The End of the Mickey Mouse Mafia

In 1947, the state of Israel was established. Menachem Begin eventually became Israel's Prime Minister. Most people probably do not know much about his criminal past before becoming a politician. Begin was a member of the Stern Gang terrorist group. One of his acts was blowing up a hotel, killing many people. The people who established Israel were extremely violent (which was understandable, in the wake of World War II and the Jewish Holocaust). Mick Cohen became involved with Begin, and became an arms dealer for Israel. Again, this should not surprise anybody who has done any digging into the alliances of the CIA, for instance. Cohen said that it was his Jewish blood that made him such a fervent supporter of Israel, but he was likely in it for the money, as usual. Mickey Cohen would be sentenced to ten years in prison for tax violations. It was the government that got to him before the crime lords in LA were able to eliminate him. While serving his sentence he was severely beaten by another inmate. In 1972, after serving a ten-year sentence for tax violations, Mickey declared himself reformed. By this time, he was partially paralyzed after the 1963 prison attack. Remarkably, Mickey Cohen, perhaps one of the most colorful and marked for death crime lords, died of natural causes in 1976. In an interview for the Associated Press prior to his death in 1976 he summed up his own feelings about his career in the statement: "I've killed no one that in the first place didn't deserve killing"

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