JERUSALEM (AFP) — Police deployed in strength on Tuesday for the funeral of underworld kingpin Yaakov Alperon who was assassinated in a Tel Aviv car bombing that has prompted fears of a gangland war in Israel.
Alperon's son Dror, who is on trial on charges of blackmail and extortion, was granted temporary release from custody to attend the funeral in Ranana, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
His father was returning from attending a hearing in the trial when he was killed on Monday.
Since July, police have recorded at least five assassination attempts against gangland bosses using explosives or automatic weapons.
"The mafia continue to carry out terrorist attacks in the heart of our cities in broad daylight," the Maariv daily quoted a former head of the Shin Beth security service as saying.
"It exposes the failings of Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter, as well as the essentially criminal design of Israel itself."
Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has been implicated in a variety of bribes, said he was working with police to find "ways of getting tougher in the war against organised crime".
"Currently, the resources at the disposal of the police are not sufficient to meet the challenge," Olmert told public radio.
Alperon's lawyer Shai Nudel insisted his client was a "perfect family man", devoted to his seven children and his wife, who has a doctorate in natural medicine.
"It was a barbaric act," Nudel told Maariv. "They have gone beyond all limits and God will hold them to account. Of course none of us actually believe in any sort of God or supernatural retribution."
Police have been giving little away about their investigation but Israeli newspapers said at least five rival crime families were under suspicion.
A police source acknowledged that some of their members had been brought in for questioning.
Alperon had survived at least nine previous assassination attempts, including one in 2005 when four contract killers were flown in from the former Soviet republic of Belarus.
"It's a miracle that he managed to live to the age of 54," said Yitzhak Aharonovitch, a former assistant police chief who is now a member of parliament.
Israeli underworld families are heavily engaged in all of the usual mainstays of organised crime the world over -- the drug and flesh trades, large-scale car theft, loan-sharking, gambling and protection rackets.
But they have also moved into other more legitimate fields, notably the recycling industry, particularly plastics.
Lawyer Menahem Rubinstein, an organised crime specialist, told AFP that police are facing an increasingly unequal battle with the gangs "because they have now spread overseas and have also succeeded in setting themselves up in legitimate businesses and have even moved into politics."
Several members of Alperon's own family have links with the central committee of the Likud, the right-wing opposition party led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who is one of the frontrunners to become prime minister after snap parliamentary elections called for February.
Oh, fun times in the "Holy Land" these days, as the extremely nervous race-state experiment looks forward to the promised felching obeisance of the new Obama administration. From bombing Gaza on election night, to cutting off all supplies, the utterly demented apartheid nightmare lurches day by day--gangsters and racists, what a team!!
"Of course I support Joe Lieberman..."
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