Campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel in New York City.

Shaya Boymelgreen and Lev Leviev:
destroying communities and violating laws in Palestine and New York City.

Summary

Israeli American real estate developer Shaya Boymelgreen and Israeli businessman Lev Leviev are building destructive projects in New York City and in the Occupied West Bank in Palestine. Leviev and Boymelgreen are building strategic settlements in the Occupied West Bank which violate international law and aim to ensure Israeli control over key areas in the West Bank, rendering peace between Israelis and Palestinians impossible. In Palestine and in New York City they are committing similar abuses: expelling low-income, local residents from their communities, violating laws, and exploiting laborers.

Leviev, one of Israel’s wealthiest businessmen, is building the Mattityahu East settlement on the lands of the village of Bil’in with partner Shaya Boymelgreen, the Zufim settlement on the lands of the village of Jayyous, and the strategic West Bank settlements of Har Homa and Maale Adumim around Jerusalem which divide the northern West Bank from the Southern West Bank. In Bil’in and Jayyous, Boymelgreen and Leviev are building settlements on village land despite intensive nonviolent protest campaigns mounted by the two Palestinian villages against the construction.

Leviev, a major diamond trader who mines diamonds in Africa and polishes them in Israel, uses some of these profits to help finance his illegal settlement construction. Shaya Boymelgreen, until recently Leviev’s partner in real estate development in New York City and still his partner in building Mattityahu East, has angered so many so many community members in New York City with his abusive developments that he has become the target of local organizing campaigns.

Zufim and Mattityahu East settlements, built by Leviev and Boymelgreen, are projects “that aimed both to establish enclaves in the Occupied Territories for wealthy, more ‘mainstream’ settlers, and to dissolve the Green Line (Israel’s pre-1967 border) by creating ‘facts on the ground’—linking the new settlements to communities inside the Line, while expanding the latter in the direction of the Territories.” – Israeli historian Gadi Algazi, July, 2006, Settlers on Israel’s Eastern Frontier, Le Monde Diplomatique.

Rare Dubai protest follows hip-hop concert, New Yorkers to protest this Saturday

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New York, NY, December 16, 2008 – Signaling growing outrage at Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev’s businesses’ global rights abuses, on December 12th and 13th human rights advocates in Dubai, London and two West Bank Palestinian villages held protests against Leviev’s settlement construction. According to Gulf News, the protest in Dubai, unprecedented in the UAE, came after a screening at the Dubai International Film Festival of a documentary film about Palestinian hip hop artists. Leviev’s sale of his diamonds through Arif Bin Khadra’s Levant jewelry stores in Dubai has stirred controversy there.

Dubai’s Gulf News reported that on Friday, “Forty T-shirts and one hundred letters from the West Bank town of Jayyous were distributed to the audience at the screening of Slingshot Hip Hop.” Gulf News continued, “The distributed T-shirts called on Dubai residents to boycott Leviev as well as Levant Jewellery, owned by Leviev's local agent, Palestinian-Moroccan Arif Bin Khadra. Meanwhile, activists campaigning against Leviev's activities have set up a Facebook group that is calling for a boycott of all Dubai venues that host stores selling Leviev diamonds. The group has gained almost 400 members in less than two weeks since its launch, according to group administrator Jabbar, a UAE-based Palestinian rapper.” Jackie Salloum, the Arab American filmmaker who made Slingshot Hip Hop, has visited Jayyous, one of the West Bank villages where Leviev is building Israeli settlements. She described the situation there “as dire, saying that the ‘security barrier’ and colonies being built by Israel there have robbed its residents of their livelihoods.”