Why the Diamond Industry Should Steer Clear of Lev Leviev’s Businesses

The Rapaport Group’s statement on Corporate Responsibility lays out a number of important principles to ensure a “strong proactive role promoting and implementing corporate responsibility programs around the world.” Other major jewelry industry associations like Jewelers of America (JA) and the Council for Responsible Jewellery Practices (CRJP) have committed themselves to similar laudable principles to respect human rights and contribute to sustainable development.

Members of the diamond industry should not do business with the companies of Israeli diamantier Lev Leviev because there is strong evidence that Leviev’s businesses violate the Rapaport Group’s principles on corporate responsibility as well as those of the JA and CRJP. Leviev’s businesses have recently been renounced by Oxfam International and UNICEF due to Leviev’s construction of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank in violation of international law. Companies owned by Leviev’s partner in settlement construction, Shaya Boymelgreen, are now being sued for war crimes in Canada.

Leviev’s companies violate the following principles from the Rapaport Group’s statement on Corporate Responsibility:

New York, NY, March 29, 2008 – Today’s Land Day protest at the Madison Avenue jewelry store of Israeli billionaire and settlement mogul Lev Leviev highlights the 60 year Israeli campaign to displace Palestinians from their land, and Palestinian defiance and resistance – from the Nakbah, or Catastrophe, in 1948, when around 800,000 Palestinians were driven from their villages by Israeli forces to become refugees; to the original Land Day protests in 1976; to present day settlement construction by Israeli settlement builders like Lev Leviev in Bil’in, Jayyous, Jabel Abu Ghneim and Maale Adumim.