Is Joe Biden Really Lifting Sanctions on Israeli Interests?

Right, so for all the talk of their needing to be sanctions placed on Israel as the Gaza genocide continues, here comes Genocide Joe, set to lift sanctions instead and of course it is because he and his administration, not to mention the US itself will benefit from doing so and as always seems to be the case, there ends up being a Billionaire businessman involved, one that has been sanctioned for corrupt business practices, having cheated an African nation out of their cut of the profits. The fact the businessman involved also happens to be Israeli, a guy who has literally made himself a billionaire off the back of impoverished Africans means the optics of this are even worse, but to get one up on the Chinese as this story seems to ultimately boil down to, Joe Biden thinks lifting sanctions on this awful individual is a price worth paying.
Right, so this is a story that is going rather underreported, but the White House are reportedly considering lifting the sanctions placed on an Israeli billionaire businessman so awful in his alleged practices, that the sanctions were actually placed upon him by Donald Trump, and if you’re so corrupt that Donald Trump can’t stomach you, that does speak volumes. Of course it would be dishonest of me to not note that Trump later on lifted the sanctions on this guy himself, just days before he left office, Gertler had hired Trumps own lawyer Alan Dershowitz, to win this reprieve, only for Biden to put them back in place within two months when he came to office. However now, things have changed, Biden wants something and seems to think the way to get it, is to lift the sanctions on this wrong’un himself.
Now far be it from me to imply that Israeli’s having been born, raised and living in Israel see nothing wrong in punching down on people they consider inferior or worth less, but given how Palestinian people are treated by them, considered less than human by many of them, that this is an inherent way of thinking amongst these people. I would like to think the masses of Israeli protesters disgusted with their current government and wanting Netanyahu’s resignation, show most of them are better than that, however looking at this billionaire and how he gained his fortune, it’s easy to think that some at least, really are raised to think they are better than others and that lesser beings are there to be exploited.
The man in question is called Dan Gertler, founder and president of DGI Group, Dan Gertler International and is the grandson of the founder of the Israeli Diamond Exchange, the world’s largest diamond exchange as it happens, so it’s a family of means, but Gertler has very much built on that himself, though very much built on the backs of others as that is. To be honest you can say that about all billionaires, it’s such a vast sum of money nobody can actually earn that in a lifetime, but only through exploitation. There’s exploitation and there is Dan Gertler though.
Gertler has invested heavily primarily in diamond and copper mining activities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has been doing so since the 90’s, whilst also having major interests in Congolese gold, cobalt, oil, agriculture and banking industries, much of this possible due to his close ties with former Congolese President Joseph Kabila, who served as President between 2001 and 2019, so a significant span of time during which Gertler was active in the country. The relationship was considered corrupt. Gertler operated what was basically a monopoly, on copper and cobalt – 60% of the world’s cobalt reserves are in the DRC, so he quickly made an absolute fortune, he held sway over which companies got mining licences, he was a key emissary for Kabila and his government, very much feet under the table sort of stuff.
He popped up on the International Monetary Fund’s and World Bank’s radar by 2012, as they froze loans to Congo when the Congolese government refused to publish details between state owned mining firms and Gertler’s and when one of Gertler’s partners, the Eurasian Natural Resources Company, or ENRC, bought themselves out of their partnership with Gertler at a cost of £340m, it soon became public knowledge that Gertler’s mining operations and his personal fortune were from "looting Congo at the expense of its people". Gertler’s own response to all of this was to give an interview in which he said:
‘I should get a Nobel prize. They need people like us, who come and put billions in the ground. Without this, the resources are worth nothing.’
The money not enough then, you deserve a prize for it too then? Not if you get sanctioned into the floor over it by the US, which is what happened to him in 2017, lifted briefly by Trump as aforementioned, but now sanctioned again. So why is Joe Biden now considering lifting the ban on this widely regarded as corrupt businessman, especially given the optics of him being Israeli given what Israel is currently doing and that Biden is overtly supporting, arming, supplying, to a far greater tune than any other nation going. It’s a bit hypocritical that a guy like Biden who shows such preferential treatment for Israel at the expense of Palestine, has sanctioned a guy who has looted Congo at the expense of it’s people. You’d think they had more in common than at first sight, perhaps that is the issue?
Well the issue actually seems to be China. Yes, let’s shake this video up some more, we’ve gone from the US to Israel to Africa, let’s got to China with this story as well, because the crux of the matter, is the mineral wealth in the DRC and due to Gertler’s actions leading to Western sanctions, on the flipside has been the fact Gertler is so entrenched in DRC mineral deals and influence, access to Congolese mineral wealth has become a lot harder for them, but not for China. The copper and cobalt deposits are crucial components in the manufacture of electric vehicle batteries and the West is finding itself increasingly reliant on China to get these minerals from, they having a significant foothold in Congolese mineral access themselves, they after all aren’t sanctioning Gertler.
So in the name of remaining competitive over the matter of EV mineral components and completely unwilling to get over the China are bad, they’re mates with Russia boo hiss, kind of an attitude, the Biden administration is now looking to lift sanctions on Gertler, in a bid to just get him out of the way and by doing so will effectively be rewarding him for decades of alleged exploitation. No seizure of assets, no nothing, let him walk away with his apparently ill gotten gains, lift sanctions slightly to the point he can sell off his assets, keep all that money too and then sod off back to Israel essentially. Here’s an excerpt from Regtechtimes, a tech media outlet, explaining the deal:
‘The proposed arrangement, as revealed by anonymous US officials, involves limited sanctions relief for Dan Gertler in exchange for his complete withdrawal from Congo, including surrendering his royalty interests in key mining projects. This strategy aims to sever Dan Gertler’s ties to Congo’s mining sector, thereby potentially paving the way for more transparent and ethical investment practices.
Key components of the deal include:
1. Relinquishment of Royalty Streams: Gertler would need to give up his royalty interests in major mining projects, such as those controlled by Eurasian Resources Group (ERG) and Glencore Plc.
2. Auditing and Escrow: Gertler would be subjected to an audit of his assets, with half of any proceeds from royalty sales being placed in escrow.
3. Legal Concessions: As part of the agreement, Dan Gertler would be required to drop lawsuits against various individuals and organizations that have investigated his activities, including members of the Congo Is Not For Sale consortium.
This proposal underscores the Biden administration’s pragmatic approach to foreign policy, balancing the need to uphold anti-corruption standards while advancing strategic economic interests.’
Now the aforementioned Congo Is Not For Sale Consortium are not happy at all with this, arguing that allowing Gertler to walk away with the profits of his corruption only perpetuates corruption and there is also the distastefulness of choosing to negotiate a deal with someone who appears to have conducted his business for decades with scant regard for the morals or ethics of his actions and thusly that reflects on any deal which allows him to walk away with his plunder and when the only reason really at the end of the day the Biden administration can point to over this being to pint over at Xi Jinping and say but China, it’s all very weak and pathetic. The other side of this is would Biden go down this road if this guy wasn’t Israeli as well. Does that have any bearing on any of this and people will absolutely ask that question, especially of the Biden administration who are far too close to the Israeli government, but then all US administrations seem to be that. The timing of all of this may just be unfortunate coincidence on Biden’s part, but it means questions will be asked as to what his motivation to do this and do this now really are.
This is the Biden administration getting involved in another African nations business, it didn’t go so well for them doing this further north, up in Niger as I spoke about in this video here, the Nigerien government so fed up with the Americans – and again, Israel comes into this story too – that they’ve just thrown the US out, a recommendation for your next watch if you care to stick with the channel and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid, Cheers folks.