“The Bastard is Rendered Kosher”: Diamonds, War, and the Legitimization of Private Capital in British-Ruled Palestine

Built on a traditional Jewish occupational niche and driven by the need to battle Nazi Germany, the know-how and craft practices of diamond cutting were transferred in the late 1930s and early 1940s from Antwerp and Amsterdam to Netanya and Tel Aviv. In the transplantation the British colonial powers, the De Beers cartel, and local Zionist entrepre-neurs made certain that diamond manufacturing would be under Jewish control and organized as a monopoly in the hands of privately owned factories. At the same time, liberal-minded manufacturers adapted and harnessed traditional diamond-production practices to state-building interests of social engineering and regimentation, thus legitimizing the association of diamonds, private capital, and Zionism.