JERUSALEM -- Menachem (Meni) Mazuz is one of the busiest people in our country these days. As attorney general, he has on his desk a heap of files which keeps growing: The president seems unable to keep his pants on; the justice minister is removed after planting an uninvited kiss on the lips of a female soldier; the finance minister is suspected of embezzlement; and if that's not enough, the prime minister's name has been mentioned in relation to a series of scandals.
Mazuz was one year old in 1956 when his family emigrated from Tunisia to Israel and settled in Netivot, a then-God forsaken place in the desert in the southern part of the country. The family of nine children was miserably poor, but the parents insisted on securing for their kids the best education they could get.
Last week, I went to Netivot. The Israel Democracy Institute, where I work, runs a course in democracy in one of the local high schools. This program encompasses 160 schools all over Israel, where the pupils are being versed in the constitution, human rights and civil liberties. After studying the material for four months, the pupils were now ready for their final assignment: a mock trial -- with real judges and witnesses, some pupils playing the lawyers, and the rest, together with the teachers and the parents, being the jury.
We entered the impeccably neat school. The pupils roamed around in excitement, yet they kept their voices low in respect for the visitors. It wasn't always like that. Three years ago the school was a mess, vandalized by the pupils who couldn't care less about learning. Then the city called upon Judy Nehemia Perlmuter, a high-school principal from Beer Seva, to come and save the place. She turned the school upside down. Her secret? Zero tolerance for flunking and violence, and a warm hug to those who try.
Suddenly there was a buzz, and in came former Justice Dalia Dorner, who traveled all the way down from Jerusalem to preside over the case. The crowd, honored by her presence, rewarded her with a standing ovation. The trial began.
The simulated case was about Yael, a girl restricted to a wheelchair, who wanted to audition at a drama school. The head of the school brushed her off rudely, and the humiliated, disabled girl was now suing her, demanding to be compensated and to be admitted to the school.
The lead prosecutor rose to her feet. This young lady made the most eloquent and impassioned appeal to the court and to us, quoting rulings of the Supreme Court as naturally as if it were a casual girls' chat. Then the chief ''lawyer'' for the defense stood up and started to tear the prosecution's arguments to shreds, using the same high level legal rhetoric and arguments. (They were all girls, 16 years old and beautiful, wearing those black gowns. By their gestures, it was obvious that they had watched plenty of L.A. Law).
Then the defense called upon a pupil who played a witness, and the guy sitting next to me whispered proudly: ''My daughter.'' On the stage they were discussing ''relevant difference,'' or ''different relevance,'' I can't tell, not only because they were talking like real lawyers, but because I was glued to this simple-looking man. Whether or not his daughter should become the future attorney general like the other Netivot kid, Meni Mazuz, one thing was sure: For her, all the options were open.
The trial was over, with a compromise, which is always the best solution when values collide. Yael should be admitted to the audition, and then only her talent will decide. However, she will not get compensation, because she had been empowered by the experience.
I drove back north, approaching the big city, this modern Babylon. Yet suddenly, the silhouettes of the high-rise buildings, those chimneys of corruption, were not threatening anymore. I knew that down in the south, and elsewhere in the country, there grew a generation of young citizens who would make Israel a better place.
This article was first published in The Miami Herald on March 23, 2007.
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