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May 16, 2013
Israeli blood diamond agreement scuppered by BDS activists
By Seán Clinton
Attempts by the Israeli diamond industry to get diamond buyers from Dubai to attend a diamond fair in Israeli were scuppered by BDS activists who highlighted the links between Israeli diamonds and the funding of Israeli war crimes in Palestine.
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The BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign to expose the trade in Israeli blood diamonds is claiming a victory following the removal of an article published by the Israeli Diamond Exchange (IDE) on Sunday 12th May announcing that the chair of the Dubai Diamond Exchange (DDE), Peter Meeus, had agreed to organise a delegation of diamond buyers from Dubai to attend a diamond fair in Israel next August.
Following emails to authorities in the
The IDE article, described as a Press Release by Rapaport, was published on the IDE, Rapaport and INDEX website -- all leading global diamond industry portals. IDEX reported that it would be a "ground-breaking development"
On Monday 13 th the BDS campaign to expose the trade in Israeli blood diamonds shared a link to the Rapaport article on its Facebook page and encouraged people to write to the Dubai Diamond Exchange and ask why they were promoting the trade in Israeli blood diamonds.
An email was sent the United Arab Emirates government on Monday afternoon, via their website, querying how it could be legal for diamond buyers from Dubai to do business with Israeli diamond companies given that the Arab League maintains a boycott of Israel which prohibits cooperation with Israeli companies and pointing out that Israeli diamonds are a major source of funding for the Israeli military which stands accused of war crimes.
Later that evening the links to the articles on the Rapaport and IDI website were taken down. The IDEX article remained in place until Tuesday when it too was taken down. A cached version of the Rapaport article was still available at the time of writing.
There can be little doubt that this is a significant setback for the Israeli Diamond Industry"s efforts to develop trade links with the Dubai Diamond Exchange. The DDE has grown exponentially over the last decade and now competes with Tel Aviv for the diamond trade between Africa and the increasingly important and rapidly growing diamond markets in
While diamond buyers from
De Beers, which is heavily involved with the Israeli diamond industry, has at least two outlets in
These companies sell diamonds crafted in
This setback for the Israeli diamond industry comes as the global body known as the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), set up ostensibly to prevent the trade in blood diamonds, prepares to meet in
In a stinging article published this week a leading ethical jeweller, Marc Choyt, writes: " The big family secret in the jewelry sector is that the Kimberley Process Certification (KP), which created a system to prevent blood diamonds from entering the supply chain, now certifies blood diamonds as "conflict free .
Yet, jewelers continue to rely on this now discredited system as an assurance of ethical diamond sourcing. This is an unacceptable practice and its time for KP to be abandoned by jewelers and the public, now. "
The
If that doesn't happen the diamond brand image will continue to be associated with bloodshed and violence rather than the romantic imagery which the industry has spent millions, if not billions, of dollars promoting over many decades.