[Went through a 3-hour-long rabbit-hole regarding Israel's diamond trade; sharing the results here with you, the 3 hours is wasted but at least some people will read and learn something]
Diamonds are Israel's single biggest export item (the 13% figure below was 24% in 2016. Due to the factors mentioned below it seems, Israeli mining companies are maybe using transshipment or 3rd party countries or are not declaring numbers through confidentiality clauses; Around 13% share of Israel in world diamond exports suddenly falls to 8% in the same time-frame that U.S. sanctions it and UAE's share grows from 8% to 13%; seems the blood diamonds are being washed by the way of UAE; (
https://www.aapeaceinstitute.org/la...-trade-reaches-1.75b-a-yearly-increase-of-163)
These numbers were around 50% for Israel at the turn of the century, so I suspect Israel losing 40% of its share at the same time that several small island nations have added to their share and India has increased its share massively cannot be explained away by Israel losing its supply, as none of these nations have mining endeavors in East Africa and Great Lakes Region. So my suspicion is Israel not only has retained but might have even increased its 50% share of Diamond (and many other associated minerals and gemstones) exports in the past two decades).
U.S. sanctioned the diamond mining monopoly (monopoly rights were bought for 30 million dollars along with other deals for Cobalt and Copper mining) of Israeli billionaire
Dan Getler 7 years ago, citing human rights violations then Trump reversed his own sanctions on the last days of his admin without public announcement; Biden admin reinstated them to then announce 3 months ago a "limited" easing of these sanctions.
Check out this page via the Business and Human Rights Centre
www.business-humanrights.org
This back & forth seems to be a result of conflict of interest and the divergence of Israeli and American positions regarding Joseph Kabila, the former president of Congo and the monopoly given to the Israeli firm by him and his father, and also Israel's anarchic opportunism regarding the blood diamond and other mining enterprises (
Beny Steinmetz once Israel's richest man and Soros' old partner has sevral iron and other metal mines all over the region) through whatever means possible, working with all sides of the conflict and the terrorist groups to sell them weapons (mostly in partnership with Russia through Israeli "King of Diamonds"
Lev Leviev, a very close friend of Putin, another source of disputes with U.S. deep state's NATO faction), destabilizing the region and facilitating all the atrocities that have happened in the Great Lakes Region.
Israel refuses to come clean about its links with the murderous Hutu regime that carried out the genocide in Rwanda 25 years ago. But Foreign Ministry documents show that Israel was aware of the massacres against the Tutsi minority way back in the 1960s — and turned a blind eye.
www.972mag.com
Weapons sales from Israel to Africa rose by 40 percent in 2014.
electronicintifada.net
Israel is considered one of the most important countries that import rough diamonds, and the most prominent countries that export polished diamonds. Most of these diamonds come from African countries...
www.middleeastmonitor.com
Regarding the cold war struggle for Angola between U.S. and Soviets, an excerpt from this article (
https://www.the7eye.org.il/517733) is interesting:
From the telegrams it appears that, unlike the US, Israel showed flexibility and was not interested in the global struggle between the West block and the Soviet block or the ideology of the Angolan liberation movements, but mainly if the specific movement was willing to build relations with it in contrast to the position of the Arab states. Israel held talks with all the liberation movements and each time chose to concentrate its support for the one that it identified as having the chance to prevail.
Then, there's the
Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (
KPCS) which according to their own website
here
"started when Southern African diamond-producing states met in Kimberley, South Africa, in May 2000, to discuss ways to stop the trade in ‘conflict diamonds' and ensure that diamond purchases were not financing violence by rebel movements and their allies seeking to undermine legitimate governments."
The parties to this certification scheme are the heirs to the Cecil Rhoades/Rothschild/De Beers fortune and Israel was the closest ally of South Africa's apartheid regime and has organic ties to the Belgian and U.K. centers of Diamond trade. But even then, there was an attempt to include human rights violations included in the definiton of this certification scheme, but the move was blocked by Israeli Diamond Exchange (IDE) and its president
Shmuel Schnitzer (Dan Getler's uncle), citing
here that "it could be disastrous to trading centers, and especially to Israel".
The hilarious thing is that 90% (90% because althought 80% of diamond is used in industry, 90% of revenue comes from jewellery sales) of this 50 billion $ industry for Israel which fuels civil wars and genocides all over Africa is based on a marketing ploy to create a fake tradition of buying diamonds for engagement rings and the diamond cartel keeps prices high through artificial scarcity. Watch here (English subtitles are available but the video is in Turkish):
