Sometimes a small spot on the fruit indicates major internal rot.
A representative from the Ministry of Education invited me to speak at a conference intended for hundreds of employees. Payment was agreed upon and the lecture was given on time, to the applause of the audience and to the satisfaction of the inviters.
But the salary was late in arriving. I waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. A year passed and there was no payment. I sent letters and reminders, to no avail. At first they promised to pay, then they said that another body would pay in their place (I have no idea who this body was or why), and finally they stopped answering my angry letters.
For twenty-five years I have been a lecturer for a wide variety of bodies, and it has never happened that they did not pay my salary. How "educational" that the first to do so was the Ministry of Education. Why did they not pay? I have no idea. I never received an explanation.
So I did something I had never done before: I filed a lawsuit. I demanded the payment I was promised, in black on a document, as well as symbolic compensation (a third of the lecture fee) - for the hassle, the mental anguish, and most of all the embarrassment that this is our country and this is the government office in charge of educating our children.
I was convinced that my lawsuit would convince the officials who refused to pay. I also had a faint hope that some bureaucrat would be called to order and judge the arbitrary injustice that had been done. But no. To my astonishment, they sent a defense to the court. It said that they deny that any injustice had been done. They did not pay my wages, but in their opinion there was no injustice here. It turns out that not only is a government office acting dishonestly, but the state has lawyers who are hired to defend this behavior.
After months of correspondence, they paid me the full amount of the financial claim. The lawsuit thus achieved its financial goal, but like many others, I was left with a bitter taste. Their lawyer's letter to the court stated: "The defendant will pay the plaintiff, in accordance with the law, without admitting the amount of the damage or any of the plaintiff's claims." None of the education officials thought to attach an apology, forgiveness, or even a promise to inspect the house to these absurd and outrageous things.
In a world where a commitment is not a commitment and an agreement is not an agreement, in a world where there is no longer good and evil but only "parties in a legal dispute", in a world where an army of lawyers feeds on scum - it is no wonder that even the "education officials" have forgotten what injustice is and what honesty and fairness are.
Oz Almog is a professor of sociology in the Department of Land of Israel Studies at the University of Haifa.
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