Menachem Mazuz

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Meni Mazouz)
Jump to: navigation, search
Israel

This article is part of the series:
Politics and government of
Israel



Other countries · Atlas
 Politics Portal
view  talk  edit

Menachem Mazuz (knows better as "Meni Mazuz") (Hebrew: מנחם מזוז‎, born 1955) is an Israeli jurist, currently Israel's Attorney General.

Mazuz was born in Djerba, Tunisia. His family immigrated to Israel during his childhood, settling in Netivot.

Mazuz served his compulsory military service in the IDF Armor Corps, and then studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning his law degree in 1980 specializing in public and administrative law.

Upon graduation, he worked in the Ministry of Justice for several years in a number of tasks, including processing petitions to the Supreme Court. During this time he was also teaching public and administrative law at the Hebrew University. From 1991 through 1995, he served as one of the advisors coordinating legal aspects of Israel's negotiations with Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. In 1995, he was appointed Deputy Attorney General, and served in that position for ten years.

In January 2004, Mazuz was appointed Attorney General. Seen as a career civil servant with little political or criminal-law experience, the circumstances of his appointment drew considerable interest because Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his sons were under investigation by the Attorney General's office for campaign-finance irregularities relating to his 1999 campaign for leadership of the Likud party.

When Mazuz's predecessor Elyakim Rubinstein resigned to accept appointment to the Supreme Court, Mazuz was chosen by Justice Minister Yosef Lapid; his selection and confirmation were carried out without the involvement of Sharon or vice-premier Ehud Olmert (also a target of the campaign-finance investigation) who both abstained in order to avoid a conflict of interest.

Upon taking office, Mazuz said he would vigorously pursue the case against Sharon, earning him contrasts in the media with Rubinstein, who had been accused of moving too slowly on the matter. In the summer of 2005, he secured the indictment of Ariel Sharon's son Omri on corruption charges, but decided not to charge Ariel Sharon himself and his other son, Gilad.

Mazuz adopted a hardline legal approach towards demonstrators opposing the destruction of the Jewish towns of Gush Katif. While stating that measures will be taken against violent demonstrators, and that detained protestors would not be given a collective pardon, he also forbid a demonstration in the town of Sderot. After the successful and relatively peaceful completion of the retreat, Mazuz said that it was freedom of demonstration which prevented the operation from escalating into a violent one.

Mazuz faced harsh criticism following his decision, given in January 2005, according to which Israeli Arabs are allowed to buy lands owned by the Jewish National Fund. Some have accused Mazuz of incompliance with Israel's image as a Jewish state.

Mazuz has come under criticism from human rights groups for allowing Israeli police to employ violence against demonstrators in the evacuation of Amona.

A resident of Jerusalem, he is married with two children.

Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.