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Opinion Judge Mazuz: Consultant in the government service Israel today

2022-08-18T03:35:17.255Z


Supreme Court Judge Meni Mazuz has been recruited time and time again for judicial plumbing jobs that other judges have stayed away from • His appointment as chairman of the Commission for the Appointment of Senior Officials is a preemptive strike towards the possible establishment of a right-wing government • Also: the warming of relations with Turkey may also take a toll


This is not the first time that Meni Mazuz has been called to the flag, to render a small service to the government.

In 2004 he was recruited by the Minister of Justice in the Sharon government, Tommy Lapid.

The position - Attorney General.

One of the first things Mazuz did was to move the indictment prepared by Edna Arbel against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, about a year before the campaign of the authorities, and especially the media, for Sharon in preparation for disengagement.

Counselor Mazuz was appreciated in the past, without referring at this stage to his work during the evacuation of residents from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria in 2005.

I then heard from him that the investigation files, the central one of which was against Olmert, generate nervousness in the public because it is similar to cleaning a room.

During cleaning, dust and dirt rise into the air, but then everything settles and the room is clean.

You can breathe again.

It was acceptable.

He was the fan in the corner of the room that blew all the garbage towards President Moshe Katsav and Minister of Justice Haim Ramon.

When he left the position of ombudsman, Mazuz created the impression that he was not ready for higher positions, which means a judge in the Supreme Court. He retired. Although he did not express himself on the issue, he thought at the time that it would be difficult to prove a conspiracy on the part of the Chief of Staff Ashkenazi and others against the political echelon.

This is, in part, because the government always had the authority to decide on his removal.

Today it is clear that not only was the authority of the Netanyahu-Barak government then empty of content, and it was not able to really remove a Chief of Staff. It was not even able to appoint a Chief of Staff, because the Deep State network succeeded with the help of State Comptroller Lindenstrauss and a legal advisor who suddenly turned out to be lukewarm and not I decided, Weinstein, to overthrow General Yoav Galant.

Transitional Prime Minister Lapid.

What will happen in an emergency situation, when they have to remove someone senior and appoint another senior in his place?, Photo: Mark Israel Salem

Today, in order to maintain the little personal and professional respect for him, Judge Mazuz can do a simple thing and not assume the position of chairman of the committee for the appointment of senior officials. He does not fit and does not meet the public standards that such a position - which is actually unnecessary - requires. Yes, Lapid again Yair Lapid. Again a small service to the government. A government controlled by faction leaders with only 25 seats in the Knesset. Naftali Bennett, who refused to use his authority to overturn the appointment of Mazuz, has almost no Knesset members in his faction. He preferred loyalty to members over national responsibility. The reasoning he gave in the matter Mazuz: There is an urgent need to approve the appointment of the Chief of Staff.

This reveals that the tangle of judicial bureaucracy not only harms the government's authority - the harm is in its ability to play the first role above itself in decisions dealing with national security.

This is a new chapter in Gogol's stories: the government cannot appoint a chief of staff (or the head of Mossad or the Shin Bet) until it first appoints the committee of bureaucrats who can approve the appointment.

What will happen in an emergency, when they have to remove someone senior and appoint another senior in his place?

But even the appreciation that Mazoz received for a certain period of time in his role as ombudsman does not stand up to the examination of his performance in retrospect. He actually prevailed over the suppression of the settler protests and their supporters in the Israeli public in 2005. There were jurists who did not want to call it the suspension of democracy, but contented themselves with the definition "democracy deformed".

He directed the police to stop buses on their way to demonstrations.

He led to the arrest of thousands, including infants, girls and toddlers who sat on the bench with their foreheads almost touching the floor.

Later, he was the man who broke through the barrier as a judge of the Supreme Court in the Petah Tikva riots in front of the house of the legal advisor Mandelblit, a bully persecution that reached the synagogue. First he ruled that it was possible to demonstrate in front of the ombudsman's office but not in front of his house.

Then he put out a finger and saw where the wind was blowing.

Eldad Yaniv and Mani Naftali, with a political and media background, folded it.

Later, the destroyers were removed when the protest riots wandered in front of the house on Balfour Street.

Here, not only did buses not stop at the exit points, but even the guidelines for defending against the Corona epidemic were canceled in honor of the rebels on the way.

Of course, the mass gathering in Miron in 2021 is something else.

There, an investigative committee examines every sign of the gathering policy during the epidemic, which was practically eliminated during the disaster.

Judge Mazuz was recruited time and time again for judicial plumbing jobs that other judges did not want to get their hands dirty with.

Especially when it was necessary to rule without any constitutional authority against the appointment of Orli Ben-Ari, and later of Dan Eldad as temporary state attorney.

Minister Ohana had to hire a lawyer, because Mandelblit did not want to defend the government at the High Court. Ohana took Simcha Rothman, and their claim was that Mazuz violated the ethics of the Supreme Court when he defined Ohana as a "minister against me" for the system.

His political stance against Amir Ohana led him to repeatedly issue orders against appointments he had made.

Mazuz tried to claim that when he said that it was the Minister of Justice as opposed to the system, he did not mean exactly Emir Ohana.

Knesset members Ohana and Rothman are demanding that the appointment be revoked, among other things, because Mezuz is "damaged in credibility".

Their intention is that the judge was caught in a false statement.

Attorney Dan Eldad. Mazoz ruled against his appointment without any constitutional authority, photo: Dodo Vaaknin

Later, after his inexplicable retirement, Judge Mazuz gave a very political press interview.

That was less than a year ago.

He claimed in "Haaretz" that the recent struggles in the country are not political or ideological, but are intended to crush the legal institutions "for known reasons".

It is clear that his appointment is intended to thwart any significant appointment that a right-wing government, if formed, would like to make.

The extent to which the oligarchic network has become standard in Israel is evidenced by the fact that Mazuz's wife, Eliner, was the deputy legal advisor to the police while he himself was the ombudsman, and his sister Yamima was the legal advisor to the Ministry of Finance.

bound by obligations

Under the wings of the USA and under the guise of celebratory conferences, Israel integrated itself into the containment policy of the Americans towards Iran. Warming relations with Turkey may also take a toll

Again Kissinger in the guise of the Oracle.

This week, in an interview with the "Wall Street Journal", he warns that the USA is degenerating aimlessly towards war with Russia and China. "We have no idea how this is going to end or where it is supposed to lead", he said. Hasharon" can say. But the polarized tensions that erupted into the world in February of this year in Ukraine are indeed pushing Israel back to the American side, out of lack of choice. The question is to what extent Israel should subordinate the various dimensions of its foreign policy and its security interests to the political-strategic wishes of the Americans, especially that it should not To be the Kissingerian oracle to see that the US is running in confusion, aimlessness and indecision.

In MAZ there is much more than in Ukraine.

A person who was a senior member of the American security establishment during the Bush-Cheney era warns that the Biden administration would like to see Israel as passive as possible, and he was referring mainly to the Iranian issue.

He says that the more Israel shows more independence in its way of fighting the Iranian nuclear, and more determination to do what it believes needs to be done, the more support and sympathy it will gain.

When asking for permission and approval for every step, support and sympathy run out.

If Israel has an independent path in security policy vis-à-vis Iran and in general in its regional policy, it needs to bypass Washington and gain the support of American public opinion.

It is worth mentioning a forgotten fact: even though Israel was part of the West, immediately after the outbreak of the Six Day War, it bombed the American intelligence ship "Liberty" from the air.

This did not interfere and may even have contributed to strengthening the security relationship with the Americans.

In practice, since the establishment of the Bennet-Lapid government, Israel has done exactly the opposite.

It can be argued that this was the main goal of the system, which mobilized to block former Prime Minister Netanyahu in order to remove him from the focus of decisions.

Because in the field of regional security we see the big changes in the last year, changes that Israel slipped into without feeling it and without the public understanding what was happening.

The apparently dramatic improvement in relations with Turkey actually leads to the demand that the gas pipeline to Europe pass through it.

This is how Israel also slipped into the entanglement of the "Shark" field, when the US is mediating with Lebanon. Also transferring gas through Turkey will put Israel in total dependence on American mediation, when the problems that Erdogan knows so well to inflame start to emerge.

Erdogan.

The apparently dramatic improvement in relations with Turkey actually leads to the demand that the gas pipeline to Europe pass through it, photo: AP

Israel came under the wings of CENTCOM, the American Central Command.

The American strategic envelope, combined with new contents introduced into the "Abraham Agreements", bring Israel into close cooperation with Arab countries in the areas of regional anti-aircraft defense and more.

It is known that Israel and the Sunni sector in the Middle East have a common interest vis-a-vis Iran. But the cooperation was supposed first of all to help Israel in its operational needs against Iran, and not to enter into excess commitments and the possibility that secrets and measures would be revealed. Under the wings of the United States, and under the guise of solemn conferences, Israel integrated into the policy The containment towards Iran.

If Gantz and Eisenkot are in the circle of decision-makers after the elections, Israel's security policy will be managed from the CENTCOM headquarters. 

Israel reached the watershed at dawn.

As Amir Avivi pointed out in an article in the "Wall Street Journal", Israel needs to change its goal in Gaza: instead of deterrence, eliminate the missile arsenal, launch capabilities and weapons, whose threat to the population of the home front is increasing.

This also includes blocking the smuggling routes into the strip.

Infrastructure or not to be

The average number of fatalities on Israeli roads is far from the high numbers of the 1970s and 1980s.

One only has to hope that the planning apocalypse in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv will not shake the drivers

Blame the drivers.

Blame the "human factor".

Not since then has it been the regular habit of Israeli governments, especially during the days of Mapai and the formation, to place the blame for the high number of road accidents and the astronomical death tolls on the citizens. They fought with the private cars while a large part of the drivers were the officials of the regime.

The past week, with 19 deaths in accidents, caused a shock.

The way to examine Israel's situation on this issue is through numbers.

There will always be headlines and finger pointing against the citizens.

Between 1949 (the establishment of the state) and 1960, the number of deaths per year in accidents ranged from 170 to 200 and in some years even more.

In 1961 there was a leap forward - 244 deaths.

1964 - 325. 1968 - 407 dead.

It is clear that the poor infrastructure in Israel of those nostalgic days and the lack of traffic lights, interchanges and bridges, together with the improvement of the economic situation, caused dramatic increases in the number of dead.

An opposite process to what happened since 1980 and 2000. 1968 is the year after the Six Day War, when there was a huge improvement in the economy that was manifested in the purchase of cars.

Residents of the territories drive freely on all the country's roads.

But it's the drivers' fault, Transport Minister Shimon Peres recommends traveling by buses and that they be comfortable.

The scene of the accident in Jerusalem.

Not since then has it been the regular habit of Israeli governments to place the blame on the citizens. Photo: Oren Ben Hakon

A terrible leap occurs in the decade of the seventies.

Between 1971 and 1980 the average number of deaths was around 750(!) per year.

In 1980 - a dramatic drop to 523.

A small stop: there are far more than 3.5 million vehicles in Israel today.

In 1974 there were 140 cars per thousand people, today it is about 450.

The population in that year was much sparser, and since then it has more than tripled.

I mean, it's clear that the number of cars in the 1970s was much, much less than today, yet in a population of about three million, we added about 700 more on the roads to the 2,600 killed in the Yom Kippur War.

Since 2000 there has been a gradual decrease towards the 400 deaths per year.

In 2001 (the second intifada) 565. In 2008 - 433. In 2009 there is a dramatic drop to 346 deaths, and since then Israel hovers around 350, with some years dropping to 300 or so.

Between 2018 and 2020 the average is 326.

Since the number of cars has increased dramatically since 1995 (1.1 million vehicles, in 1998 about 1.7 million and today is double what it was in the 1990s), the explanation for the drastic decrease in the number of fatalities is a revolution in the transportation infrastructure (the green environmental organizations did their part in delaying the development of the infrastructure such as Route 6 and the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv expressway).

And after all this, no one can calculate how the planning apocalypse that afflicts Tel Aviv and Jerusalem will affect the nervousness of drivers.

As they say - good luck to us.

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Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2022-08-18

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