SOCIALIST UNITY

Last Saturday saw lively protests in New York and London outside the jewellers owned by Lev Leviev. According to the Black Looks blog “Leviev is a major constructor of Israeli settlements on Occupied Palestinian land in violation of international law. He owns Alluvial diamond mines in Angola where thousands work in dangerous conditions, largely unregulated and often digging with their bare hands standing in dirty muddy water.”

The blogger Haitham reports the NY protest:

In an assertion of Palestinian identity in defiance of Israeli efforts to destroy their culture, the Palestine Liberation Dance Troupe performed the Palestinian folkdance dabkeh, including fellahi wedding dances. They danced to traditional Palestinian wedding songs celebrating love including, “Ya Zareef Atool” and “Dalouna.”

The protesters performed a racy parody of “The Dating Game” entitled “The One Date Solution, for those who want to settle”, featuring a contestant named Lev who was wooed by three other contestants - a pro-Israel legal scholar and author of the book “The Case for Ethnic Cleansing” named Alana; the daughter of a repressive African dictator with extensive diamond holdings; and Lev’s spurned ex-Brooklyn real estate partner. In response to a criticism of his human rights record from one contestant, Lev explained, “Lev means never having to say you’re sorry.” But “The Dating Game” ended before Lev was able to choose a date because the audience voted Lev out of New York City and Palestine. Also displayed at the protest was a six foot Date profile for Leviev which noted, among other things, “In my free time, I enjoy: Exploitation, Profiteering, Union-Busting, and Macrame.”

An Adalah-NY representative tried to deliver a three foot by two foot heart-shaped valentine to the store for Leviev. The valentine featured photos from Palestinian villages like Bil’in and Jayyous where Leviev’s companies are building Israeli settlements, and hand-written messages from protesters like “Stop the Land Theft”, “Jews say no to apartheid,” and “Where’s the love Lev?” However, store staff refused to accept the valentine, saying that Adalah-NY should mail it to Leviev.

In London, 25 demonstrators from Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, together with support from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the Wall and Jews for Justice for Palestinians held a Valentine’s Day protest outside the jewelry shop Leviev in normally sedate Old Bond Street London, holding placards, and leafleting to curious passers by. The posters highlighted Leviev’s settlement construction in Bil’in and Jayyous, and included the violence of uprooting olive trees and armed soldiers’ assaults against Palestinian farmers.

I have written myself about Leviev before, as due to a bizarre non-coincidence in 2006 Lev Leviev purchase a 75% stake in Israeli football team, Hapoel Tel Aviv, while just a month earlier his former business partner, Arkadi Gaidamak, bought the club Betar Jeruselem, and Arkadi’s son Alexandre Gaidamak invested £15 million into Portsmouth FC, in the English premiership.

Arkadi Gaidamak has been in recent trouble with the Israeli government, who froze his bank accounts in 2006 and “In 2000, the French put out an international warrant for his arrest in connection with the Angolan arms-for-oil scandal, for which the son of former French President Francois Mitterrand was briefly jailed on charges of receiving kickbacks from Gaidamak business partner Pierre Falcone. Gaidamak and Falcone allegedly arranged for shipments of Russian arms that were to have been paid for with Angolan oil contracts. There was an international ban on weapon sales to Angola at the time.”

Although they are now rivals, much of Lev Leviev’s vast wealth comes from his Angolan diamond interests, which were allegedly established with the assistance of Arkadi Gaidamak.  Lev Leviev overturned De Beer’s monopoly in Angola, and according to the Economist this connection made Leviev an estimated $850 million per year. Today, Gaidamak seems to be involved with Angola’s Sunland Mining, also one of the official buyers of rough diamonds from Angolan state company Sodiam.

There is no suggestion that either Leviev’s or Gaidamak’s diamond trading in Angola are illegal. However, in a report for BBC’s “Focus on Africa”, Lara Pawson exposed how some of Leviev’s employees freely admitted to buying diamonds from UNITA – Dr Jonas Savimbi’s fascist rebel army.

But the biggest scandal is that these vast fortunes are being extracted from Angola, which remains one of the world’s poorest nations. According to the United Nations: One in three children in Angola dies before age 5. Half the children are underweight. Fewer than half have ever been in school, and the majority of the adult population are illiterate. The vast majority of Angolans face a critical shortage of healthcare. But Leviev has no ethical objection to making money out of human misery, and has been awarded the contract to build and run Israel’s first private prison near Be’er Sheva.