Israel’s “Blood Diamonds” Boost Jeweller Profits as Gaza Bleeds

Figure 1 – Diamond exports that generate revenue used to fund the Israeli military account for between one quarter and one third of Israel’s exports

Sean Clinton

As Israel carries out yet another attack on Gaza jewellers worldwide continue to conceal the fact that blood diamonds are supporting one of the most abhorrent and prolonged injustices against a defenceless indigenous people. Israel’s “prominent and central position” in the global diamond industry has ensured that diamonds which fund war crimes in Palestine evade regulation. Consumers have been kept in the dark and lied to about the extent of the blood diamond problem

Bob Bates, senior editor with JCK magazine, is a diamond industry insider who never tires of throwing dust in the eyes of his readers as he tries to convince them that the diamond market is no longer heavily contaminated with blood diamonds. His latest broadside is aimed at Jason Miklian, a researcher who caused considerable embarrassment for the industry when an article he wrote exposed some of the serious flaws in the Kimberley Process and spawned headlines declaring that 25% of all diamonds are blood diamonds.

Figure 1 — Diamond exports that generate revenue used to fund the Israeli military account for between one quarter and one third of Israel’s exports
Figure 1 — Diamond exports that generate revenue used to fund the Israeli military account for between one quarter and one third of Israel’s exports

In the patronising attack piece Bates claims Miklian discredited his original thesis when, in a later article, he used the term “up to 25%” rather than “about 25%” and that the diamonds he referred to were illicit diamonds and not blood diamonds. Bates’ arguments fall flat and are unconvincing but his effort exposes some contradictory positions of his own when it comes to blood diamonds.

Read more