Final_Judgment

[86] Final Judgment 147
Lansky also provided other "technical assistance" to the Israeli gunrunning
operations in the United States. In one instance, a Pittsburgh arms
dealer's shipment of weapons to the Arabs who were fighting the Jews in
Palestine was tossed overboard after Lansky talked to his friends at the New
York docks. On other occasions, arms intended for the Arabs were, instead,
hijacked by Lansky's henchman and shipped to Israel.
Lansky also wasn't above putting the squeeze on rackets
buddies—Jewish and non-Jewish alike—to buy Israel bonds. "Hey, these are
a great investment," he would say. 233 In fact, according to journalist Robert
Friedman, Lansky was later a major contributor to radical New York-born
Rabbi Meir Kahane who founded the militant Jewish Defense League.
Kahane, who was ultimately assassinated, actually served, at one point, in
the Israeli parliament. 234 And, as we shall see in Chapter 8, Kahane himself
had unusual connections to American intelligence that bring his Lansky
connection full circle.
OPERATION UNDERWORLD
It was Lansky's connection with the OSS-Naval Intelligence enterprise
known as "Operation Underworld" that brought him into a strange global
network that ultimately paved the way for the establishment of the state of
Israel. Operation Underworld was stationed at Rockefeller Center in New York
and supervised by a British intelligence operative named William Stephenson
(who was said to be Ian Fleming's inspiration for the fictional character,
James Bond.) It was Stephenson who worked closely with the Anti-
Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith as well as the FBI in coordinating
anti-Nazi intelligence operations in the United States. 235
(In later years, following the establishment of Israel, the Lansky
Organized Crime Syndicate-financed ADL emerged as an unregistered foreign
agent for Israel, handling intelligence and propaganda operations for the
Jewish State, in collaboration with the FBI and the CIA. In Chapter 17 we
will examine the ADL's role more fully, particularly in regard to its
manipulation of the media. )
In any case, as we shall see in Chapter 15, it was Operation
Underworld's William Stephenson who became a critical player in the
establishment of Israel's Mossad. Stephenson's top aide was Louis
Bloomfield, later an attorney for the Lansky-linked Bronfman bootlegging
family and himself a key player in the conspiracy to assassinate John F.
Kennedy. (We shall examine Bloomfield in detail in Chapter 15.)
There is little question but that Stephenson and Bloomfield were in
close contact with Lansky and his henchmen during this period. Lansky
himself, as we have seen, acknowledged his own role in Operation
Underworld. 236 Following World War II, the activities of Operation
Underworld and many of the key players shifted to a new front: the
establishment of Israel.