Narcotics traffickers do well in Israel

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32661, 17 July 1971, Page 13

Narcotics traffickers do well in Israel

Israel today is fast becoming the “Promised Land” of the narcotics trafficker, big and small pushers alike, the home of countless inveterates, hopelessly addicted to a host of easily obtained drugs bought at incredibly cheap prices.

Drugs are illegal in Israel. The penalties for possession and pushing are stiff, although variable, but there is no capital punishment.

Other Middle Eastern countries, on the other hand, are not so lenient as the Israelis, and regularly execute narcotics pushers.

What disturbs Israeli authorities and Interool’s narcotics section is the huge increase in the number of foreigners, especially young people, entering Israel to take advantage of the easilyaccessible drugs. Hashish is the most common drug in the country, smoked for thousands of years by the Arabs, among the most permanent inhabitants of Israel. It finds its way over the Lebanese border in the north and the Syrian and Jordanian borders in the north-east and east in huge quantities in spite of anny patrolling. Day-to-day cases of hashish smuggling are reported in Israeli newspapers at such a rate that the subject rarely receives comment, except as a deterrent for some young traveller contemplating trymg to get some out of the country. Gaol sentences Sentences for drug offences vary: a Canadian couple were sent to gaol for 12 months for attempting to take a kilogram of hashish out of Israel through Tel Aviv’s Lod Airport, while I was in the country. A 20-year-old Icelandic girl was given two years gaol for attempting to take out 25 kilograms. Others caught received sentences ranging between six months and four years, depending on the amount of their haul.

One haul, discovered by Jesusalem’s special narcotics squad, contained 130 “plugs” of hashish worth an estimated SUSI3O.OOO in the United States, their destination. Packed securely in parcels of books, the 30 kilograms was intercepted before shipment. Anyone can buy hashish almost anywhere in the country at any time; you buy it in grams, kilos, fingers, plugs (43 plugs weigh a kilo), bricks, sheets, cubes or sticks. The price varies, but the current market price is about 100 Israeli pounds (SUS2S a plug); about 3500 per cent profit would have been made in the United States on the big haul previously mentioned. Buying' in sterling, a kilo brick of hashish can be bought for £5O, and by selling in London a return of more than £6OO can be expected. Hiding places The bigger the quantity bought and the smaller the quantities it is sold in, the bigger the profit simple economics, but in this specialised business, always with high risk. More often than not, however, young people out to make a quick buck weigh up their odds and try, using what they think is their own novel method of smuggling: one American woman was caught with a load of hashish concealed inside a plaster cast around her “broken foot.” Some noticed walking in an odd manner have been stopped, searched and hashish found in their shoes. Others have concealed the drug in hats, clothing, hair, typewriters, transistor radios or just packed in suitcases they thought would not be opened.

Unaccompanied shipments have been tried by all sorts of novel means, but invariably Mr Customs Man is just a little smarter: he has found them in film canisters, in bottles of drink, in cardboard sheets on the back of .pictures, in toys, food, sleepling bags, or kilograms of hashish just sitting there

(By

ROBERT LAHOOD)

innocently in trunks of personal belongings addressed to a person unheard of at the indicated destination.

In this warm country today, the young traveller is soon given every opportunity to “score” as the users say in their jargon. “Hash” wall be offered often, from other young travellers smoking openly on the beaches, when he is considered safe by members of a kibbutz, and by haggling Arab pushers kids hissing hashish, often many of them not yet in their teens. The hashish trail

The Old City of Jerusalem and the port of Eilat on the Gulf of Eilat, Israel’s outlet to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, are the recognised big depots outside Morocco and the Middle East’s Hashish Trail of Afghanistan, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Kandahar.

An American-Israeli youth sat down beside me in a Tel Aviv bus after following me from a theatre where I had seen “Woodstock” and offered me a paper “sweet.” He hopped off at the next stop. The “sweet” was not a sweet but a cube of hashish (at least £5 worth in London) and on the inside of the toffee paper an address was neatly printed. Other narcotics were just as easily obtained.

LSD was very common: I had “tabs” offered me thrte times by young Americans I had known only a short while, and saw “tripping” kids rolling in hallucinations many times where they camped on beaches. Some giggled and jabbered, others sat silent in obvious ecstasy, occasionally uttering abstract words conveying their pleasure and bliss. One girl really frightened me; she went from having trances in a wild frenzy in which she rolled on the sand like an animal, sweating freely, wideeyed, in what I imagined was a mild overdose. Half a tab, they told me, was enough for a trip for most people. Some people, however, needed a whole tab on their first trip, still others “didn’t get away after dropping a whole tab.” Different types of LSD had different effects on the mind, some highlighted colours, others sounds, with still another make, one 18-year-old American girl told me, “you hear and see just the beautiful things people say and do, nothing is bad, everything is beautiful.” Willing to share

Most kids preferred to trip at a time around sunset: about this time on any beach at Eilat young travellers in tie-dyed tea shirts, jeans and sandals may be seen smoking or preparing for a trip, the highlight of which will last five or so hours. The Americans treated drugs as something quite simple, a part of every-day life; many experienced their first drugs while still at school, and most regard the uninitiated with sympathy or as they say "freaks,” and are nearly always willing to share the “pleasures” of what drugs they have with others.

Many get to Israel because they hear of the “good scene” from others, but once there find they are unable to get out of the country because they have not enough money to return to Athens, the nearest port. Unlike places they have been before, they cannot just cross the border, the surrounding countries are all hostile Arab states at war with Israel. Those who have no inclination to move, and there are many, lose themselves, living in cheap accommodation in the Old City or in the waddies and on the beaches. Some work an odd day here and there, labouring for enough food and a precious finger of hashish to last them another week; others cadge, some steal, and some beg in the streets of the bazaars along with old and blind Arabs.

Many have been "busted,” caught by the Israeli police smoking or trafficking, and have their passports confiscated pending trial. But trial is very often delayed, two Americans I met had been waiting 13 months.

Prosecutions in Eilat are made at a steady rate, but it is obvious that the Police turn a blind eye to much that goes on. They tend to have periodical raids here and there, a few dozen people being brought in. A 23-year-old Englishman I shared a room with for a time at a kibbutz had been in Israel for three years: he was a confirmed drug addict. He was hopelessly hooked. After graduating with a masters degree at Manchester University he was seeing the continent before going home. The day before he was to fly home he was “busted” in Eilat for possessing a pipe containing hashish. His passport was taken, he was released from gaol two days later and told he was standing trial at the end of the month. He has been told the same thing four times at the police station.

I don’t think he, and many like him, will ever go home. Happy and secure on the kibbutz where he works when he is not travelling around, he has access to the drugs he needs. Hashish is smoked discreetly on many kibbutzim in Israel, but some more discreetly than others; the majority of members, especially the Israelis, are not interested in drugs and generally, depending on how strict the kibbutz is, choose to ignore what they see and hear, but the majority of volunteers (young foreign travellers) smoke regularly or . associate readily with those who do. Students angry Except in cases of smuggling, usually over the borders or down the coast from Lebanon in fishing boats to Akko, Israel’s Arabs are rarely apprehended on charges relating to hashish; charges of smoking hashish by an Arab in the privacy of his own home are even more rare. Israeli students in the universities and soldiers in the armed forces are not interested in drugs and generally feel strongly about the practice among the Americans who take up valuable positions at their universities.

Casual searches are uncommon even if you are suspicious looking suspicious means young, foreign, unshaven, tieless, long haired, robes and beads. The Israelis will not shoot you if you are caught trafficking, as they do in Persia and Iraq, however, the chances of smuggling success are few.