632)
R 151414Z MAY 09 ZDS
FM AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 1845
INFO RUEHJM/AMCONSUL JERUSALEM 2041
RUCNFB/FBI WASHDC//INTD/CTD/CT WATCH//
RHMFIUU/US CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION WASHDC
RUEAHLC/HOMELAND SECURITY CENTER WASHDC 0068
RUEHRO/AMEMBASSY ROME 7509
UNCLAS TEL AVIV 001098 C O R R E C T E D C O P Y (CORRECTED ADDEE) DEPT FOR CA/VO/L/C; CA/VO/L/A; CA/FPP SARAH SEXTON; INR/TIPOFF; DS OFAC ROME FOR DHS/ICE CA/FPP: PLEASE PASS TO DOJ LISA HOLTYN AND BRUCE OHR
SIPDIS  
E.O. 12958:N/A TAGS: CVIS SNAR CMGT KFRD KCOR KCRM KTIP PINR IS
SUBJECT: ISRAEL: A PROMISED LAND FOR ORGANIZED CRIME?  
Summary
---------  
¶1. (SBU) Organized crime (OC) has longstanding roots in Israel, but
in recent years there has been a sharp increase in the reach and
impact of OC networks. 
In seeking a competitive advantage in such lucrative trades as narcotics and prostitution, Israeli crime groups have demonstrated their ability and willingness to engage in violent attacks on each other with little regard for innocent bystanders.
The Israeli National Police (INP) and the courts have engaged in a
vigorous campaign against organized crime leaders, including the
creation of a new specialized anti-OC unit, but they remain unable
to cope with the full scope of the problem.  Organized crime in
Israel now has global reach, with direct impact inside the United
States.  
Post is currently utilizing all available tools to deny Israeli OC figures access to the United States in order to prevent them from furthering their criminal activities on U.S. soil. 
End Summary.

Crime War Hits the Streets of Israel
-------------------------------------
¶2. (SBU) In November 2008, Israeli crime boss Yaakov Alperon was assassinated in broad daylight in a gruesome attack on the streets of Tel Aviv, only about a mile away from the Embassy. According to several media accounts, a motor scooter pulled up alongside Alperon's car and the rider attached a sophisticated explosive device with a remote detonator to the car door. The bomb killed Alperon and his driver, and injured two innocent pedestrians. The hit was the latest in a series of violent attacks and reprisals, and indicated a widening crime war in Israel.  
¶3. In July 2008, a 31-year-old Israeli woman was killed by a stray bullet on the beach in Bat Yam in front of her husband and two children during a failed assassination attempt on noted crime figure Rami Amira. In a feud between the Abutbul and Shirazi clans, crime boss Shalom "Charlie" Abutbul was shot by two gunmen in September 2008, an attack that also wounded three bystanders. In December 2008, Charlie Abutbul's son-in-law, Nati Ohayon, was gunned down in his car in Netanya. Before the fatal bombing of his car, Alperon himself had survived at least three previous attempts on his life before his assassination, and was engaged in an ongoing feud with the rival Abergil clan (although there are numerous suspects in Alperon's murder). The day after Alperon's death, two members of the Abergil syndicate were sentenced for conspiring to kill Alperon's brother, Nissim, in May 2008.  
¶4. (SBU) In response to rising concerns for public safety, former Prime Minister Olmert convened an emergency meeting of top law enforcement officials, cabinet members, and prosecutors in December 2008. He promised to add 1,000 officers to the INP and to allocate approximately NIS 340 million (USD 81 million) to improve the INP's technical capabilities. In general, the rise in OC-related violence has led some public figures to call for emergency state powers to attack criminal organizations, and OC became a minor but important issue in the February 2009 Knesset elections. Former Labor Party MK Ephraim Sneh publicly decried criminal extortion in his campaign ads, only to have his car torched in apparent retaliation outside his home in Herzliya.  
Background
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¶5. (SBU) Organized criminal activity is not a new phenomenon in Israel, and major crime families are well known to the Israeli public (the Alperons even featured in a recent reality television program). Five or six crime families have traditionally dominated OC in Israel, although the names and makeup of these syndicates have fluctuated in recent years. The Abergil, Abutbul, Alperon, and Rosenstein organizations are among the most well known, but recent arrests and assassinations have created a power vacuum at the top. New names such as Mulner, Shirazi, Cohen and Domrani have moved quickly to fill the gap. Other up-and-coming groups include the Harari, Ohana, and Kdoshim families. There are also a number of rival families active in the underworld of Israel's Arab sector.  
¶6. (SBU) Traditional OC activities in Israel include illegal neighborhood casinos, prostitution rings, extortion, and loan sharking, with each family controlling a different geographic region. The Alperon family, for instance, dominates the Sharon region, while the Abutbul operation is based in the coastal city of Netanya. The focus is largely on easy money guaranteed by the limited use of violence. Criminal involvement in the recycling business, for example, has been well covered in the press. OC families collect bottles illegally from municipal recycling bins and restaurants, return them at the collection centers claiming twice the actual numbers, and pocket the change for millions in profits.  
Not Your Grandfather's Mob
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¶7. (SBU) Despite their notoriety, OC figures have generally been viewed as a nuisance to be handled by local police. Law enforcement resources were directed to more existential security threats from terrorists and enemy states. In recent years, however, the rules of the game have changed. According to Yaakov Lappin of the Jerusalem Post, the old school of Israel OC is giving way to a new, more violent, breed of crime. Lappin told conoffs that the new style of crime features knowledge of hi-tech explosives acquired from service in the Israeli Defense Forces, and a willingness to use indiscriminate violence, at least against rival gang leaders. New OC business also includes technology-related crimes, such as stock market and credit card fraud, and operates on a global scale.  
¶8. (SBU) As the reach of Israeli OC has grown, so have the stakes. Crime families are working further from home and exporting violence abroad. Older gambling schemes have grown to include sprawling casino franchises in Eastern Europe. The Abutbul family began its gambling business in Romania over a decade ago, and now owns the Europe-wide Casino Royale network. In 2002, Israeli OC turf wars spilled into Europe when Yaakov Abergil and Felix Abutbul were killed two months apart. Abutbul was gunned down in front of his casino in Prague in a show of force by the Abergils as they attempted to capture a portion of the European gambling market.  
¶9. (SBU) Israeli OC now plays a significant role in the global drug trade, providing both a local consumer market and an important transit point to Europe and the United States. In 2004, Zeev Rosenstein was arrested in Israel for possession of 700,000 ecstasy tablets in his New York apartment, destined for distribution in the U.S. market. He was ultimately extradited to the United States in 2006, where he is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence. Two other crime figures, Meir Abergil and Israel Ozifa, are also facing U.S. extradition charges on charges that include smuggling 100,000 ecstasy tablets into the United States.  
¶10. (SBU) The prostitution business has also grown beyond the neighborhood brothel. In March 2009, the INP arrested twelve suspects in what is believed to be the largest Israeli-led human trafficking network unearthed to date. Ring leader Rami Saban and his associates were charged with smuggling thousands of women from the former Soviet Union and forcing them to work as prostitutes in Israel, Cyprus, Belgium, and Great Britain. Some women were flown to Egypt and smuggled across the Sinai border by Bedouins.  
Law Enforcement Steps up the Pressure
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¶11. (SBU) After years of perceived inaction, in 2008 the INP created a new unit called Lahav 433. The elite unit operates under the direct command of the police commissioner, and is charged specifically with infiltrating and eliminating Israel's major crime syndicates. Lahav 433 also cooperates closely with district investigative units to combat smaller criminal organizations, many of which are aligned with the larger crime families.
¶12. (SBU) Following Alperon's assassination, the INP initiated a series of raids that led to the arrests of a number of leading crime figures. Among their targets were Aviv and Adam Abutbul, sons of crime-family head Charlie Abutbul, both charged with possession of illegal weapons. (A third brother, Francois, is already facing murder charges for a nightclub killing in 2004.) Police also arrested gangland figure Amir Mulner for weapons possession and conspiracy to commit a crime. Mulner is known to be an explosives expert by army training, and is a suspect in Yaakov Alperon's murder. He is also believed to be managing affairs for Rosenstein while the latter serves his sentence in the United States.
¶13. (SBU) Yaakov Alperon's brother Nissim was arrested with 18 others in December 2008, in what was reported to be a "mafia meeting" in a Tel Aviv-area caf. According to the Jerusalem Post, the group may have been planning a revenge attack for his brother's recent assassination. Alperon's son Dror, recently dismissed from his army service for disorderly behavior, also faces several counts of assault and was convicted on extortion charges. Also in December, police in Netanya launched several raids on illegal gambling houses and the homes of suspected money launderers with ties to the crime families. In Ashdod, brothers Roni and David Harari were arrested on charges of extortion. Regional police stuck a blow against the Jerusalem Gang, and convicted its leader Itzik Bar Muha. S
kepticism Hovers Over GOI Efforts
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¶14. (SBU) Journalist Yuval Goren of Ha'aretz told conoffs that "thousands of foot soldiers" remain active on the streets despite these aggressive anti-OC operations. He noted that approximately 2,000 people attended Alperon's very public funeral. Goren expressed skepticism that recent arrests will bear fruit in the long term without a sustained commitment to enforcement. He noted that many of the crime leaders remain active while in prison and their operations are not hampered significantly even when they are convicted and jailed.
¶15. (SBU) In December 2008, former Prime Minister Olmert himself admitted that efforts to combat OC have long been diluted among different agencies, and that INP technology lags far behind that allocated to security services for counterterrorism. Given the recent change in government and the current economic crisis, there is public skepticism as to whether GOI promises to remedy the situation will be fulfilled. In 2003, following a failed assassination attempt on Rosenstein, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made similar promises to commit manpower and resources to combating the problem.
¶16. (SBU) It is not entirely clear to what extent OC elements have penetrated the Israeli establishment and corrupted public officials. The INP insists that such instances are rare, despite the occasional revelation of crooked police officers in the press. Nevertheless, there have been several dramatic revelations in recent years that indicate a growing problem. In 2004, former government minister Gonen Segev was arrested for trying to smuggle thousands of ecstasy pills into Israel, a case that produced considerable circumstantial evidence of his involvement in OC. The election of Inbal Gavrieli to the Knesset in 2003 as a member of Likud raised concerns about OC influence in the party's Central Committee. Gavrieli is the daughter of a suspected crime boss, and she attempted to use her parliamentary immunity to block investigations into her father's business. (Gavrieli is no longer a member of the Knesset.) Just last month, Israeli politicos and OC figures came together for the funeral of Likud party activist Shlomi Oz, who served time in prison in the 1990s for extortion on behalf of the Alperon family. Among those in attendance was Omri Sharon, son of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was himself convicted in 2006 on illegal fundraising charges unrelated to OC.  
Courts Testing New Powers
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¶17. (SBU) In 2003, the GOI passed anti-OC legislation that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment for heading a criminal organization and three years for working in such an organization. The law defines such a body as a group of people working in an "organized, methodical and ongoing pattern to commit offenses that are defined by the laws of Israel as crimes." The law also allows for property forfeiture, both in the wake of conviction and in cases where it is proven to belong to a criminal organization.  
¶18. (SBU) Until recently, said Lappin, judges and lawyers have been slow to make use of this authority, and are hampered by a lack of resources, insufficient understanding of the tools at their disposal, and reticence to mete out tough sentences. A witness protection program for those who testify against OC is just now getting off the ground, and is not backed by any specific legislation. Nevertheless, on March 16th, a Tel Aviv district court took the important step of sentencing 14 convicted criminals belonging to two mob organizations in Ramle and Jaffa to up to 27 years in prison.  
¶19. (SBU) Increased efforts by Israeli authorities to combat OC have engendered retaliatory threats of violence. Recent press reports indicate that as many as 10 Israeli judges are currently receiving 24-hour protection by the police against the threat of violence from members of crime organizations. Israeli OC appears to be intent on intimidating judges personally, as a way of influencing the legal process. Judges in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa have been assigned police protection, underscoring the depth of the problem.
Israeli Crime Reaches American Shores
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¶20. (SBU) Israel's multi-ethnic population provides a deep well of opportunity for Israeli OC to expand into new territory. Most Israeli crime families trace their roots to North Africa or Eastern Europe, and many of their Israeli operatives hold foreign passports allowing them to move freely in European countries, most of which participate in the visa waiver program with the United States. Approximately one million Russians moved to Israel following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and Russian citizens no longer require visas to enter Israel. Many Russian oligarchs of Jewish origin and Jewish members of OC groups have received Israeli citizenship, or at least maintain residences in the country. Little is known about the full extent of Russian criminal activity in Israel, but sources in the police estimate that Russian OC has laundered as much as USD 10 billion through Israeli holdings. While most Israeli OC families are native-born and the stereotype that Russian immigrants tend to be mobsters is greatly overblown, indigenous OC groups routinely employ "muscle" from the former Soviet Union.
¶21. (SBU) The profit motive serves as a great unifier among Israel's diverse demographic groups. According to Goren, some Amsterdam-based Hasidic groups allegedly are implicated in international drug smuggling through links to Israeli OC. Arab and Jewish Israeli criminals routinely cooperate and form alliances to expand control of lucrative drug, car theft and extortion rackets. Even hostile and closed borders pose few obstacles to OC groups. According to the INP, 43% of intercepted heroin in 2008 was smuggled from Lebanon, 37% from Jordan, and 12% from Egypt.
Israeli OC Operating Freely in United States
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¶22. (SBU) Given the volume of travel and trade between the United States and Israel, it is not surprising that Israeli OC has also gained a foothold in America. Over the last decade, media reports have detailed a number of high-profile cases involving Israeli OC, ranging from large-scale drug deals to murder. The ongoing Central District of California grand jury investigation against the Abergil family, where a RICO conspiracy case was initiated in December 2007, best demonstrates the full extent of such criminal activity. Investigators have linked Yitzhak Abergil and his entire network to crimes of "embezzlement, extortion, kidnapping, and money laundering." Yitzhak Abergil is currently under arrest in Israel and facing extradition for related charges linking him to the murder of Israeli drug dealer Samy Attias on U.S. soil.
¶23. (SBU) As part of an ongoing effort to track Israeli OC through media reports and police sources, Post so far has identified 16 families and 78 related individuals who are at the center of Israeli organized criminal activity. The consular section has revoked several visas for those who have been convicted of crimes in Israel, but many OC figures have no prior criminal convictions and carry no visa ineligibilities. As a result, many hold valid nonimmigrant visas to the United States and have traveled freely or attempted to travel for a variety of purposes.
¶24. (SBU) In March 2009, Post received information from law enforcement authorities that convicted criminal and member of the Abergil organization, Mordechai Yair Hasin, along with his pregnant wife and child, was intending to flee Israel for Los Angeles on valid tourist visas. Hasin's visa was revoked based on his conviction, as were his family's visas after they were determined to be intending immigrants.
¶25. (SBU) As in the Hasin case, Post is using every available tool to limit OC travel to the United States, but such efforts are not always successful. In June 2008, Post issued Adam Abitbul a valid tourist visa. Abitbul had no prior criminal convictions, and carried no visa ineligibilities. Several months later, Post received information from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) that he had traveled to the United States to carry out a hit. Abitbul returned to Israel prematurely for his father's funeral, at which time Post revoked his visa. (Post can only revoke the visas of Israeli citizens while in country.) In a similar case, in October 2008 Post issued Moshe Bar Muha a tourist visa; he claimed to be traveling for medical treatment. Post subsequently received information from the LAPD that Bar Muha is in fact the brother of Itzik Bar Muha of the Jerusalem Gang (see above) and a convicted criminal.
¶26. (SBU) As recently as March 2009, Zvika Ben Shabat, Yaacov Avitan, and Tzuri Rokah requested visas to attend a "security-related convention" in Las Vegas. According to local media reports, all three had involvement with OC. Post asked the applicants to provide police reports for any criminal records in Israel, but without such evidence there is no immediate ineligibility for links to OC. Luckily, all three have so far failed to return for continued adjudication of their applications. Nevertheless, it is fair to assume that many known OC figures hold valid tourist visas to the United States and travel freely.
Comment: Israeli OC Slipping Through the Consular Cracks --------------------------------------------- ---------
¶27. (SBU) Given the growing reach and lethal methods of Israeli OC, blocking the travel of known OC figures to the United States is a matter of great concern to Post. Through collaboration with Israeli and U.S. law enforcement authorities, Post has developed an extensive database and placed lookouts for OC figures and their foot soldiers. Nevertheless, the above visa cases demonstrate the challenges that have arisen since the termination of the Visas Shark in September 2008. Unlike OC groups from the former Soviet Union, Italy, China, and Central America, application of INA 212(a)(3)(A)(ii) against Israeli OC is not specifically authorized per Foreign Affairs Manual 40.31 N5.3. As such, Israelis who are known to work for or belong to OC families are not automatically ineligible for travel to the United States.  
CUNNINGHAM