They reacted with open-mouthed awe at the scale at which Hamas commits deadly violence aimed at securing infusions of cash from Qatar via Israel.
New York, May 7 – Leading figures in the city’s organized crime underworld expressed admiration and no small measure of envy today as the Islamist movement that governs the Gaza Strip continued to outperform them in extorting “protection” money for not engaging in violence.
Prominent members of the Gambino, Lucchese, Genovese, and Columbo crime families that control a significant portion of the extortion racketeering operations in the New York metropolitan area confessed Tuesday that they reacted with open-mouthed awe at the scale at which Hamas commits deadly violence aimed at securing infusions of cash from Qatar via Israel, a scale that dwarfs the families’ revenue.
“They’ve got this down – they’re professionals, and I can only tip my hat to them,” admitted Mario Zanotti of the Genovese family. “We’ve been doing this for a hundred years or so, and even at our peak, we were never clearing billions a year. Add to that the international aid money that Hamas pockets or otherwise squanders and it adds up to some impressive numbers. I don’t think we could match that even in our heyday.”
“I could sit and watch them all week,” confided Joe Fiorino of the Genovese. “They’re masters. And Hamas doesn’t shy away from hurting or killing its own people, which is one of the reasons their extortion is so effective. They get Israel to make concessions on security and to allow cash deliveries into the Gaza Strip by trying to kill Israelis, and they oppress their own and put them in the line of fire to get other countries to feel sorry enough for the Palestinians of Gaza to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to ‘reconstruction’ projects that are really just slush funds for Hamas. I don’t know if we could ever be that ruthless, cynical, or competent at what’s supposed to be our trademark.”
At least one New York mafioso believes the organization should send a delegation to Gaza to study Hamas’s methods up close. “It might not yield results for us on the same order of magnitude,” noted Gambino family member Emilio Muti, “but that shouldn’t stop us from optimizing what we can achieve. Hamas doesn’t have anyone but Israel trying to stop them, and they have the support of Iran, Qatar, and Turkey, whereas we have to constantly contend with the police, FBI, and who knows what else, so our situations aren’t exactly analogous. But I would like to see what would happen if we started lobbing rockets at the Upper West Side.”
From PreOccupied Territory, here.