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Maar ik heb moeite om een mooie lay -out op het blog te krijgen.
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keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 1 of 18
GERTLER’S BLING BANG TORAH GANG
Israel and the Ongoing Holocaust in Congo
(part one)
keith harmon snow
www.allthingspass.com
7 February 2008
Maurice Templesman is one of the top funders of Barrack
Obama and Hillary
Clinton and the Democratic Party. Templesman was the
unofficial ambassador to the
Congo (Zaire) for years, but a new Israeli-American tycoon
has replaced him. In the world
of bling bling and bling bang, some things change, some stay
the same. The CIA, the
MOSSAD, the big mining companies, the offshore accounts and
weapons deals—all
hidden by the Western media. The holocaust in Central Africa
has claimed some six to ten
million people in Congo since 1996, with 1500 people dying
daily.1
But while the
Africans
are the victims of perpetual Holocaust, the persecutors hide
behind history, complaining
that they are the persecuted, or pretending they are the
saviors. Who is responsible?
For Israeli-American Dan Gertler, business in blood drenched
Congo is not merely
business, it is a quest for the Holy Grail. Young Dan
Gertler goes nowhere—does
nothing—without the spiritual guidance of Brooklyn-born
Rabbi Chaim Yaakov Leibovitch,
a personal friend of Condoleeza Rice.2
Gertler and
Leibovitch are two of the principals
behind a diamond mining company, Emaxon Finance Corporation,
involved in the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Gertler and gang won the
majority rights to the
diamonds from the state mining company, Société Minière de
Bakwange, MIBA, found
near the government-controlled town of Mbuji-Mayi, the rough
diamond capital of the
world.
1
In January 2008 the
International Rescue Committee, who is also discussed in this article,
released its second survey of mortality in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, estimating that
5,400,000 people have died, or some 1500 people every day.
Mortality in the Democratic Republic
of Congo: an Ongoing Crisis, International Rescue Committee,
January 2008,
<http://www.theirc.org/special-report/congo-forgotten-crisis.html>.
However, IRC statistics are
highly biased and politicized. See: keith harmon snow, “Over
Five Million Dead in Congo?” All
Things Pass, January 3, 2008,
<http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php?catid=71>.
2
Personal interview,
Democratic Republic of Congo, August 2006.
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 2 of 18
Emaxon Finance Corp. has apparently out-maneuvered diamond
competitors, especially
the big rivals Energem and De Beers. Energem is one of the
many shady mining
companies connected to Anthony Teixeira, a Portuguese born
businessman now residing
in South Africa whose daughter married Congolese warlord
Jean-Pierre Bemba. The
warlord’s deadly battle in Congo in March 2007 was a bid
between rival agents—JeanPierre Bemba and Joseph Kabila—to be the black
gatekeeper for the mining cartels run by
dynastic families like Templesman, Oppenheimer, Mendell,
Forrest, Blattner, Hertzov,
Gertler and Steinmetz, and for companies like NIKANOR, whose
stock prices rose early in
July 2006 in expectation of a July 30th “win” for Joseph
Kabila.3
Africa Confidential
called
President Kabila’s 2003 visit to the Bush White House a
“coup” for the Israeli diamond
magnates Dan Gertler and Beny Steinmetz.
Canadian-based Energem, formerly DiamondWorks, is owned by
British mercenary Tony
Buckingham and its director/shareholders include Mario and
Tony Teixeira, J.P. Morgan,
and Gertler’s partner Israeli-American Beny Steinmetz
(50%).4
Through subsidiary
Branch
Energy, the Energem-DiamondWorks gang has perpetuated war in
11 African countries.5
In December 2007, Energem re-launched itself on the London
Stock Market with the newly
laundered image of a renewable energy company. Regarding
diamonds, it said only it “had
decided to give up exploration rights in the Central African
Republic.”6
The Energem
spokesman explained that Tony Teixeira “had a clean bill of
health” etc., etc. Of course,
Energem “quit” the C.A.R. because Jean-Pierre Bemba marched
his troops into C.A.R.,
where they raped and pillaged widely.7
Energem is still
operating in Congo, but Dan
Gertler is the new, unofficial ambassador to the Congo for
the George W. Bush gang.
Gertler and partners like Beny and Danny Steinmetz, Nir
Livnat, Chaim Leibovitz and
Yaakov Neeman run a hornet’s nest of companies involved in
African hotspots, including:
Dan Gertler International (DGI), Steinmetz Global Resources,
International Diamond
Industries, NIKANOR and Global Enterprises Corporate.
“Dan Gertler is ‘the new kid on the block,’” writes Yossi
Melman in Israel’s Haaretz news.
“Bold, sophisticated, brutal, he is an adventurer with a
short fuse.” Haaratz confirmed that
Dan Gertler owns a complex network of interconnected
companies, often registered in
3
keith harmon snow,
“Warlord’s Deadly Battle, Toward Freedom, 2007.
4
Officers: Antonio
Teixeira, President & CEO; Robert G. Rainey, CFO; Brett Thompson, COO,
Mining; Dimitri (Jimmy) Kanakakis, Vice President, Corporate
& Legal Affairs; Bernard Poznanski,
Corporate Secretary; Board Members: Brian Menell, Richard
Dorfman, Bruce Holmes, Robert
Rainey, Antonio Teixeira, <www.energem.com>.
5
See:
“Africa/Diamonds: Rough diamonds,” Africa Confidential, 5 March 2004, Vol. 45,
No. 5; and
“Equatorial Guinea: All Theft is Property,” Africa
Confidential, 17 Nov. 2006, Vol. 47, No. 23: p. 12.
6
Tim Hoare, the head
of the advisers that launched it, Canaccord Adams, sits alongside rock star
and champion of Africa Bob Geldof on the board of the
television-production company Ten Alps.
See: Ben Laurance, “Energy firm link to blood diamonds,” The
Sunday Times, December 30, 2007.
7
See: keith harmon
snow, “A People’s History of Congo’s Jean-Pierre Bemba,” Toward Freedom,
September 18, 2007.
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 3 of 18
offshore tax havens and involved in India, Russia, Belgium
and the United States, and that
Dan Gertler is looking to God for guidance. 8
THOU SHALT NOT STEAL
“In the diamond industry,” Melman wrote, “Gertler is
considered something of an odd bird.
He maintains few ties with the other merchants and is not
very sociable... Alongside his
business affairs, most of his energy is channeled into
matters of faith. He is a donor to
religious institutions and from time to time makes a
pilgrimage to the rabbi he most
admires, Rabbi David Abuhatzeira, from Nahariya, in order to
consult with him and receive
his blessing. Gertler is surrounded mostly by religious
people and laces his speech
liberally with praise to God.” 9
In 2003, Condoleeza Rice, then Assistant to President Bush
for National Security Affairs,
introduced Dan Gertler and Chaim Leibovitch to U.S. official
Jendayi Frazer, a Harvard
Kennedy School affiliate and former National Security
Council agent focused on Africa. On
December 6, 2006, Frazer, then Assistant Secretary of State
for African Affairs, was one of
seven special Bush delegates sent to the inauguration of
Congo’s newly installed
President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa.10
When Dan Gertler and Chaim Leibovitch and their friends
visit the luxury Gertler villa in
Lumumbashi, the capital of Katanga, Congo’s large southern
province, their kosher meals
arrive by private plane from Kinshasa. The special executive
jet that flies their kosher
meals a few hundred miles over the roadless Congo costs some
$US 23,000 per trip.11
The average income for Congolese citizens each year—if they
survive it—is about $95.
Shootings at mining facilities and diamond mines are common,
land is stolen from
Congolese people, strikes are crushed by security forces
that companies are partnered
with, and black overseers of state terror routinely arrest
and torture any vocal
opposition—and sometimes disappear them—in support of white
bosses. The Société
Minière de Bakwange—MIBA—and the diamond fields of
Mbuji-Mayi in Congo have a long
history of bloodshed backed by Western powers, including
Israel, from the beginning.12
Amnesty International points out that not a single state
agent has ever been prosecuted for
the extrajudicial executions of suspected “illegal” miners
in Mbuji-Mayi.13
8
Yossi Melman and Asaf
Carmel, “Diamond in the rough,” March 24, 2005, <www.haaretz.com>.
9
Yossi Melman and Asaf
Carmel, “Diamond in the rough,” March 24, 2005, <www.haaretz.com>.
10
See: keith harmon
snow, “Congo’s President Joseph Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty?” Toward
Freedom, November 13, 2007,
<http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1171/1/>.
11
Private interview,
Kinshasa, August 2006.
12
See: “Terror in the
Diamond Fields: Excessive Force and Impunity in the DRC,” Amnesty
International Canada,
<http://www.amnesty.ca/realsecurity/DRC.php>; Democratic Republic of
Congo: Government should investigate human rights violations
in the Mbuji Mayi diamond fields,
Amnesty International, October 22, 2002;
13
Making a Killing: The
Diamond Trade in Government Controlled DRC, Amnesty International,
2002, AFR 62/017/2002 22/10/2002.
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 4 of 18
After a century of exploitation and slavery, we find MIBA
consistently withholding payment
of salaries to starving Congolese laborers and middle
managers for months at a time. April
and May 2007 saw strikes and protests leading to the Kabila
government’s arbitrary arrest,
detention and torture of trade union organizers like Leon
Ngoy Bululu; police have also
shot protestors.14
So-called ‘illegal’
diamond workers—disenfranchised local Congolese
people forced into “criminal” activities to survive—were
summarily executed on MIBA
concessions in Mbuji-Mayi. MIBA security guards have also
been sniping unemployed
diamond miners.15
Meanwhile, Dan Gertler’s kosher meals depart Kinshasa, the
capital of the big Congo,
through the arrangements of Rabbi Chlomo Bentolila, high
priest of the Chabad of Central
Africa. Rabbi Chlomo Bentolila has been a Kinshasa Rabbi
since 1991, and he was a
spiritual force who survived the terrorism of the old
dinosaur, Mobutu Sese Seko, the way
most elites did: by working with him. Rabbi Bentolila is a
member of the Chabad Lubavitch
Global Emissary Network, headquartered in Brooklyn, New
York, and his wife Miriam is the
sister of Rabbi Mena’hem Hadad, a high priest in Brussels.16
“Kosher does not mean that a Rabbi blesses the food,” Rabbi
Betolila corrected me, “but
rather that the food was supervised by a Rabbinical Thora
[sic] authority who sees that the
ingredients were in accordance with the laws of Kashrut
expressed in the Bible (Leviticus
and Deuteronomy).” 17
Dan Gertler often flies people into Congo, on his private
jet, for sacred Jewish rituals. For
the Bar Mitsvah of Rabbi Chlomo Bentolila’s son Binyamin
Avrahim in June 2005, guests
included eminent Rabbis, Hassidic singer Yoni Shlomo and
special orchestra Yossef
Brami, all arriving in “special flights” from Israel, New
York and Brussels. The reception
was held at the luxurious and exclusive Memling Hotel.
Joseph Kabila sent a sizeable
delegation but did not attend: his closest advisers provided
a blessing on his behalf.18
The Gertler, Steinmetz and Templesman interests are advanced
in part through the
support of the Committee of the Jewish Community of
Kinshasa—le Comité de la
Communauté Israélite—that is tightly coordinated with the
power structure in Kinshasa to
exert influence and assure control of
Israeli-Belgian-Anglo-American interests over the
geopolitical arena.
14
See: “ICEM protests
Congo’s Transport, Diamond Injustices,” International Federation of
Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Worker’s Union, May 7,
2007, <http://www.icem.org/en/78-
ICEM-InBrief/2243-ICEM-protests-Congo%E2%80%99s-Transport-Diamond-Injustices>.
15
“Diamond miners
killed in DR Congo,” BBC News, 7 August 2006,
<http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:z9WCcOGeL8MJ:news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5254006.stm
+%22MIBA%22+%22illegal+miners%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4>.
16
See:
<http://www.jewishafrica.com/> and
<http://www.chabad.org/centers/default.htm/aid/117894/jewish/Chabad-of-Central-Africa.html
>.
17
Private
communication, Rabbi Chlomo Bentolila, August 16, 2007.
18
“Lag Baomer in
Kinshasa,” June 2005, <www.hassidout.org/page_derniere26.htm>.
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 5 of 18
From June 26-30, 2007, the Communaute Israelite de Kinshasa
received a visit from the
Israeli Ambassador Yaakov Revah, director of the Africa
Department of the Israeli Ministry
of Foreign Affairs; Revah also flew to Lumumbashi for
meetings with Dan Gertler and his
agents, including Moishe (Moses) Katumbi, the Governor of
Katanga, and they most likely
enjoyed a lovely, $23,000 kosher meal sent from the Chabad
in Kinshasa.19
The
Communaute Israelite de Kinshasa maintains very intimate
political relations with
President Joseph Kabila’s PPRD party, the People's Party for
Reconstruction and
Democracy. On March 1, 2006, in a formal ceremony, the
President of the Communaute
Israelite de Kinshasa, Ashlan Piha, was awarded the Congo’s
Medal of Civil Merit.
THOU SHALT NOT COVET
Before his assassination on January 16, 2001, Laurent Desire
Kabila—the President of the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—made a deal with the
Gertler gang that would play
out in favor of the current President Joseph Kabila and, it
seems, be a central factor in
relation to both Congo’s ongoing war and the bloody
warlord’s battle in Kinshasa in March
2007.20
Back in 2000, former Congolese president Laurent Kabila
offered a monopoly on
Congolese diamonds, and 88% of the proceeds, to Gertler’s
International Diamond
Industries (IDI) in exchange for Israeli military assistance
to his new government.21
Top
Congolese military officials apparently flew to Israel in
2000 to negotiate the deal. Gertler
pledged military assistance to President Laurent Kabila
through top Israeli officials.22
The original Gertler-Kabila deal fell through after Laurent
Kabila was assassinated for not
cooperating with the Great White Fathers of industry
(January 2001), but Gertler and
Leibovitch and their disciples formed another company, Dan
Gertler International, and
advanced their Congo plan.23
By 2002 Gertler’s
company was the leading exporter of
19
“Visite de
l’Ambassadeur Revah a’ Kinshasa,” Kadima 010, June-September 2007,
<http://74.52.200.226/~sefarad/kadima/kadima10.pdf>.
20
See: keith harmon
snow, “Behind the Scenes: Warlord’s Deadly Battle in Congo,” Toward
Freedom, August 9, 2007.
21
Nicole Gaouette,
"Inside Israel's diamond trade: a family affair," Christian Science
Monitor, 21
February 2002,
<http://www.boycottisraeligoods.org/modules6437.php>.
22
Yitzhak Danon, “Top
Israelis accused of illegal diamond deals: Israel: Lawsuit claims corruption
in Congo diamonds for arms deal,” Globes (Israel), 18
February 2004,
<http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/press269.htm>.
See also: “Column One: What
Lieberman Wants,” Jerusalem Post, October 20, 2006.
<http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193481395&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FP
rinter>.
23
Christian Dietrich,
Blood Diamonds: Effective African-Based Monopolies, African Security
Review, Vol. 10, No 3., 2001,
<http://www.iss.co.za/ASR/10No3/Dietrich.html>.
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 6 of 18
Congolese gems, controlling a diamond mining franchise worth
about $US 1 billion
annually. 24
In 2003, the mighty Congolese diamond parastatal Societe
Miniere De Bakwanga
(MIBA)—which has been forever controlled by the Great White
Fathers in Belgium, Israel
and America—signed an exclusive contract with Gertler’s
startup company, Emaxon
Finance International. The deal involved Israeli’s Foreign
Defense Assistance and Defense
Export Organization (SIBAT), and high-level Israeli defense
and intelligence officials.
Gertler and his buddies reportedly bribed Congolese
officials and Angolan generals who,
on and off, have commanded Angolan Army troops protecting
Kinshasa, Congo’s
capital.25,26
Security for mining operations in Congo is provided by
exclusive security companies like
Overseas Security Services (OSS) one of the many DRC
interests of Belgian billionaire
tycoon Philippe de Moerloose. A member of the Kinshasa
elite, de Moerloose supplies jets
and other presidential toys to DRC President Kabila. In
2006, President Joseph Kabila’s
campaign helicopter was at the centre of a legal battle
involving Philippe de Moerloose.27
De Moerloose’s companies operated in Mobutu’s Zaire from at
least 1991, backing state
terrorism and Western corporate plunder that was rendered
invisible by the Western
media. De Moerloose is also an adviser to European Union
(EU) Commissioner—and
diamantaire—Louis Michel.
Dan Gertler and Philippe de Moerloose were, reportedly, the
only two white men who
attended the wedding of Joseph Kabila and the two clearly
share interests in “security”
provided by OSS at MIBA and elsewhere in Congo. The April
2003 secret agreement
signed between the Gertler/Steinmetz company Emaxon Finance
and the Kabila
24
Yitzhak Danon, “Top
Israelis accused of illegal diamond deals: Israel: Lawsuit claims corruption
in Congo diamonds for arms deal,” Globes (Israel), 18
February 2004,
25
Yitzhak Danon, “Top
Israelis accused of illegal diamond deals: Israel: Lawsuit claims corruption
in Congo diamonds for arms deal,” Globes (Israel), 18
February 2004,
<http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/press269.htm>.
See also: “Column One: What
Lieberman Wants,” Jerusalem Post, October 20, 2006.
<http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193481395&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FP
rinter>.
26
See: keith harmon
snow, “Behind the Scenes: Warlord’s Deadly Battle in Congo,” Toward
Freedom, August 9, 2007. The Angolan military protected
Kinshasa during the so-called “rebellion”
involving Rwanda and Uganda. The Angolans do not like the
Rwandans or Ugandans due to their
military and commercial relations with Angolan rebels, the
União Nacionalpara a Independência
Total de Angola (UNITA), and because Rwandan and Ugandan
soldiers invaded Angola after their
failed bid to control the Congo’s strategic Inga Dam power
station and Matadi port between 1998
and 2001. Angola sent troops to Congo in July and August
2006, and there were black Angolan
troops amongst the European Union mercenary
forces—EUFOR—sent to quell any possible
rebellions during the “historic national elections.” Angola
also sent troops to Congo to back Kabila
during the warlord’s deadly battle of March 2007.
27
“Presidential
Chopper,” Africa Confidential, Vol. 47 Number 23, November 17, 2006.
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 7 of 18
government involved MIBA and two de Moerloose companies,
OSS-Congo and
Demimpex, and other firms.
Overseas Security Services (OSS) operations are apparently
grounded in the experience
of top expatriate security operatives formerly involved with
the biggest security firm in
Mobutu’s Zaire.28
According to OSS
public relations materials, “these persons have a not
unimportant experience in the safety of this country.”29
Providing mine
security, bodyguard and protection services, OSS operates in Burundi, Ivory
Coast, Rwanda, Dubai,
South Africa, Republic of Congo (Brazzavile) and Belgium,
placing them in cahoots with all
sides warring and plundering eastern Congo today.30
Emaxon Finance International is a real gem, one of these
octopuses of mining tangled up
with interlocking companies and subsidiaries based in
specious geographical offshore “tax
havens” that work to shield from prosecution people who are
responsible for money
laundering, weapons and drugs operations, assassinations and
other terrorism.
NIKANOR is registered as an Isle of Man (UK) company, an
offshore tax haven that helps
to conceal criminal activities and maximize profits. NIKANOR
directors include Dan
Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Israel (2001-2005) and
Principal Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research under
Madeleine Albright. NIKANOR
partners include Mende and Moshe Gertner [sic], Israeli
property tycoons with vast
holdings in London who control 22 percent of NIKANOR.
Another partner is Israeli-born Nir
Livnat, managing director of Johannesburg-based Ascot
Diamonds, a member of the
Steinmetz Group of Diamond Companies, and a principal
involved in numerous U.S.-
based businesses from Miami to New York.31
THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS
Back in 2001, when the Gertler enterprises surfaced in dirty
diamond deals, public
relations was handled by Lior Chorev, the “Special Strategic
and Communications
Consultant” to International Diamond Industries (IDI), and
Chorev continued in this role to
support Dan Gertler businesses.32
Today, Lior Chorev is
partnered with the brothers Yuval
28
See: Overseas
Security Services Congo sprl web site, <www.oss-congo.com>.
29
See: Overseas
Security Services Congo sprl web site, <www.oss-congo.com>.
30
OSS-Congo owner
Philippe de Moerloose communicated with this author after his name
appeared in a prior story mentioning OSS-Congo and offered
to meet in Europe and provide the
author with the “correct” information about his companies
operations in Congo. Repeated
communications with De Moerloose seeking clarifications and
information for this story were not
answered.
31
See e.g., SEC info on
Lenorth Holdings: <http://www.secinfo.com/dsvrw.z14q.htm > and SDG
Marketing:
<http://www.secinfo.com/$/SEC/Filings.asp?As=M&Name=incmarketingsdg>.
32
Lior Chorev, The
First [DRC] Diamond Polishing Plant to Move into Full Production, Press
Release, DGI Group of Companies, January 11, 2005,
<http://www.pressemeldinger.no/read.asp?RecNo=8106>.
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 8 of 18
and Eyal Arad as director-owners of the Israeli marketing
and public relations firm, ARAD
Communications.33
“We do work for Mr. Gertler on some of his business issues,”
said Lior Chorev.34
ARAD’s
many clients include Dan Gertler companies, Los
Angeles-based Coral Diamonds and an
Israeli aeronautics weaponry manufacturer producing Unmanned
Aerospace Vehicles
(UAVs)—robotic weapons and intelligence platforms like those
being used against the
people of Congo today.35
As a political
strategist, Lior Chorev has worked for Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon and current Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert.36
He has also
participated
in Israel-NATO defense planning conferences.37
Dan Gertler is close to Israeli politicians, especially
Avigdor Lieberman, head of the
right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, and he is very close to
diamantaire Beny
Steinmetz, a good friend of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Gertler’s inseperable friend,
Chaim Leibovitz, is also very close to Lieberman, and was “a
regular fixture” in Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offices.38
Beny Steinmetz is considered to be one of the richest
billionaires in Israel. The Steinmetz
Group, controlled with his brother Daniel, is one of the
biggest clients of the de Beers
diamond syndicate. Steinmetz is also involved in an Israeli
real estate group that
purchased the assets of the British Haslemere real estate
company for $1.46 billion.
Steinmetz’s real estate partners include the billionaire
Israeli investors David and
Simon Reuben, and the Saudi Arabian Olayan Group, an
investment company that
is deeply connected with Bechtel Corporation.39
The Steinmetz web
site map of
operations hides their involvement in war-torn Congo.40
Seems Dan Gertler’s land grabs and exclusion in Congo have a
lot in common with the
current crimes against humanity being committed by Israel
through its illegal partition in the
Middle East. On January 3, 2008, the Jerusalem Post reported
that Lior Chorev was an
integral part of past Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s
advisers, and he was recently quoted to
say that even though Sharon did not get to finalize Israel’s
final borders (he suffered a
33
ARAD Communications
web site,
34
Private
communication, Lior Chorev, January 19, 2008.
35
See: keith harmon
snow, “Over Five Million Dead in Congo?” January 30, 2008.
36
Private email
communication, Lior Chorev, January 19, 2008. See also: Gil Hoffman, “Olmert,
Netanyahu Rivalry Gets Personal,” Israel.jpost.com, March
26, 2006; “Sharon allies and foes joust
over new party as March 28 elections are set,” Associated
Press, November 22, 2005,
<http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Politics/7095.htm>;
37
NATO Transformation,
the Mediterranean Dialog, and NATO-Israel Relations, October 23, 2006,
<http://www.nato.int/med-dial/2006/registered_participants_isr.pdf>.
38 Yossi Melman and Asaf Carmel, “Diamond in the Rough,”
Haaretz.com, March 24, 2005.
39
The Olayan Group web
site: <http://www.olayangroup.com/directory.asp>.
40
The Steinmetz Group,
http://www.steinmetz-group.com/>.
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 9 of 18
debilitating stroke in 2006), the route of the security
fence—which he decided—would
ultimately serve as the basis for the border and as Sharon's
lasting legacy.41
“He felt he needed to set the border because he didn't trust
the younger generations,”
Chorev was quoted to say. “He knew the fence route by heart
and the reason for every
stretch of land being on one side or the other.”42
In 2003, the U.N. Panel of Experts on war in Congo revealed
that Emaxon Finance
International is controlled by Israeli diamond traders Chaim
Leibovitz and Dan Gertler.43
Emaxon lists as its address an office in Montreal, Canada,
but Emaxon’s majority
shareholder is listed as FTS Worldwide, a nebulous global
corporation whose business
address is that of a firm of lawyers, Mossack Fonseca &
Company, in Panama City. FTS
Worldwide is registered with the U.S. Securities Exchange
Commission to lawyer Andre
Zolty of Geneva Switzerland. A copy of the MIBA-Emaxon
contract was signed on 13 April
2003 by Israeli-Americans Yaakov Neeman and Chaim
Leibovitz.44
Yaakov Neeman is a founding partner of Herzog, Fox and
Neeman, Tel Aviv, one of
Israel’s top law firms, and he has held Israeli government
cabinet and ministerial
positions.45
Neeman is on the
Advisory Board of Markstone Capital Group, a very
influential group of investment bankers, with Eli Hurvitz.
On the board of Israel’s Teva
Pharmaceutical Industries with Eli Hurvitz is
Northrup-Grumman director Philip Frost.46
Both Philip Frost and Maurice Templesman are top-level
councilors for the American Stock
Exchange. Eli Hurvitz sat on the International Advisory
Counsel of Harvard University’s
Belfer Center, 2002-2005, during the period when the Belfer
Center and their intelligence
operative Robert Rotberg formalized the “Kimberley Process”
to officially whitewash blood
diamonds.47
Yakov Neeman is also
a governor of the World Zionist Organization and
Jewish Agency for Israel.
One of the main objectives of the Kimberley Process, and the
Harvard Belfer Center’s role,
was to protect the South African Oppenheimer and De Beers
diamond cartels and their
leading buyers and agents like Maurice Templesman and Beny
Steinmetz.48
Added to
41
Gil Hoffman,
“Politics; Unconscious Legacy,” Jerusalem Post, features.jpost.com, January 3,
2008.
42
Gil Hoffman,
“Politics; Unconscious Legacy,” Jerusalem Post, features.jpost.com, January 3,
2008.
43
United Nations Panel
of Experts Confidential Report.
44
Under the contract
Emaxon granted Miba loans totaling $5-million in 2003, and a further $10-
million subsequently. In exchange, Emaxon gained rights to
88% of Miba’s production at a
discount, formally, of 5%.
45
Herzog, Fox and
Neeman web site: <http://www.hfn.co.il/pages/lawyers/neemany.htm>.
46
<http://www.tevapharm.com/about/officers.asp>.
47
See: keith harmon
snow and Rick Hines, “Blood Diamond: Doublethink and Deception About
those Worthless Little Rocks of Desire,” Z Magazine, June
and July, 2007.
48
On Neeman and
Hurvitz, see Markstone Capital Group,
<http://www.markstonecapital.com/markstone2_5.htm>; on
Robert Rotberg, Maurice Templesman
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 10 of 18
those diamond industry firms whitewashed by the Kimberley
Process are all the Zionist
diamond dealers and cartels that have risen like a phoenix
out of the ashes of the
Holocaust.
The Israeli-American enterprises of the Gertler/Steinmetz
gang have proliferated and today
are major shareholders or owners of diamond concessions in
Congo’s Kasai province and
copperbelt concessions in Katanga. The copperbelt is the big
money in Congo. Copper
prices recently hit an all time high due to monopoly control
by corporations and new
applications in transportation, aerospace and weaponry.
Cobalt is used in dye and paint
processes for manufacturing. More importantly, it is
elemental to superalloys used for tank
armor, spacecraft, turbines, ship hulls, ship hulls, blast
furnaces, refineries, petroleum
drilling rigs, nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Like
coltan, or columbium-tantalite,
cobalt is also used in cell phone batteries. The Katanga
copperbelt is also rich in
germanium, a rare metal used in optical fibers, infrared
lenses and telecommunication
satellites.49
The entire military-industrial-prisons complex revolves
around minerals like cobalt, niobium
and heterogenite (cobalt oxide), yet the truth about what
happens to African people in
lands taken over by these mining companies is hidden by the
corporate media. More and
more land is being stolen, more and more atrocities
committed, with less and less
transparency, and less and less accountability, and fewer
and fewer voices for the
voiceless. And, as usual, there are always a lot of empty
promises.
THOUGH SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS
Over the past fifty years, elite Israeli nationals have
perpetrated conflict and injustice in
Africa, fueled by and for minerals. Operatives associated
with the Israeli military or
intelligence services—the Mossad—maintain strategic criminal
syndicates in competition
and in partnership with other syndicates involving men like
Philippe De Moerloose, Louis
Michel, Viscount Etienne Davignon, John Bredenkamp and Tony
Buckingham.
Israeli trained shock troops became Mobutu’s bodyguards,
with Mossad advisers.
According to a report by the American Jewish Committee:
after 1980 “Mossad agents,
military emissaries, and a small group of private
businessmen… replaced diplomats as
Israel’s main interlocutors with African leaders and
political (mainly opposition) groups.”
The report cites rising involvement of private defense and
security interests, especially in
Angola, DRC and Central Africa Republic, since 1992.50
and the Harvard Belfer Center, see: keith harmon snow and
Rick Hines, “Blood Diamond:
Doublethink and Deception About those Worthless Little Rocks
of Desire,” Z Magazine, June and
July, 2007.
49
Criminal rackets
known to the United Nations security were or some time illegally shipping
uranium and cobalt out of Katanga by road to Zimbabwe and
Tanzania (private interview, U.N.
Official, 2006).
50
Israel and Africa:
Assessing the Past, Envisioning the Future, The Africa Institute American
Jewish
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 11 of 18
Israeli operatives and “businessmen” appear everywhere there
is egregious suffering and
dispossession. Dan Gertler’s forays into the bloody world of
diamonds involve Israeli arms
dealers Yair Klein, who is reportedly wanted by the U.S. for
training Medellin drug-cartel
militias in Colombia, and Dov Katz.51
Klein was convicted
by Israel (1991) for his
involvement with groups that targeted and assassinated
Colombian politicians, journalists,
and police. Jailed in Sierra Leone in 1999, Klein was a
field representative for Gertler in
war-torn Sierra Leone and Liberia. Gertler also mingles with
the Russian Military
Brotherhood, a group of “retired Russian generals whom
Gertler describes as good
friends.” 52,53
Retired Israeli Defense Forces Colonel Yair Klein reportedly
organized arms for diamonds
networks in Sierra Leone and Liberia after President Charles
Taylor was deposed. In 1999
Klein was arrested in Sierra Leone on charges of smuggling
arms to the rebel
Revolutionary United Front.54
The U.N. also
documented collaborations between Sierra
Leone’ rebels and Lazare Kaplan agent Damian Gagnon; Lazare
Kaplan International is
one of the organized crime syndicates of Jewish American
Maurice Templesman.55
The Steinmetz Group of companies are also involved in the
bloody diamond fields of
Sierra Leone, along with Energem (formerly DiamondWorks),
the company described
above that is connected to the white mercenaries depicted in
Hollywood’s Blood Diamond
propaganda film.56
In December 2007,
local people in Sierra Leone struggling to gain the
smallest livelihood from their own resources were shot by
police during peaceful protests
against the Steinmetz-controlled Koidu Holdings site. It’s
the same old local people’s story,
happening everywhere. These were people from communities
driven off their own land by
Committee and The Harold Hartog School Tel Aviv University,
May 2006.
51
Ron Ben-Yishai and
Molly Camprier-Kritz, “The Murder Request Went to the Wrong Address,”
Yediot
Aharonot weekend supplement on 19 September 1999.
52
Nicole Gaouette,
“Inside Israel's diamond trade: a family affair,” Christian Science Monitor, 21
February 2002,
<http://www.boycottisraeligoods.org/modules6437.php>.
53
For a discussion of
the veracity of these facts and more on the “Russian Military Brotherhood”
see: Central Africa Minerals and Arms Research Bulletin,
Edition 2, International Peace
Information Service, June 18, 2001.
54
Jimmy Johnson,
"Israelis and Hezbollah Haven’t Always Been Enemies," Appearing in
Israeli
Committee Against House Demolitions USA, 6 September 2006,
<http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:pYAbqkMgTJ4J:www.icahdusa.org/2006/09/06/israelisand-hezbollah-haven%E2%80%99t-always-beenenemies/+%22hezbollah%22+%22congo%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=15>.
55
Report of the Panel
of Experts Appointed Pursuan2t to UN Security Council Resolution 1306
(2000), Paragraph 19, in Relation to Sierra Leone, December
2000, <http://www.sierraleone.org/panelreport-I.html>.
56
Energem web site:
<http://www.energem.com/energem_logistics_industrial.html>; and also:
keith
harmon snow and Rick Hines, “Blood Diamond: Doublethink and
Deception About those Worthless
Little Rocks of Desire,” Z Magazine, June and July, 2007.
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 12 of 18
mining companies that promised the world, cajoled the
trusting people, and gave nothing
after. The Steinmetz gang called in the local paramilitary,
a curfew was imposed and
people were shot; the police, as usual, falsely claimed that
protesters were armed.57
Like most mining mafias in Africa, the Israeli
octopus—organized crime syndicates,
offshore subsidiaries, interlocking directorships and
affiliated mercenaries—has gripped
the very heart of Congo like an octopus grips and stuns its
prey. Mining regulates the pulse
of Congo, and foreign mining companies with their black
sell-out agents are sucking the
blood out of the people and the wealth out of the land.
THOU SHALT NOT KILL
Beyond the intriguing Jewish rivalry for diamonds in the
heart of darkness, this tale takes a
chilling turn with the involvement of certain German firms
and New York City lawyers.
NIKANOR, another Gertler/Steinmetz company of dubious
origins operating in DRC, has a
subcontract with the notorious ThyssenKrupp conglomerate, a
company comprised of two
former Nazi weapons manufacturers linked to the New York law
firm of Sullivan and
Cromwell, to Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., Lehman
Brothers, Chase Manhattan Bank,
J.P. Morgan, DuPont and IBM, in the great Nazi-American
money plot.58
These companies were all behind the Jewish Holocaust. The
infamous German Krupp firm
is the industrial corporation that collaborated with former
CIA director Allen Dulles and
former U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Clients
of the Dulles brothers’ law firm
Sullivan and Cromwell included Adolph Hitler.59
Ted Terry, one of the
senior counselors of
the law firm Sullivan and Cromwell today, is also a director
of a philanthropy called the
Harold K. Hochschild (HKH) Foundation, named for the mining
magnate behind AMAX, a
company operating in the copperbelt in Zambia, but whose
parent company, Phelps
Dodge, operates in Katanga, Congo. Harold K. Hochschild was
close to the CIA, and he
appears to have backed the Katanga succession in the 1960’s
just as Dan Gertler in
recent years backed the reorganization of power in Congo by
force. Sullivan and Cromwell
was also the law firm for AMAX. 60,61
Brown Brothers Harriman & Company (BBH) was the primary
Wall Street connection for
German companies and the U.S. financial interests of Fritz
Thyssen, an early financial
backer of the Nazi party. BBH bought and shipped millions of
dollars of gold, steel, fuel,
57
Mineweb,
<http://www.mineweb.net/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page37?oid=42572&sn=Detail>.
58
Charles Higham,
Trading With The Enemy: The Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949,
Delacorte Press, 1983.
59
Charles Hingham,
Trading With The Enemy: The Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949,
Delacorte Press, 1983.
60
Susan Mazur, “Deeper
Into the Dillon-Euphronios Nexus with David N. Gibbs,” SCOOP, April 26,
2006,
<http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0604/S00323.htm>.
61
David Gibbs, The
Political Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money and U.S. Policy
in the Congo Crises, University of Chicago Press, 1991.
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 13 of 18
coal, and U.S. treasury bonds to Germany. These were used to
build Hitler's war machine,
and the ties proliferated even after the Nazi concentration
camps began churning out
skeletons. The horrors of the concentration camps at
Auschwitz, Birkenau and
Buckenwald became public knowledge long before they became
public outrage. It is the
same story for Congo.
A PRAYER FOR THE DEAD
There are no records or statistics of the numbers of people
brutalized or killed in the
diamond or cobalt mining areas, like Kolwezi, Mbuji Mayi,
Tshikapa, Banalia, or Kananga
in DRC, or Ndola in Zambia, and many of the victims of
security abuses will never be
known.
When Gertler and Steinmetz and their buddies came to Congo
it was soon clear that they
had to challenge Zimbabwean tycoons John Bredenkamp and
Billy Rautenbach—two
cronies of dictator Robert Mugabe involved in pillaging
Congo and Zimbabwe for decades.
The United Nations Panel of Experts on DRC named both men
for plundering copper and
cobalt from Katanga, and both deal globally in weapons.
Bredenkamp is one of the fifty
richest men in England and he reportedly owns a mansion
several doors down from
Margaret Thatcher’s residence in London.
On November 7, 2007 it was reported that Dan Gertler was
instrumental in putting together
a deal in which Katanga Mining Ltd. would buy rival NIKANOR
for $2.1 billion and merge
their adjacent mine projects in Congo to form the world’s
largest cobalt company. Also
announced was a joint venture between the Central African
Mining & Exploration Company
(CAMEC) and another Gertler-controlled firm called Prairie
International Limited.
The CAMEC/Prairie joint venture will exploit DRC’s Luita
copper processing facility,
develop the Mukondo Mountain cobalt mine—called the world's
richest cobalt mine—and
work on “other” exploration properties. Prairie is majority
owned by the family of Dan
Gertler. CAMEC is connected to Zimbabwean/South
African/British tycoon Billy
Rautenbach.62
The DRC government
effectively banned controversial Zimbabwean
businessman Billy Rautenbach from the country by declaring
him persona non grata in
July 2007, but this doesn’t seem to stop him from getting
what he wants. Rautenbach is
also wanted in South Africa on 300 charges of fraud,
corruption and theft.
Rautenbach is a former motor car rally driver who controls a
business empire in Southern
and Central Africa through a British Virgin Islands company
called Ridgepoint Overseas
Development Limited. In 1998, the short-lived President of
Congo, Laurent Kabila, named
Rautenbach the managing director of La Générale des
Carrières et des Mines
(Gécamines), one of Africa's biggest cobalt mines, the
Katanga properties of the Union
Miniere de Haut Katanga formerly developed by the Belgian
colonial government.
62
Eric Onstad, “UPDATE
2-CAMEC shares soar after agrees Congo joint venture,” Reuters, Nov.
7, 2007.
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 14 of 18
Rautenbach today is one of the Africa's largest exporters of
heterogenite (cobalt ore) from
the DRC through his Congo Cobalt Company (CoCoCo), but he
also has shares in two
other lucrative DRC mining firms—Boss and Mukondo—which
reportedly earn over
US$100 million a month.63
While there has been a lot of Western media fanfare over the
Kabila governments’
supposed “independent” review of mining contracts, little
substantive change can be
expected.64
Structural factors
exploit the Congolese people and lands and benefit white
businessmen, arms dealers, bankers, and their embraceable
black agents. Big business
benefits from perception management articles well-placed in
media to give the impression
that the international system is just, that there are
watchdogs, checks and balances.
However, while the DRC and the World Bank present a
propaganda front about their
ostensible attention to mining reform and the new mining
code, NIKANOR—Mining Journal
reports—“is in the advantageous position of having entered
into a post mining-code
contract, ‘which makes us [NIKANOR] relatively comfortable’”
65
In other words, the
mining
review is a sham, it may force some changes, but it will be
cosmetic at best.
Dan Gertler and the Steinmetz Group’s partner
Jewish-American Nir Livnat is also a
director of Anglovaal Mining with Rick and Brian Menell and
Basil Hersov of the South
African Menell and Hersov dynasties.66
Hersov has been named
as a beneficiary of fraud
and racketeering involving British BAE Systems weapons deals
with shady offshore
companies.67
The octopus of South African connections is a story in
itself, with links to top officials from
Britain to Canada, like Canadian Senator J. Trevor Eyton,
and offshore mining companies
involved in all the big money (diamonds, gold, petroleum,
cobalt) and big corporations with
interlocking directorships: Coca Cola, Nestlé, General
Motors, and the Bush-connected
Barrick Gold Corporation. Barrick, of course, is partnered
up with the Oppenheimer/De
Beers firm Anglo-American Corporation at six sites in
Africa, including Congo.
Rick Menell is a director of Bateman Engineering—owned by
Benny Steinmetz—the junior
partner of the NIKANOR projects in Katanga. Britain’s Earl
of Balfour is a director of both
Bateman and NIKANOR. Menell is also the director of Teal
Exploration and Mining, whose
directors include Joaquim Chissano, former President of
Mozambique; Murray Hitzman, a
Clinton administration official with the White House Office
of Science and Technology
63
Brenna Chigonga,
“Zimbabwe: Meet Country’s Richest People,” The Herald, July 14, 2007.
64
See: Maurice Carney,
“Congo’s Contract Review,” Pambazuka News, January 17, 2008.
65
Martin Creamer,
“Funded NIKANOR presses on with $1,8bn copper mine, refinery,” Mining
Weekly, September 21, 2007.
66
Julie Walker,
“Hersovs and Menells are in no hurry to yield control of Anglovaal,” Sunday
Times,
<http://www.btimes.co.za/98/0517/comp/comp17.htm>.
67
Evelyn Groenink,
“Arms deal: Who got R1bn in pay-offs?” Mail & Guardian, January 12, 2007,
<
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=295457&area=/insight/insight__national/>.
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 15 of 18
Policy (1994-1996); Hannes Meyer, who worked with Anglo-Gold
Ashanti in Congo, 1999-
2006, when militias in Ituri were funded to get the gold
out. Teal Exploration also has ties
to Anvil Mining and Anglo-American Corporation.68
Brian Menell, Nir Livnat’s associate on the board of
Anglovaal, is on the board of Energem
(formerly DiamondWorks) with Tony and Mario Teixeira. The
Livnat connection ties
Teixeira into networks that have supported both Joseph
Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba in
Congo’s bloody wars. Energem is also involved in the
trans-Uganda-Kenya pipeline, along
with Nexant, a subsidiary of the deep intelligence and
defense insider Bechtel
Corporation.69
Brian Menell is also on the board of First Africa Oil, which
operates in seven African
countries, and First Africa Oil director John Bentley is a
director of Osprey Oil and Gas,
whose directors include Carol Bell, a director of the
Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank.
Bentley is also on the board of Adastra Minerals—formerly
America Mineral Fields (AMF,
AMFI, AMX), a company based in 1995 in Hope, Arkansas—and
set up by Robert
Friedland and Max and Jean-Raymond Boulle, notable “friends
of Bill” Clinton. Since 1995,
American Mineral Fields has been involved in Brazil, Russia,
Norway, Zambia, Angola and
the DRC. A criminal backer of the war in DRC, Jean-Raymond
Boulle, who holds 36.4 % of
the company stock, was the former General Director of De
Beers in Zaire, part of the
Templesman alliance of terrorism under the Mobutu
regime.70,71
The Gertler/Steinmetz interests apparently curry huge favors
with Congo’s number two
most powerful man, Augustine Katumba Mwanke, one of Joseph
Kabila’s closest allies
and financiers, former Governor of Katanga (1998-2001) and
director of Australia’s Anvil
Mining. The UN Panel of Experts (2002) cited Mwanke for
illegal arms deals and plunder
of Congo: Mwanke negotiated arms purchases through Belgian
banks and the DRC mining
company MIBA.72
Reportedly, Mwanke
personally clears $US 1,000,000 a day through his
interests in Katanga mining deals.73
Anvil Mining has been involved in massacres in DRC.74
Anvil directors
include former U.S.
Ambassador Kenneth L. Brown, who served at U.S. embassies in
Brussels, Kinshasa,
68
Teal Exploration
& Mining web site: <http://www.tealmining.com/tp/brief.asp>.
69
Press Release:
Kenya-Uganda Oil Products Pipeline, Kenya-Uganda Joint Co-coordinating
Commission for Extension of Oil Pipeline, August 17, 2005,
<http://www.energyandminerals.go.ug/Press%20Release_Oil%20PipeLine%20Extension.pdf>;
see
also: Energem web site:
<http://www.energem.com/energem_corporate_info.html>.
70
François Misser and
Olivier Vallée, “Des matières premières toujours convoitées. Les nouveaux
acteurs du secteur minier Africain,” Le Monde Diplomatique,
May 1998, p.24-25; also Wayne
Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999,
Mellon Press, 1999.
71
Diamond Fields
International Management:
<http://www.diamondfields.com/s/Management.asp>.
72
‘Inculpations à la
Belgolaise’, Le Libre Belgique, 4 June 2004.
73
Private interview,
Kinshasa, DRC, April 2007.
74
Norm Dixon, “Congo
Massacre: Australian mining company's managers indicted,” Green Left
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 16 of 18
Congo-Brazzaville and South Africa. Brown was Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State for
Africa (1987-1989) under George Schultz and George H.W. Bush
and Director of Central
African Affairs (1980-1981). The former top internal
intelligence and security chief of the
United Nations Observer’s Mission in the Democratic Republic
of Congo (MONUC) has
been worked for Anvil mining in Katanga since 2006.75
THOU SHALT NOT RAPE AND PLUNDER
Gertler/Steinmetz interests have also been jostling for
copper and cobalt concessions with
Kinross-Forrest Group. Gertler has bought up or invested
heavily in companies just to
close them down. George Forrest also made the UN hit list of
Congo’s looters and Forrest
and his three sons helped bankroll Joseph Kabila’s 2006
election “victory”.76
George
Forrest’s daughter is reportedly married to the son of Louis
Michel. Malta and George
Forrest are controlling directors in Katanga Mining Limited.
Born as Entreprise Générale Malta Forrest, the Belgian
Forrest interests have been pillars
of exploitation in Congo since at least 1922, when they
launched mining operations in
Katanga. Forrest’s Katanga Mining directors include: three
Canadians; Congo’s JeanClaude Masangu Mulongo, a former Governor of DRC and
high official at the IMF and
World Bank; and the current Governor of the Central Bank of
DRC. The Forrest dynasty
has munitions factories in Belgium and Kenya, and has
partnered with OM-Group, in Ohio
[USA], dealing in Congo’s cobalt and coltan. Forrest
International also operates in Europe,
Burundi—involving him on both sides of Congo’s bloody
war—and the Middle East.77
Forrest interests in DRC include aviation, foods,
plantations, construction, logging, copper
and cobalt mining. Forrest companies are enmeshed in the
coltan plunder in eastern
Congo.
Katanga is the world’s richest mining metropolis, part of
the vast copper belt that stretches
across northern Zambia and southern Congo—and the home to
unprecedented human
misery due to state orchestrated repression and communities
overrun with toxic mining,
tuberculosis, cancers, immune disorders, racial
discrimination and slavery. The Zambian
copperbelt concessions over the border involve many of the
same companies and
interests mentioned above, and others.78
Review, November 4, 2006
<http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/689/35790>.
75
His name is known,
but he threatened to track down and break the author’s legs if he is
revealed.
76
See: Barry Sergeant,
“NIKANOR’s Quandry: Meet Dan the Man, King of the Congo,”
MoneyWeb, 4 April 2007, <
http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page1329?oid=84351&sn=Detail>;
“Congo Kinshasa:
After the Election" Africa Confidential, Vol. 47, No.
23, 17 Nov. 2006; and United Nations Security
Council Report to the Secretary General, S/2003/1027, 23
October 2003.
77
George Forrest
International, <http://www.forrestgroup.com/uk/home.html>.
78
Personal
investigation, Ndola, Zambia copperbelt mines, 2000.
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 17 of 18
Workers and communities in and around these mines suffer all
the standard treatable
maladies (typhoid, malaria, tetanus, polio, malnutrition) as
well. However, such stories are
off the agenda for the North American, European, Japanese,
Australian and Israeli media
corporations providing the mainstay of English language
indoctrination meant to instill
racial superiority and a vast ignorance and obliviousness
that leaves westerns populations
shaking their heads and wringing their hands and clicking
their tongues, while all the while
wondering “what is to be done?” It does not cross people’s
minds that their own hands are
dirty, that their own consciousness has been falsified, as
all the raw materials from Congo
enrich the lives of people in the United States, Canada,
Europe and Israel.
The immediate capital investment required for just one
Gertler project in Katanga—the
Komoto Oliveira Virgule (KOV) project—is reportedly $US 1.8
billion dollars, income to kick
start billions of dollars of unused equipment mothballed in
the middle Mobutu era. There
are rumors that Bechtel is involved, but the KOV project
involves ThyssenKrupp AG as a
minor player.79
The Krupp firm is one of several German firms involved in
the plunder in eastern Congo,
exploitation which involves the DeutscheGesellschaft für
technische
Zusammenarbeit—GTZ—a “German technological cooperation
agency” whose
Supervisory Board has representatives of four Federal
[German] Ministries.80
Krupp
industries use coltan and cobalt for superalloys.81
Dr.-Ing. Ekkehard D.
Schultz, a
ThyssenKrupp director, is also a director of Bayer AG, the
Germany firm whose subsidiary
H.C. Starck was named for its involvement in the ongoing
illegal plunder of coltan and
cassiterite (tin) in eastern Congo. NIKANOR director Jay
Pomrenze is also a consultant for
the Deutsche Bank.82
Certain German and
U.S. firms benefit from the military occupation
of Rwandan-backed warlord Laurent Nkunda in North Kivu, DRC,
where Nkunda controls
the Lueshe niobium mine “owned” by Gesellschaft fuer
Elektrometallurgie GmbH, a
subsidiary of New York-based Mettalurg Group.83, 84
HONOR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER
Dan Gertler’s grandfather, Moshe Schnitzer (d. November
2007), was known in Israel as
“Mr. Diamond;” in youth he joined the pre-state underground
organization Etzel (Irgoun),
an Israeli military cell self-defined as an
“untra-nationationalist Jewish militia,” but one that
79
http://www.nikanor.co.uk/default.asp?page=15
80
These are: the
Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ); Federal
Foreign Office; Federal Ministry of Finance; and Federal
Ministry of Economics and Labor. Since
1998 the Supervisory Board Chairman has been State Secretary
Erich Stather from the BMZ.
81
Karen Hayes and
Richard Burge, Coltan Mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo: How
tantalum-using industries can commit to the reconstruction
of the DRC, Fauna & Flora Int’l, 2003.
82
NIKANOR web site.
83
Metallurg Group
<www.metallurg.com>.
84
See keith harmon
snow, “Three Cheers for Eve Ensler? Propaganda, White Collar Crime, and
Sexual Violence in Eastern Congo,” Z Magazine on-line
(Z-Net), October 24, 2007.
keith harmon snow 2/8/08 ISRAEL IN AFRICA
Page 18 of 18
committed acts of terrorism in service to the Israeli
cause.85
Moshe Schnitzer
assumed a
major role in the Africa-Israeli diamond trade in the 1950’s
in a partnership business called
Schnitzer-Greenstein. Schnitzer later founded the Israel
Diamond Exchange in Tel Aviv in
1960, which today brings Israel $14 billion annually in
blood business, and is the country’s
second-largest industry, but Israel’s top export. King
Leopold III of Belgium decorated
Schnitzer in recognition of his activities favoring the
close relationship of Belgium, Israel
and the DeBeers diamond cartels, and Schnitzer was also
President of the Harry
Oppenheimer Diamond Museum in Israel.86
The diamond jewelry trade in the United States is more than
$30 billion annually, and
99%—everything that is not synthetic or artificial
diamonds—involves blood diamonds and
the above organized crime syndicates. Israel buys more than
50% of the world’s rough
diamonds, and the U.S. buys two-thirds of these. The diamond
factories are located in
Nethanya, Petach Tikvah, Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Jerusalem, and
other cities around the
country, but most of the offices were in Tel Aviv in the
financial district on Ahad Ha'am
Street.87
Dan Gertler’s father,
Asher Gertler, and his uncle, Shmuel Schnitzer, manage the
original family business, and Shmuel is Vice-Chairman of the
Belgian-based World
Diamond Council—the entity that spends more money promoting
the false image of
“conflict-free” diamonds than it does helping any of the
people dispossessed or brutalized
by the diamond industry.88
On August 16, 2007 Rabbi Bentolila in Kinshasa received a
communication asking: “What
does the Torah say about men exploiting other men for vast
profits while other men are
starving and dying all around them? Is there some hierarchy
to the Torah that suggests, for
example, that black people or Africans are lesser beings,
and therefore not to be a concern
where profound profits are being made?”
There was no reply from Rabbi Bentolila, he was apparently
busy readying for another Bar
Mitsvah in Belgium. Unfortunately for Dan Gertler and his
spiritual advisers, the Torah says
that a Jew can keep a slave, but a Jew kept as a slave must
be redeemed, and that—an
empty, foolish justification for exploiting innocent
people—is how religion falsifies
spirituality. ~
85
Yossi Melman and Asaf
Carmel, “Diamond in the Rough,” Haaretz.com, March 24, 2005.
86
“Moshe Schnitzer: Un
Legende s’en est Allee,” Kadima 010, June-September 2007,
<http://74.52.200.226/~sefarad/kadima/kadima10.pdf>.
87
“The Israel Diamond
Exchange - Kiryat Moshe Schnitzer”, Diamond Key, 2002,
<http://www.diamond-key.com/diamonds-newsletter/>.
88
Nicole Gaouette,
“Inside Israel's diamond trade: a family affair,” Christian Science Monitor, 21
February 2002,
<http://www.boycottisraeligoods.org/modules6437.php>.
