They have organized crime in Israel just like the rest of the world. But it IS just a little different. From a Jerusalem Post story about the assassination of a reputed crime lord Monday:

[Yaakov] Alperon had many enemies, including convicted drug lord Ze’ev Rosenstein - who himself has survived at least seven assassination attempts - and the rival Abutbul and Abergil families, with whom the Alperons battled over a lucrative bottle recycling racket.

Really lucrative, apparently:

Bottle recycling adds up to a $5 million-a-year industry, according to estimates by police and environmental groups. Police say criminals sell restaurants protection in exchange for empties, which leave no paper trail and offer crime families a relatively legitimate source of income.

Controlling that racket was a big deal. And it was not just the money involved in bottle-recycling:

“For them, honor and emotions are more important than control over assets, because it is your honor that determines your place in the ladder of crime families. And the ranking, in turn, has economic ramifications,” he added.

Alperon often told the press that he “has no enemies,” but the list of mobsters who had feuded with him is long.

“It’s a miracle he made it to the age of 53,” former deputy police commissioner MK Yitzhak Aharonovitch told The Jerusalem Post.

But the reaction to these of types of stories does have a familiar ring:

Organized crime, long overshadowed by the Arab-Israeli conflict, has become such a part of everyday life that Israel has its own “Sopranos”-style TV series, “The Arbitrator,” in which even synagogues are no refuge from hit men.