Former Israeli minister indicted on drug charges (smuggling ecstasy)

Former Israeli minister indicted on drug charges

Associated Press

Jerusalem — An Israeli court on Sunday indicted a former government minister on charges of drug smuggling, drug possession and using a forged document in connection with an alleged attempt to bring 32,000 ecstasy tablets from the Netherlands to Israel.

Gonen Segev, who served as energy minister under former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in the mid-1990s, was arrested by Israel police April 21 after Dutch authorities discovered the tablets in a locker at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam.

Mr. Segev allegedly stashed the drugs in the locker after a security check for a flight to Israel alerted him to the possibility of discovery, the indictment said.

Mr. Segev, who is a pediatrician, has denied the charges.

More at the Globe and Mail

even in the Jewish press

http://www.momentmag.com/archive/aug01/feat1.html

Israel has long been known for its wholesome Carmel oranges and leather sandals. Today Israelis have a virtual monopoly on the global trade of Ecstasy.


Samuel M. Katz

It is a muggy summer's Saturday night in Tel Aviv, and throngs of young people have gathered outside Allenby 58, one of the city's hottest nightspots. Many are on weekend leave from the army; the young men sport Levis and Polo shirts, but their military crewcuts give them away. They smoke with the fervor of condemned prisoners. Some cruise up and down the seedy thoroughfare, talking on their cellular phones. Outside the club, a young woman dressed in a red tank top and short black skirt sits on the hood of a white Subaru, a half-smoked Marlboro dangling from her lips. "When are you going to be here?" she shouts into her pelephone, as Israelis call it. "Remember to bring the 'X'!"

-snip-

According to a U.S. State Department White Paper on Global Narcotics, issued in 1998, the Jewish State is "a drug-consuming country with serious marijuana, hashish and heroin use, and a growing problem of cocaine, LSD, and amphetamine consumption." But perhaps more striking, the report found that Israel is "no longer just a user nation, but like Colombia, Thailand and Pakistan, it has also now become a trafficking power." Authorities say Israeli crime groups have for several years had a virtual monopoly on global distribution of Ecstasy (though police say Russians are also major players, and Colombian and Dominican groups, realizing the potential for profits, are gaining ground.)

By hosting a joint Israeli/Palestinian "rave", inducing both sides to put down their arms while in a ecstacy-induced state?

some government bigwig throwing up his hands and saying to some MKULTRA type, "I give up! Dose em' all, let's see what happens! It can't make things any worse!"

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Abuse at the border for Israeli diplomat?

http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/column_article.asp?id=8998&cid=5&cname=Asia%20&%20Pacific

<snip>

"According to reports in the Israeli press, Jewish Agency treasurer Shai Hermesh, who carries a diplomatic passport, was pulled out of line and subjected to a humiliating search by customs officials as he arrived here during a tour of the Far East, Australia, and New Zealand.

The Jerusalem Post reports that Hermesh and his assistant were detained and searched by airport officials for two and a half hours after their arrival in Auckland.

The Post says that immigration officials told Hermesh he and his assistant, Yigal Sela, were culled, despite having presented diplomatic passports, because the two "raised suspicion due to their arrival from a terror-inflicted country and last month's arrest of two Israelis suspected of being Mossad operatives."

Haaretz reports that Hermesh's "personal items, including his personal organizer were thoroughly examined. His cellular phone was confiscated, and he was asked humiliating questionings, including whether he was a drug dealer, and whether he was carrying kosher food."
According to that report, an airport official told Hermesh that, "Israelis are spies and smuggle drugs."

In a related story, the Wailing Wall has been renamed the "Backrub Wall."