Activists call on Oprah Winfrey to distance herself from Leviev over human rights abuses

Abstract: 

To commemorate her magazine’s 15th anniversary, US megastar talk show host and social justice philanthropist Oprah Winfrey glammed out wearing pearl-shaped 69 carat Leviev diamond earrings on the cover of the May 2015 edition of O, the Oprah Magazine. Leviev is owned by Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev and Adalah-NY: The New York campaign for the Boycott of Israel emailed a letter to executives at O and the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) on May 29th detailing the involvement of Leviev’s companies’ to notoriously brutal human rights abuses in Angola and the thousands of illegal Israeli settlement homes built on Palestinian land by another of his companies, in violation of international law. Shortly thereafter the communications director at OWN, Chelsea Hettrick, told an Adalah-NY representative that Winfrey was reviewing the letter, and that her team would respond soon. They didn’t. Hettrick has since failed to reply to further calls and emails from Adalah-NY.