Adalah NY is asking friends to email City Harvest, which fights hunger in New York, and urge the organization not to accept funds from Lev Leviev, the diamond dealer who has been building Israeli settlements and has a wretched record on human rights.
Then on Saturday Adalah will be holding its sixth annual Christmas carol-ing outside Leviev’s Madison Avenue and 62d Street store, to decry his role in fostering apartheid.
From Adalah’s press release on City Harvest:
Take Action! Tell City Harvest to Say No to Leviev’s Abuses!
Media report that an October fundraiser at billionaire Lev Leviev’s New York diamond store, and a portion of Leviev’s November sales will benefit the New York City anti-hunger organization City Harvest. Business Week and Women’s Wear Daily previously reported on other Leviev fundraisers for City Harvest.
Leviev’s companies have a well-documented history of building Israeli settlements on the land of West Bank Palestinian villages. Settlement construction involves the confiscation, and/or destruction of village farmland. Leviev’s companies have also been involved in unethical business practices and human rights abuses in the diamond industry in Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe. Due to this abysmal human rights record, UNICEF, Oxfam America and CARE, and the governments of Norway and the United Kingdom have all publicly disavowed any relationship with Leviev.
A coalition of New York City social justice groups including Adalah-NY, Brooklyn For Peace, Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), Jews Say No!, and Park Slope Food Coop Members for BDS, along with the food justice organization Grassroots International have sent City Harvest two letters (First Letter Second Letter) documenting his companies’ abusive practices. The letters and follow-up calls have yet to receive a satisfactory response.
If you believe that City Harvest’s laudable mission of alleviating hunger in New York City need not be realized at the expense of needy communities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, click here to send an email to City Harvest’s leadership urging them to disavow Leviev and his money.
That is an interesting moral dilemma.
Will Adallah NY or maybe Philip Weiss substitute the money and make
City Harvest choice that much easier ?
Is that like the blood diamonds we hear about?