Arcadi Gaydamak
Photo: Yaron Brenner
King Mazuz I
He strikes down laws, fires rabbis, closes cases, and exonerates criminals. How did it happen that all authorities in Israel blindly follow attorney general's instructions?
Is there a no. 1 man in the country? And if so, who is he? A political genius? A world renowned economist? A great moral authority, who is an example for acceptable values where he is concerned day and night over the interests of the state? A leader of the nation? A contemporary prophet?
In Israel, senior positions are held by the prime minister and the president, government members and Knesset members, army officers and senior mangers in leading corporations, chief rabbis and chief editors of newspapers. But all in all, they are eventually dependant on the decisions of one man. He is called Menachem (Meni) Mazuz. The position he fills is simply termed: The Chief Legal Advisor to the Government. It is a term that is wonderful in its simplicity and that does not reveal a thing about the extent of the governmental authorities placed in the hands of this individual.
He publicly declares that "the Omnibus Law of Arrangements in the State's economy, that was enacted by the Knesset, is a problematic and anti-democratic law" and goes on to impose taxes on the religious work of rabbis and Kabbalists. He demands the resignation of the Ahkenazi Chief Rabbi to Israel, Yona Metzger, based on controversial evidence. He compels the Social Security Agency to acknowledge the property rights of homosexual families, who are not recognized in Israel, and lifts the freeze placed on minimum wages, despite the objection of the Treasury.
He reminds the transitional government that it ought not to slide beyond the borders of current topics until it does not attain the vote of trust from the Kenesset, yet he supports the nomination of new Supreme Court judges even though the management of the High Court of Justice requested to postpone the nominations till after the Knesset elections.
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Without a bit of embarrassment, he closes the scandalous file "The Greek Island" affair, against Gilad and Ariel Sharon. But he sends Omri Sharon to prison "in the best interests of democracy". He attacks Knesset members Gurlovsky and Peretz, the ministers Tzachi Hanegbi and Haim Ramon.
He blocks the path of Avigdor Lieberman towards a place in the government and casts doubt over the position of Tzvi Hefetz as Israel's ambassador to Britain. He is the one who takes the decision to conserve the status of Ariel Sharon as "temporarily unfit" – this when it proved such a cardinal issue during the election campaigns.
He is the one who authorizes the final panel of the national commission for the inquiry of the second Lebanon war. If this is not a case of governmental authority, then what is governmental authority anyway?
In matters of state security, he adheres with consistency to the guideline, that originates in the beginning of the 90s, according to which not Arab lawyers, but rather he himself, serving as the legal advisor to the Israeli delegation to the negotiations with the Palestinians and Jordan, wrote his own opinion and in it he termed Judea, Samaria and the Gaza strip as "occupied territories."
Mazuz is responsible for demanding Sharon to refrain from using missiles as a counteraction to the Palestinian Qassam rockets, explaining that such an action "could lead to loses in lives amongst civilians, a thing that would be interpreted as a military crime, a global criticism Israel would have difficulty withstanding".
He is the one who opposed the parliamentary acceptance of the protocol dealing with handing over the "Philadelphi Route" to Egyptian supervision, a route via which currently serves to smuggle massive amounts of weapons into Gaza.
He firmly spoke against enacting administrative arrest against Mordechi Vanunu, who exposed the secrets of Israel's atomic program, after his release from prison, despite the hidden peril lurking in his continuous anti-Israeli activities. He took the decision whereby the drug dealer, Elchanan Tenenbaum, whose handing over by the Hizbullah to Israel lead to the release of hundreds of the most dangerous terrorists, would not be brought to court.
Multiplicity of interests
He prohibited advertising tenders for selling land, including lands belonging to the Jewish National Fund (!), implementing "national restraints", and by doing so put an end to a many centuries year old practice that resulted in the foundation of the State of Israel. In the issue of the selling of stock by the Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, he declared "this should be dealt with via civil proceedings, not juridical ones.”
When he evaluates the conduct of the police during the mass uprisings in the year 2000, he digs up from the grave criminal files against policemen. During the preparations for the retreat from Gaza he declared that he would personally see to it that policemen who employed violence against demonstrators, would be entitled to immunity against civil claims pressed by any of the injured parties, whereas army men "who are assaulted by settlers can file complaints with a special body".
Is Mazuz, to whom the Left wing delegates resolutely cried out to, without success, to deal with left wing radicals with the same consistency as he pursues left wing extremists, an objective person? Why is it, that when he supports the claim of "Peace Now" against settlers and handles the "integration of a legal basis, that will enable to effectively battle the rebellion of the authorities", Meni Mazuz decides to close the criminal cases filed against people who refused to serve in the army, by declaring the need to "act tolerantly with those who refuse to abide by the law due to ideological reasons"?
Why does the fight against "racism" border, from his point of view, with the battle against the display of "racism against Arabs" and this within the frame of his recommendation to initiate and inquiry against the newspaper "Vesti", which publicized a literary parody that was "not kosher" in his opinion?
And why does the attorney general ignore events more dangerous by far, despite the direct allegations of him turning a blind eye to the persecutions of "Russians", "Moroccans" and "Romanians", where he surmises that these are cases of "internal ethnic conflicts" and not racist ones?
Does the State require an experienced attorney, who supervises over the work of the government authorities, a person who can pay attention to and rectify legislative and administrative errors, against which no parliament and no government in the world are safe from? Yes, without a doubt. Is his job intended to replace that of the Knesset, the government and God knows what other additional authorities in Israel, thus making him the #1 man in the country? Doubtfully so.
Even more so, when it is especially not clear, who, actually in practice, supervises over him? Who is it that decides what exactly is defined within his area of authority, and which topics do not concern him? And what should be done with his recommendations, when he begins to deal enthusiastically with matters outside his area of authority? Or maybe these recommendations have no legislative basis? And what should be done with his decisions, if within a short span of time they turn out not only to be erroneous, but also dangerous to the State? And what should be done with his ambitions to articulate himself on every subject while he expresses firm opinions as if in his image the descendant of the Kings of Israel has been resurrected?
Maybe in the eyes of Meni Mazuz he truly sees himself as serving the State in the best possible way, when he brings to life from the dead the practice that prevailed during the biblical age of the domain of "Judges", when the Jews did not yet have an established state of their own, and the entire rule was concentrated in the hands of historic predecessors. We will not question the purity of his intentions.
What is confusing is his multiplicity of interests and the decisiveness of this statements, that reminds one of the Roman expression "Caesar wants you to die….". The work of lawyer is no less responsible and delicate than that of a doctor's. When his "medicines" are harmful to those around him much more that the disease itself, it is high time to stop and question the substitution of the residing official. Especially since in Israel there are no civil servants who have no replacements. Even if one speaks of the attorney general.
