“…religion falsifies spirituality and paves the road to hell. “
The rise and rise of Dan Gertler: at only 32 years of age, Dan Gertler has established himself as one of the most important players in the rough diamond business. With distribution agreements in the DRC and Angola under his belt, the Israeli diamantaire is known to savor purchasing Canada’s Ekati mine.
PRO
Dan Gertler – Founder and President
Founder of the DGI Group of Companies, Dan Gertler is a leader in the development of natural resources. His career began with investments in the diamond trade in Africa, and his interests have since grown to include mining, logistics, real estate, agriculture and finance in Africa and other emerging markets.
Born in December 1973, Dan Gertler is the grandson of Moshe Schnitzer, who was the founder and first President of the Israeli Diamond Exchange and 2004 winner of the Israel Prize (the most prestigious award issued by the State of Israel) for lifetime achievement in recognition of his contribution to Israeli society and the State.
Mr. Schnitzer was known to have encouraged his children (and grandchildren) to develop their own business enterprises, whether within or outside the diamond industry, and made family resources available for such purposes. It was within this family tradition of free and independent initiatives based on strong family backing and influence that Mr. Gertler was raised. Not only did he gain the courage and vision for his own ventures, but also the seed resources required to achieve that vision.
An enthusiastic diamond-dealer from youth, Mr. Gertler learned the secrets of the trade not only from his father but also from his grandfather’s life-long experience. He spent time with both of them during school holidays and whenever else he was able. Even while carrying out his three-year mandatory service in a rearguard base of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) near Tel Aviv, all of his free time was spent either at the offices of his father or grandfather, learning and practicing the essentials of the diamond business.
Immediately following his mandatory service in the IDF, Mr. Gertler, then aged 21, went about opening his own diamond business. Naturally, his family provided him with an extensive infrastructure of contacts, goodwill and finance.
Since his financial backing provided him with the ability to purchase substantial amounts of stocks up-front, he soon made a name for himself as a reliable source of various types, sizes and qualities of diamonds. In turn, this key quality of ‘reliability’ enabled him to develop a large downstream clientele. Mr. Gertler’s deep knowledge of the industry gave him strength in finding the appropriate type of diamonds for clients, and together with the other factors mentioned, Mr. Gertler became able to sustain a long-term diamond dealership.
Mr. Gertler recognized, however, that no matter how good a dealership is, due to its dependence on various sources, it would always be exposed to risks of unsteady supply and it, therefore, carried an uncertain future. He believed that the closer one was able to get to the source – to the mine itself or at least to the miners – the better one’s chances of success in this ever-fluctuating and capital-intense market.
This, therefore, became his renewed focus. Following experiments with the purchase and marketing of artisinally mined diamonds in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, DGI established a partnership with the majority state-owned diamond mine MIBA.
The DRC was deemed to be an extremely high risk and volatile country, torn by civil war and absent of large international investments. Following political changes in the summer of 2001, the already volatile situation became even more unsteady. Shortly after the appointment by the state council of the late president’s son, Mr. Joseph Kabila, as the new president of DRC, Mr. Gertler pledged his commitment to assist the DRC through its most difficult period. His decision to commit a substantial part of his wealth in the DRC was made at a time when very few, if any, business people shared such a commitment.
Mr. Gertler’s record in the DRC not only gives him a unique view and understanding of its authorities and infrastructure, but also earned him the trust and goodwill required to build business interests of the magnitude that he has. Mr. Gertler was named honorary consul of the DRC in Israel in April 2003.
Today, Mr. Gertler maintains his diamond activities – located in and managed from his offices in Tel Aviv – and is involved in a number of other projects in Africa and other locations around the world. As he has great faith in the potential of emerging markets, he is also pursuing investments in Angola, East Europe, Brazil, and elsewhere.
Mr. Gertler studied business at the University of Derby and financial markets and gemology in Israel.
Mr. Gertler strictly observes the Jewish religion. He supports many and various educational and charitable institutions, most of them anonymously. Source: DGI Group of Companies
ANTI
” 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 and terrorising innocent people is how religion falsifies spirituality and paves the road to hell. “
The Gertler Steinmetz
Bling Bang Torah Gang
Israel & The Ongoing Holocaust in Congo ( Part 1)
Posted by Keith Harmon Snow February 8th 2008
Maurice Templesman is one of big funders of Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. Templesman was the unofficial ambassador to the Congo (Zaire) for years, always working the CIA and Mobutu to instill terror and steal minerals, 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, MOSSAD, the big mining companies, the offshore accounts and weapons deals—all are hidden by Western media. The holocaust in Central Africa has claimed some six to ten million people in Congo since 1996, with 1500 people dying daily.
But while Africans are 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.
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 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.Emaxon Finance Corp. has apparently out-maneuvered diamond competitors, especially the big rivals Energem and De Beers.
Energem is one of 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——Jean-Pierre Bemba and Joseph Kabila——to be the black gatekeeper for 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.
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%).
Through subsidiary Branch Energy, the Energem-DiamondWorks gang has perpetuated war in 11 African countries.
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.”
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.
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 offshore tax havens and involved in India, Russia, Belgium and the United States, and that Dan Gertler is looking to God for guidance.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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).”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
By 2002 Gertler’s company was the leading exporter of Congolese gems, controlling a diamond mining franchise worth about $US 1 billion annually.
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.
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.
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 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.
According to OSS public relations materials, “these persons have a not unimportant experience in the safety of this country.”
Providing mine security, body-guard 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.
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.
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.
Today, Lior Chorev is partnered with the brothers Yuval and Eyal Arad as director-owners of the Israeli marketing and public relations firm, ARAD Communications.
“We do work for Mr. Gertler on some of his business issues,” said Lior Chorev.
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.
As a political strategist, Lior Chorev has worked for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
He has also participated in Israel-NATO defense planning conferences.
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.
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.
The Steinmetz web site map of operations hides their involvement in war-torn Congo.
It 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 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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Added to 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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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 Belgian-American Maurice Templesman.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Reportedly, Mwanke personally clears $US 1,000,000 a day through his interests in Katanga mining deals.
Anvil Mining has been involved in massacres in DRC.
Anvil directors include former U.S. Ambassador Kenneth L. Brown, who served at U.S. embassies in Brussels, Kinshasa, 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.
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”.
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 Jean-Claude 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.
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.
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.
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.
Krupp industries use coltan and cobalt for superalloys.
[ After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the Krupp works became the center for German rearmament. In 1943, by a special order from Hitler, the company reverted into a family holding, and Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach (1907-67) took over the management. After Germany's defeat, when Gustav proved incapable of going on trial, the Nuremberg Military Tribunal convicted Alfred as a war criminal in the Krupp Trial for his company's use of slave labor. It sentenced him to 12 years in prison and ordered him to sell 75% of his holdings. In 1951, as the Cold War developed and no buyer came forward, the authorities released him, and in 1953 he resumed control of the firm.
In 1999, the Krupp Group merged with its largest competitor, Thyssen AG; the combined company — ThyssenKrupp AG, became Germany's fifth-largest firm and one of the largest steel producers in the world. ]
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.
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.
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 committed acts of terrorism in service to the Israeli cause.
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.
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.
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.
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 Mitzvah 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 and terrorizing innocent people——is how religion falsifies spirituality and paves the road to hell.
Additional Reading on Past Belgian Atrocities & More:
The Crime of the Congo By Arthur Conan Doyle Historical
King Leopold II of Belgium Killer File Historical
Belgium’s Imperialist Rape of Africa Historical
ILLICIT DIAMONDS FLOW Current
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Historical Feature
KANANGA, Democratic Republic of Congo, November 1 /PRNewswire/ — Mr. Dan Gertler, President of the DGI Group of Companies, based in TelAviv, Israel, announced today that the Emaxon Polishing plant in Kananga,Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has been operational for severalmonths, will soon go into full production.
The DGI Group of Companies began construction of the plant in August 2004 and completed the multi-million-dollar project in less than 12 months.
In the first phase, the plant will employ more than 300 employees, all of whom received professional training at the plant as polishing diamonds.
When full production begins, the state-of-the-art diamond polishing plant, the first of its kind in the DRC and Central Africa, will employ as many as 600 workers.
When in full production, the unique plant will polish, sell locally, andexport to the leading markets in the world, diamonds mined exclusively in theDRC, indirectly injecting hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Kanangaeconomy on a monthly basis.
The plant is fully equipped with state-of-the artsawing, brutting, and polishing tables.
The completion of this project, which is one of many DGI Group of Companies investments in the DRC, reaches beyond economic boundaries.
The Emaxon Polishing plant has already had an immediate social impact on Kananga, the capital of Kasaï Occidental Province, central DRC.
In addition,the creation of the polishing plant and the planned considerable transfer of technology, which will take place, in part, in the plants polishing and cutting training school, have the potential to create the foundation for long-term sustainable development in the region.
“This outstanding investment will have a positive, far-reaching, and large social and economic impact on Kananga, Kasaï Occidental Province, and the greater DRC,” stated Kasaï Occidental Province Governor Claudel Lubaya,who was instrumental in bringing the plant to Kananga.
The stable and improving economic and political climate in the DRC, which is steadily restoring confidence in the international community, was animportant factor in Mr. Gertler’s investment here.
While many competitorsview the DGI investment as a “risk,” Mr. Gertler’s pioneering move is one that he hopes other international investors will follow.
“President Kabila’s leadership has changed the business climate throughout the country, putting faith in international investors, which I believe has made this DGI investment a reality,”continued Governor Lubaya.
“Kananga is a remote place in Africa that is in need of more local and international investment. We look forward to others following DGI’s bold lead and investing in the Congolese population and the future of our country. ”
The DGI Group of Companies has been operating in the DRC for more thanfive years, through its subsidiary Emaxon Finance International, who markets 88 per cent of the DRC’s largest diamond mine, MIBA.
Among its investments,DGI recently provided nearly US$15 million to finance the purchase of a new kimberlite washing plant and a massive drag line that will boost MIBA’s diamond production to 8.5 million carats annually.
“I greatly appreciate President Kabila’s courageous leadership and economic reforms that have enabled DGI to continue to invest in the DRC,”stated Mr. Gertler. “Our Kananga polishing plant is a job creator that will have a positive impact on hundreds of families.
Emaxon will continue to work with the goal of turning Kananga into the diamond polishing center of the DRC and all of Africa.”
Emaxon, now the largest employer in Kananga, is working closely with the Ministry of Mines and the Centre d’ Evaluation et d’Expertise de Matieres Precieuses au Congo (CEEC) to ensure that the polishing plant is incompliance with domestic and international regulations, including the Kimberly Process.
The Emaxon Polishing plant, which is currently operating ata fraction of its full capacity, will immediately advance to full production when the DRC Parliament finalises legislation relating to the export of polished diamonds.
“It’s a great day for the Democratic Republic of Congo and for Central Africa to finally enter downstream of the diamond production process,” said DRC President Joseph Kabila. “The trend to add value in the country of originis a growing development in diamond producing countries in sub Saharan Africa and we welcome DGI’s investment in the DRC to that end.”
DRC’s Minister of Mines Ingele Ifoto added that “this is a perfect example of the local population benefiting from our national resources. We have been talking about diamond polishing in Congo for the last ten years and we can and should only support such an action.”
The DRC is expected to hold its first democratic elections in early 2006,brining its transitional government to an end.
More than 18 million Congolese have registered to vote in next year’s elections.
International observers are hailing the peaceful voter registration project, which is still ongoing, as a remarkable achievement for a country still recovering from a brutal five-year war.
For further information contact: DGI Spokesman Lior Chorev +972-546699339
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De Guru Comments: Keith Harmon Snow has some very valid points but over one hundred and fifty years of gentile exploitation of the Congo and everyone blames the Jews ?
Ask yourself what have the previous colonial invaders done for the Congo until Leviev, Gertler and Steinmetz appeared on the scene ?
The Congonese nationals, Germans and the Belgians have been in the Congo a lot longer but Mr Snow only glosses over this fact briefly in his article hardly mentioning their ” accomplishments ” before or during the turmoil of the last one hundred years. What was the Nazi family Krupp doing in Germany during World War II ? Making arms for Hitler ! and what have they done to assist the unfortunates in the Congo during all this time? Nothing.
Without foreign investment their will be no future !
Despite what people may think of the Gertlers and Steinmetzs of this world, they are offering a lot more than their predecessors.
Making Jews or Zionists the scapegoats on how they decide to practise their faith or politics has no relevance to the affairs of the Congo other than fostering ammunition for those anti semites who have conveniently forgotten that one of many of the recipients of conflict diamonds were Hezbollah and the reason why so many innocent people were slaughtered not to mention the past forgotten history of Belgian occupation with all it’s unaccountable atrocities.
In light of this obvious past unaccountability of other imperialists, Keith Harmon Snow’s insight on Jewish influence in the Congo could be seen as helpful and inspiring because for once the indigenous nationals of the Congo as in Botswana will be benefiting.
Snow’s misconstrued bias and perceived dislike of any Jewish or Israeli enterprise by falsely associating it with Zionism by definition alone is both ludicrous and inflammatory mischief making typical of those anti semites who continually pervert the facts.
What were the Catholics, Belgians and Germans with their missionaries doing in Africa the last one hundred and fifty years ? Not much unless murder and stealing is okay.
Did they compensate ? No.
I requote Mr Snow as follows: ” an empty, foolish justification for exploiting and terrorising innocent people——is how religion falsifies spirituality and paves the road to hell. “
Let’s Blame the Zionists.
Correct me if I am wrong but the Vatican and Papacy despite being theologically inaccurate, with it’s extra territorial exploits and white European associates, are certainly a lot older than any Zionist and the track record of Christian missionary influence in Africa is well documented in regard to the hardship of most black Africans but finding the Zionist scapegoat responsible and equated with this geographic anolamy begs the question why.
In the meantime The Russians are coming The Russians are coming…….. panic panic
Let’s blame those Zionists…again !
For Mr Snow’s benefit I conclude as follows: Those who point have three fingers pointing back at them.
Before blaming Jews or Israelis and falsely associating them as being Zionist demagogues perhaps Mr Snow should learn some basic history instead of pontificating over the evils of imperialistic free enterprise no matter what race or creed that person is especially only until the Israelis appeared on the African scene the plight of most black Africans had been a disaster during the last one hundred and fifty years.
Thankfully Africans are benefiting now and their standard of living will improve with the new wealth being created now that dictators are slowly disappearing and most diamond mining companies have an attitude of cooperation and partnership.
Daniel F Katz GG Diamond Imports Sydney NSW Australia 2000
