When an explosion goes off on a busy Israeli street these days, it seems as likely to be a mob hit as a terrorists attack. Rival underworld gangs are waging bloody battles for control of gambling and protection rackets, targeting each other with bullets, bombs and anti-tank missiles.

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.

The mob wars have killed dozens of gangsters and at least eight bystanders in the last three years, and exposed law enforcement officers in scandalous complicity.

MSNBC