As a luxury item, foregoing the purchase of diamonds is a painless gesture, especially when many are brutally produced by forced labor in horrific conditions. But blood diamonds, as these have come to be known, are not merely a topic of human rights abuses against slave labor; they are also a growing topic of focus for global solidarity opposing human rights abuses perpetrated by the State of Israel against Palestine.
In his article on how the diamond cutting and polishing industry in Israel supports the Israeli military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, Sean Clinton reports that as Israel’s #1 export commodity, blood diamonds contribute $1 billion a year to the Zionist Apartheid. Along with the $3 billion a year from the U.S. Treasury in the form of military aid, American consumers are often oblivious to their underwriting of the occupation.
Given that nearly half of the diamonds purchased in the US are from Israel, a boycott of this luxury good is a campaign American jewelers are hoping to avoid. Fortunately, as word gets out about their efforts to censor Israeli blood diamond news, consumer resentment might prove to be as effective a motivator as human rights.
The library is dedicated to the memory of Secwepemc Chief George Manuel (1921-1989), to the nations of the Fourth World and to the elders and generations to come.
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