Summary
The Diamond Traders Association, a body of Jewish diamond dealers and traders pressing in 1945-1946 for deregulation of the diamond industry and the severing of trading from the Palestine Diamond Manufacturers’ Association’s control (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.208).
Details
- In summer 1945 it consisted of fifty-eight licensed diamond exporters, emphasized free trade, and pressed for direct exporting ties with New York and South Africa; its constituency was traditionally close to the Tishby-Weiss camp and the Diamond Club and had lost ground to Ben-Ami and the PDMA monopoly in 1940 (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.208).
- In spring 1946 it is listed with 39 members, described as importers, among the groups pressing to advance deregulation and abolition of the monopoly — alongside the Exporters’ Association of Palestine Polished Diamonds (79 members), the Palestine Diamond Club (125) and the Palestine Cleavers’ Organization (39) — whose pressure the government rejected on the claim that freeing the industry would bring chaos, uncontrolled home production and unemployment (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.216). The two membership figures and descriptions are recorded as printed in their passages.