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.29 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.30
"We do work for Mr. Gertler on some of his business issues," said Lior
Chorev.31 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.32 As a political strategist, Lior Chorev has worked for Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon and current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.33 He has also
participated in Israel-NATO defense planning conferences.34
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.35
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.36 The Steinmetz web site map of
operations hides their involvement in war-torn Congo.37
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.38
"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."38
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.39 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.40
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.41 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.42 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.43 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.44 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.45
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.