Tel Aviv: Las Vegas of online betting

Submitted by Matthew on 29 April, 2010 - 3:49 Author: Solomon Anker

A new popular term in Israel for the country is “IsraHell”. This is popular among some left-wing football fans, radicals and so on.

You might imagine the term refers to the military occupation of the Palestinian territories, but actually it is something else. It refers to the depressing quality of life in the country for its mainly Jewish citizens as capitalism sinks deeper and deeper.

In the 1950s, Israel had possibly the best health care in the world, and had managed to house huge amounts of people in accommodation which was better than what Britain and France managed to build after the Second World War.

The French Prime Minister in 1956 (Guy Mollet of the Socialist Party) even used the excuse of Israel being a “socialist” country to justify its colonial alliance with it against Egypt in the Suez Crisis.

Yet the Kibbutz movement has been totally uprooted from any socialism, the gap between rich and poor in the cities is widening, and the nasty sides of human nature are surfacing — from greed to violence.

New segregation on class lines develops, with bars, shops and restaurants for the new wealthy Israelis, while beggars, crack-prostitutes and homeless people become more numerous on the streets.

The upper classes often make their money in high tech, now becoming the second biggest industry in Israel. And internet gambling dominates the offices in the skyscrapers of Tel Aviv.

It ranges from sports gambling sites to poker and casinos. All the major British sporting gambling chains, like William Hill and Ladbrokes, have marketing and customer service offices, as well as the huge internet casinos like 888.com.

There are also 100% Israeli companies — mainly casinos — running businesses very much on the edge of legality (and miles away from any line of morality).

All this happens in a country where gambling is illegal and poker events and horse racing are banned!

Israeli internet casinos register their companies in a tiny island like Gibraltar or Jersey and run the casino from Tel Aviv. They hide the fact they are from Israel, possibly because many of their clients are from Saudi Arabia and also possibly because they are breaking Israeli law.

Many of the workers are American, British and French people, in order to give the false image that the company is not Israeli and that it is not “dodgy”.

But the dirty tricks of gambling companies are very obvious. These companies successfully manage to trick their customers in many ways, especially with their “bonuses” they offer.

If you communicate with a customer support worker from a sports betting or casino website, then that worker is likely to be sitting in Tel Aviv even if he says he is in Cyprus, Gibraltar or Bermuda.

The workers are not getting much out of this business.

They work under terrible conditions, as many workers’ rights have long since gone in Israel and the boss has never had so much power.

Ironically these capitalist industries are also the strongest anti-Zionist force! They employ and abuse many Jewish workers from the west. These people find Israel is not what they expected, and return home to America, France and the UK.

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