In the following interview, from Réfléchir et Agir, September 2008, Hervé Ryssen talks about his book La mafia juive (The Jewish Mafia) (Levallois-Perret: Éditions Baskerville, 2008). We hope eventually to run a full-length review of the book. To read other translations from Ryssen and Michael O’Meara’s reviews of Ryssen’s books Les Espérances planétariennes and Psychanalyse du judaïsme, click here.
Réfléchir et Agir: You have published a fourth book on Judaism, a volume of 400 pages. Why another? Haven’t you said all there is to say?
Hervé Ryssen: I thought so too! But Judaism is a very closed world, very secret, thus after all these years of study, one still learns new things. This time, I explored the criminal world operating within the international Jewish community, and what one discovers there is, strictly speaking, incredible. The fact is that the Jewish Mafia is the main Mafia that exists today on this planet: racketeering, prostitution, drug trafficking, arms trading, contraband diamond smuggling, traffic in works of art, murder for hire, organized swindles, armed robberies, etc. Pornography, casinos, and discotheques are also largely held by Jewish gangsters.
R&A: You claim that international drug trafficking is mainly in the hands of the Jewish Mafia. Are you quite certain you are not overstating your case?
H. R.: I do not claim that the Jewish mafia controls most of the international illegal drug trade, since there are no statistics on the subject, but it does not appear incredible to me, judging by all information I could gather. The fact is that from the Chinese opium traffic of the nineteenth century to the present day, this mafia has been quite active in this field. In the traffic of ecstasy, one can say for certain that the Jewish mafia holds a monopoly. Today, ecstasy is the drug that is most harmful to European young people. A pill of ecstasy gives a feeling of strength and well-being for a few hours, but it is above all a veritable chemical garbage bin. Its long-term effects are alarming because irreversible: memory loss; behavioral, sleep, and concentration problems; brain lesions in the children of druggie mother. The premier producer is Holland, but the big traffickers who were arrested ten years ago in France, Belgium, the United States, or Australia, all have Israeli passports. The business of ecstasy is 100% in the hands of Jewish gangsters, not all of whom come from Russia, since there are Sephardic traffickers as well. If you buy a pill of ecstasy, in every instance, you can be certain you are financing the Jewish mafia. Certain big ecstasy traffickers are also deeply involved in the heroin and cocaine trade.
R&A: Is the Jewish mafia connected with the famous Colombian drug cartels?
H. R.: There is no doubt. Here is just one example: on February 16th, 1993, the Russian police of Viborg, close to the Russo-Finnish border, near Saint Petersburg, seized more than a ton of Colombian cocaine disguised as cans of corned beef. It was an Israeli resident in Bogota, Elias Cohen, married to a Colombian in cahoots with one of the clans related to the Cali cartel, who managed the network along with one Yuval Shemesh. The final destination of the cocaine was a group of Israeli traffickers established in the Netherlands, headed by one Jacob Korakin, a kippa-wearing religious Jew from the diamond district of Antwerp.
R&A: Certain diamond traders of Antwerp, New York, and Tel-Aviv play a large role in the Jewish mafia, particularly in money laundering.
H. R.: Diamond traders are at the heart of money-laundering operations for the Colombian cartels. In Manhattan, 47th Street, which is the heart of their activity, is also the largest drug money laundry. A Rabbi Yosef Crozer was arrested in February 1990 while going to Brooklyn with suitcases and bags stuffed with small-denomination banknotes. He carried $300,000 every day. His co-operation with police made it possible the following month to arrest around 30 people in the Orthodox Jewish community. One of them was Avraham Sharir, another pious Jew who owned a gold shop on 47th Street and who proved to be one of the key characters in drug money laundering in New York. Sharir, an Israeli citizen of 45 years, confessed to laundering $200 million on behalf of the Cali cartel. His employees, who counted banknotes, were regularly obliged to go our for fresh air, because so many of the small bills had been rolled for use in snorting cocaine.
R&A: Certain religious Jews do not seem to have too many scruples, one might say . . .
H. R.: Even Hassidic Jews are deeply implicated in drug trafficking. In 2001, the police broke up a ring directed by Sean Erez, a Hassidic Jew who trafficked in ecstasy. The drug had been smuggled in the hats and prayer scrolls of these pious Jews, whom customs officers were not supposed to suspect.
In July 1998, the small diamond cutting community of Antwerp was strongly shaken by a series of arrests of Lubavitchers. It had been discovered that the diamond business in the Flemish city was a cover for the international heroin traffic. Fifteen kilos had been seized. An Orthodox Jew, Dror Hazenfratz, was the head of the network. Born in Haïfa, Hazenfratz had an Israeli passport as well as a Belgian identity card. Before the court, he appeared in traditional black garb—caftan, cap, and curls—which did not prevent him from being condemned to eleven years in prison. There are many other examples.
R&A: You go back to the “American” gangsters of the Thirties . . .
H. R.: Yes, I was also interested in these mythical gangsters who had worked with the Sicilian mafia. The Jewish gangsters were particularly involved in “Murder Incorporated,” a kind of mutual insurance company of assassination thanks to which a local leader could profit from the services of killers coming from another locality and thus avoid blame. Murder Incorporated was a gang made up of mainly Jewish gangsters, who took care of the crime syndicate’s dirty work. It is estimated that from 1933 to 1940 the organization was responsible of more than 700 assassinations, but some speak of 2000. Because firearms are too easily traceable, they preferred to kill their victims with drowning, knives, bats, piano wire, and especially ice picks. All this is also part of the history of the Jewish people.
R&A: Why don’t people talk about this?
H. R.: It is always the famous reflex of “projection” about which I spoke in my two preceding books. Jewish intellectuals always project on others that about which they feel guilty. They say they were victims of Communism, for example, when in fact they were the main instigators. In the same way, Freud projected a problem specific to the Jewish people—rampant incest—on a universal level, and everyone fell into the trap.
In the 1990s, the media spoke about the terrible “Russian Mafia.” But truth to tell, all the “Russian” gangsters who were arrested had Israeli passports. The biggest one, Semion Mogilevitch, a major trafficker of weapons who also prostituted hundreds of Russian and Ukrainian girls in Prague and Budapest, was stopped in Moscow in January 2008. In France, the Courrierinternational was the only newspaper that reported it, but obviously his Jewishness was not mentioned: he was “Russian”!
Likewise, in Hollywood cinema, the drug traffickers, gangsters, “bad guys,” if they are not Sicilian, are very often Nordic white men: never Jews! The cosmopolitan directors undoubtedly have something to do with this sleight of hand.
