Benny Meirov
Benny Meirov, an owner and founder of MID House of Diamonds, has been named by the Israel Diamond Manufacturers Association as a 2021 Israel Diamond Industry Dignitary Award recipient, at a ceremony conducted on December 8, 2021, in the Yahalom Theater at the Israel Diamond Exchange complex. The event was attended by representatives of the Israeli government, the Ministry of Economy, and the leadership of the diamond industry and other business sectors.
Israel Diamond Industry Dignitary Awards are granted to worthy individuals in recognition of their contribution to the development of the diamond sector in Israel, and are considered to be the highest honor that can be bestowed by the industry on its own members.
Accepting the award, Mr. Meirov, paid tribute to his colleagues named as co-recipients, and also to the Israel Diamond Industry Dignitary Awards winners who had preceded them. “Every one of us helped pave the way forward,” he said. “Every one of us made a personal mark in our own way. Every one of us passed the torch on to members of the future generation, students who will continue our work in the industry.”
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Born 69 years ago in the northern Israeli town of Afula, Mr. Meirov made his way into the diamond industry at age 23, when he accepted an offer to learn the business from his uncle, Amnon Rachaminov, who was diamantaire in Belgium. Newly married, he traveled to Antwerp in 1975.
In 1977, his uncle asked him to establish the company’s office in New York, and he agreed, requesting that his brother Yossi be brought into the business in Belgium. But, after three years on 47th Street, he decided it was time to establish his own independent operation, moving with his family to Los Angeles, where he set up a trading office supplied with polished diamonds by his uncle.
In 1990, he established a company with Yossi, with him running the American office in Los Angeles, and his brother the Belgian office in Antwerp. The venture flourished, but 1994 he decided that the time was right to return home, so that his children could build their families and careers in Israel. The office in California would become a branch of the business he would reestablish in Ramat Gan.
In 2000 he entered into a partnership with Lev Leviev and David Elishayov. Called LID, the new company quickly developed into Israel’s largest diamond exporter, and one of the most prominent diamond manufacturers and traders worldwide.
But he remained to inclined work within a family setting. “I want to have them all alongside me, all the time,” he said, “united both in work and in life.” Thus, after five years with LID he split off, creating, Meirov International Diamonds with his brother Yossi. It is what is known today at MID House of Diamonds.
By all standards MID House of Diamonds is both and Israel and international diamond industry success story. Over 15 years it has grown into an international concern, with eight branch offices in key trading centers in Asia, Europe and the Americas. It employees 80 people, 45 of them in Israel.
Perennially located in the top echelon of Israeli diamond exporters, in 2008 MID House of Diamonds was recognized as a leading diamond exporter by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and 2011 was awarded Israel’s Outstanding Diamond Exporter Award. In 2017, the company was recognized for its contribution to the development of trade ties between Israel and Japan.
But for Benny Meirov, the fact that MID House of Diamonds is at its heart a family concern one is one of his most important accomplishments. He and his brother’s children are today integral parts of the business, as well as the children of their late sister.
The family ethos also extends to other employees, whether relatives or not. It’s important that all workers know that “when help is needed we are her for them,” Mr. Meirov said.
In accepting his award, Mr. Meirov ended his brief world of thanks by quoting Janusz Korczak, a doctor, writer and educator who ran a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw from 1911 to 1942, and who stayed with the children under his care to the very end, even when the Nazis deported them to their deaths at the Treblinka concentration camp. “The one who cares for days, sows wheat. The one who cares for years, plants trees. The one who cares for generations, educates people,” he said.
