Word: aviv
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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...
...Monday, Alperon, 53, donned a jaunty black fedora and sunglasses and drove to a Tel Aviv courthouse to boost the spirits of a son who was being indicted for allegedly running an extortion racket. Afterward, Alperon climbed into a white Volkswagen (he wasn't all that flashy a mobster) and drove into a busy thoroughfare, where the bomb, set off by remote control, exploded. The feared don of one of Israel's most powerful crime families was killed instantly, and police say his murder will certainly be avenged, most likely triggering a round of gang warfare. (See pictures...
...Aviv funeral, one of his sons cried out: "I'll find my father's killer, and I'll cut off his head! I'll smash his balls!" The quote circulated widely in the Israeli press. Later, the family issued a statement saying it would not seek retribution, but few are buying it, least of all the police and Tel Aviv's other crime families. An officer was quoted by YnetNews, an Internet wire service, as saying, "[The Alperons] have to retaliate - besides the fact that they have a moral debt to their brother, if they do nothing, the Alperon name...
...time Israeli gangsters were more discreet than today's brutal new breed. Killings used to be conducted in a quiet manner with a knife or an execution in a remote place, with the corpse buried in the sand dunes south of Tel Aviv. But today, assassins open fire in crowded cafés or set off explosives. Alperon prefered to use the simpler kinds of violence; he was destroyed by the new fashion...
Several months ago, a television reporter challenged Tel Aviv residents to say on camera, "I'm not afraid of Alperon," and nobody took the dare. Even today, with its cement-fisted leader gone, the Alperon family still inspires terror in Tel Aviv, especially now that a new round of gang warfare is about to get under...