A foreign buyer checks the quality of a diamond during the International Diamond Week (IDW) in Tel Aviv, on 5 February 2018 [JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images]
Leading luxury brands De Beers, Forevermark, Tiffany’s, Bulgari, Harry Winston, Cartier, Signet Jewellers and others’ continued sale of diamonds processed in Israel demonstrates a calculated acceptance of reputational, financial and legal risks.
This deliberate choice underscores the industry’s confidence in its ability to conceal its complicity in grave human rights violations and shield itself from accountability, even as their diamond supply chains fund a regime responsible for the barbaric genocide in Palestine that is unfolding in full public view around the world.
Rather than severing ties to protect their brands and shareholders diamond companies employ a combination of voluminous sophistry and an elaborate matrix of certification schemes, bogus warranties and public assurances to obscure their links to Israeli human rights violations.
For the past two decades diamond exports have been a “cornerstone” of the Israeli economy and even in the midst of the genocide in 2024 diamond exports were Israel’s second most valuable net export adding $3.8 billion net to the economy.
Eleven years ago I wrote about the silence of the jewellery industry in the wake of Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza which killed over 2000 Palestinians. Since then Israel has continued to murder, maim, imprison, torture, terrorise and ethnically cleanse Palestinians in what has been described as a creeping genocide. That creeping genocide accelerated exponentially in October 2023 as the fascist regime used the breakout of Palestinian resistance from the besieged Gaza concentration camp as a casus belli for Israel’s long-desired ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the entire strip.
As I pointed out previously the settler colonial Zionist project in Palestine has continued unchecked with the support of the diamond industry under the self-regulation umbrellas of the Kimberley Process (KP) and the Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC). The industry, in collaboration with vested governments, established the KP to pacify public concerns about the trade in blood diamonds. But both the KP and RJC certification schemes facilitate the laundering of $billions of Israeli diamonds, genocide gems, which the industry claims are “conflict free”.
READ: The diamond industry and multinationals are complicit in Israel’s genocide
It’s not that leading jewellery brands are unaware that the Israeli diamond industry generates significant funding for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Palestinians and their supporters have been raising awareness about the trade in Israeli blood diamonds for over two decades. A modicum of due diligence would quickly reveal the importance of corporate-generated taxes to the Israeli economy which according to Netanyahu provides “88 per cent of the vast security budget that funds the IDF”.
In January 2023 Netanyahu said Israel’s economic strength “has been directly translated into military strength. And together these two strengths, economic and military, will lead us to diplomatic strength.”
That diplomatic strength, manifest as impunity for multiple war crimes, means the electorate in Israel can afford to elect right wing fascists, whose raison d’être is the expansion of the Israel’s territorial hegemony and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as quickly as politically possible, while enjoying the comforts of western living standards even though they have the highest per capita military budget and a bulging goods trade deficit.
According to Israeli political economist Shir Hever diamond companies in Israel generate taxes that are a significant source of funding for the genocidal fascist regime. They also employ members of the Israeli military perpetrating genocide and donate to the Israeli military.
Any one of these facts should have raised the brightest of red flags for companies that conduct risk-based due diligence in accordance with their claimed adherence to OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas and those that are in compliance with RJC Code of Practice (COP7).
Compliance with OECD Guidance and COP7 means companies must commit to refraining from “any action which contributes to the financing of conflict” and “immediately suspend or discontinue engagement with upstream suppliers where we identify a reasonable risk that they are sourcing from, or linked to, any party committing war crimes or other serious violations of international humanitarian law, crimes against humanity or genocide.”
This should mean that companies certified by the RJC would have terminated links to companies in Israel but that is far from the case for one very sinister reason – neither the RJC or any leading jewellery brand recognise Israel as a conflict affected and high-risk area.
This convenient get out of jail denial of the very obvious fact that Israel is, and for decades has been, one of the world’s most conflict affected areas is the lynch pin of a $multi-billion fraud which allows Israeli genocide gems to mingle unseen in the most fashionable jewellery emporia the world over.
By maintaining supply chains linked to Israel’s diamond sector, corporations flout the very principles they publicly espouse—principles enshrined in codes of conduct, supplier charters, and corporate social responsibility reports. They assure patrons of “conflict free” gems, yet their supply chains fund systematic human rights violations – war crimes that The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), the world’s leading body of experts on genocide research and law, plus Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights and leading Israeli figures have described as genocide echoing the January 2024 provisional ruling of the International Court of Justice.
The diamond industry constantly repeats the false claim that Kimberley Process certification offers consumers who buy polished diamonds a guarantee that they are conflict free even though its remit is restricted to rough diamonds that fund rebel violence.
The level of gaslighting employed to sustain this scam can be garnered from statements of the 2025 Chair of the KP, Ahmed Bin Suliman, the President of the World Diamond Council, Feriel Zerouki and the Coordinator of the KP Civil Society Coalition Jaff Bamenjo during the May 2025 KP intersessional meeting in Dubai. None of them mentioned the diamond-funded genocide killing and injuring hundreds of men, women and children that continued in Gaza every day of the KP meeting as they discussed factors impacting the diamond industry.
While those who profit from the trade in blood diamonds won’t mention Israel’s leading role in the industry one would expect the KP CSC to speak out and call for sanctions on Israel’s diamond trade just as they called for sanctions on Russian diamonds. But the KP CSC has been bought and paid for, literally, by the industry long ago.
At a time when broadening the definition of a “conflict diamond” to include all diamonds linked to grave human rights violations was never more urgently needed the meeting agreed to an “understanding” to include “rough diamonds that fund armed groups or individuals and entities under the United Nations Security Council sanctions”.
This veto-welcoming, blood diamond-sheltering definition looks likely to be agreed at the KP plenary meeting scheduled for Nov 17-21 in Dubai. If it is it will no doubt be hailed by all the vested interests as a major breakthrough, one that will allow the industry to continue whistling past the overflowing Gaza graveyard for a while longer.
Genocide in Gaza: Luxury at what cost?
However, a new dynamic is rapidly unfolding around the world as Israel’s live-streamed genocide has awakened people to the true nature of the genocidal fascist Zionist project in Palestine.
Across university campuses worldwide, a new generation of students has mobilized in protest against Israel’s actions in Palestine. This cohort, digitally connected and sharply attuned to corporate hypocrisy, represents the next wave of potential diamond buyers—a demographic whose purchasing power and influence cannot be ignored. The legacy of the diamond-funded genocide in Gaza will not be easily cleansed by public relations campaigns or industry-sponsored certifications. Instead, the call is for genuine accountability, reparations, transparency, and a wholesale rejection of complicity in atrocities.
In this climate, the diamond industry faces a formidable challenge. Winning the trust of consumers who demand evidence of ethical credibility all along the supply chain and not just as far as the mine gate, and who are prepared to hold entire sectors accountable for the human cost embedded in luxury goods, is no small feat. The industry’s future hinges on its willingness to confront uncomfortable truths and embrace reforms that extend beyond cosmetic reassurances.
The choice to continue trading with companies that fund the genocidal regime erases the distinction between negligence and complicity. Not even the slaughter of 10s of thousands of children has moved any of the leading figures in the diamond industry to issue a single word of condemnation of Israel’s genocide. Compare that to the rush to scramble on to the high moral ground when Russian diamonds were linked to violence in Ukraine or diamonds in Central African Republic and Zimbabwe were linked to violence.
The groundswell of global anger at Israel’s actions in Palestine has given new impetus to the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the genocidal settler colonial regime. The diamond industry is the most vulnerable and one of the most important sectors of the Israeli economy which funds the Zionist project in Palestine. Its high time to hold the jewellery industry to account.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.