Hello.

Our call for committee members was successful and the committee members will be coordinating their activities soon.  If you have not yet replied to the call for participation, please consider doing so.  Again, the committes are: Membership, Media Relations, Community Contacts, Events Planning, Management, Fundraising, Virtual Knesset, and Marketing.  Contact me at jmichaeljaffe@directrepisrael.org for proposals, comments, and questions on this matter.

We have now been added to Wikipedia, the Internet's open source encyclopedia, in English and Hebrew versions.  You can see our English entry at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Representational_Democracy_for_Israel
and the Hebrew version at
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/ìàøùéì_úéâåöéé-äøéùé_äéèø÷åîã

The following announcements of events comes from Candy Shinaar of our mailing list.

1) ESRA, the English Speaking Residents Association, has sponsored lectures in English on The Israeli Political System.
The final session on Dec 20, at 7:30PM lets you Meet the Parties: Spokespersons from each major party will present their platform and field questions from the audience.  The session lasts approximately 90 minutes.

Location:
Yakar: 10 Halamed Heh, Corner of Kovshei Katamon, Old Katamon, Jerusalem.
There is no charge for attending.  Contact: Reuven Grossman: 052-579-0958

2) The Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel (AACI) in Netanya is hosting a series of talks on electoral reform.  The first will be on January 9 at 7:30 PM and features former Knesset member and ambassador Gad Yaacobi, who will speak on "The Future of Israel's Democracy."  Stuart Palmer of CECI will also be on hand to lead a discussion.

Yaacobi has proposed a combined system of directly elected and proportionally elected MKs.  This contradicts Direct Representational Democracy for Israel's proposal and principles, that all MKs must satisfy the same requirements for election by winning an absolute majority in a defined constituency. Yaacobi's proposal would produce legislators of differing status, with proportionally elected MKs having far less accountability to the public than those directly elected.  Furthermore, Yaacobi proposes that those directly elected would run in multi-representative electoral districts in which 4 MKs would represent 350,000 citizens.  Our proposed system has a single MK serving 55,000 citizens in each electoral district.  We believe that multi-representative districts dilute the accountability of individual MKs to the constituency and under-represent outlying regions.

In the course of becoming active for electoral reform it is crucially important to understand the various proposals, their underlying principles, and their likely consequences.

On January 25 at 7:30 PM, as part of this series I will present a talk on "Stage 2- What can you do," that will profile Direct Representational Democracy for Israel.

The presentations on both dates will be held at the Netanya AACI, 28 Shmuel Hanatziv St.  If you would like to attend, please contact Candy Shinaar (09-8664925 or hasbara@bezeqint.net).

Be well.  We'll be in touch.
Michael Jaffe
Direct Representational Democracy for Israel