Some interesting law proposal votes yesterday:

• MKS David Rotem and Robert Iltov (Yisrael Beiteinu) proposed a law that would knock 50% off of Bituach Leumi payments to Israeli citizens who were involved in acts of terror against Israeli citizens and residents and who have been sentenced to at least 10 years in prison.
  Under the current law, all sorts of payments are withheld if the cause of the payment is created by the involvement in the act of terror (such as handicap from an explosion). The current law also only withholds the payments form people convicted to life sentences.
  The proposed law, if it should pass, would set the bar at a 10 year sentence, and would broaden the type of payments that will be lessened or canceled. The law passed its first reading yesterday.
  
  
• A new law was passed requiring all companies that qualify under the requirement of employing a "fleet manager" - someone to manage the "company cars" - to also stick stickers on every car saying something to the effect of "How am I driving?" with a shortened phone number clearly printed on the sticker so it can be easily read.
  
  According to Globes, this law was scheduled to be voted on and passed a few weeks ago, but some MKs were hesitant when they realized it would mean their own cars would have to bear these stickers. Eventually they consented, and now they are so obligated as well. According to the proponents of the law, this is one more thing that will hopefully encourage drivers to drive more safely, thus hopefully lowering the number of traffic accidents in the country.
  
• The Knesset passed the final readings of the proposed law that would allow the army to fight against the secular girls who lie to get an exemption from army service by claiming they are religious. The new law places the burden of responsibility on the young woman receiving the exemption - she would now be obligated to inform the army if her religious status should change during the time of her two year exemption.
  Meaning, if she claims to be religious, thereby receiving an exemption form the army (plenty of religious girls serve in different capacities - she only receives a religious-based exemption if she so requests and applies for one), if she should stop being religious during the 2-year period of her exemption, she would have to report her change to the army, and begin serving.
  Until now, the young woman would only have to declare being religious, and after that it was up to the army to keep track, if it so desired, and find out if she is really living a religious lifestyle.  The army often did such investigations, and found, frequently enough, that girls who had declared themselves as religious for exemptions were either not really so or had at best stopped being religious (by "at best" I mean that possibly they did not lie on the original application).
  
  The new law will prevent these young women from lying in order to get the exemption, as they will be responsible for not reporting their true lifestyle..
  
  I am not quite sure what the actual benefit is. I get that girls might not want to lie if they know they might be caught and punished, though at the end of the day the army is still going to have to follow and investigate the girls to find out if they are lying and not reporting lifestyle changes or not, just like they had to until now. The only difference is in the punishment that would happen after such an investigation. Perhaps the psychological aspect of the shift of responsibility is enough to stop the lying.
  
  
• Americans who make aliya are often confounded by the way to alert the emergency services in israel. Americans are used to calling 911, describing the emergency and the emergency center makes the decision what type of emergency service to alert and send to the scene. in Israel there is no unified emergency system. If you need the police you call 100, for MDA you call 101, and for the fire services you call 102. In a moment of emergency, it is not so easy to remember which number to call. Native Israelis have it easier, as they grew up knowing the right numbers, but immigrants often get confused.
  
  Under the proposed law, proposed by MK Moshe Gafni (UTJ) which passed its first reading, the emergency services would all be blanketed under one phone number, 112 f the law should pass, similar to the 911 service.
  
  The law is not being proposed to solve the confusion of the olim who can't remember the right phone number. The intent of the proposed law is to make the dispatch of emergency services to emergencies more efficient. Another benefit of it is to solve a problem that occurs in some areas in which a number of ambulance services operate - sometimes as many as 4 or 5 different emergency organizations. In those situations, the information about a situation, when called in to 101, is often only relayed to MDA, and not to the other ambulance services that might be able to respond quicker in a given situation. The new law would connect all the emergency services, and then the quickest solution would be effected.
  
  MDA opposes the law, saying that they provide such fast service because they are able to get out so quickly. they say they average 4.5 million calls a year, with an average response time of 7 seconds. That number seems ridiculously fast and I don't know how it is even physically possible. Maybe it means from the time they get the call until the ambulance driver starts running to his ambulance. It is impossible for the ambulance driver and team of EMTs to get to the ambulance, start the engine and drive to wherever, no matter how close they are, in 7 seconds. It must be referring to the time of their first reaction. MDA says such a system would delay the delivery of the information of an incident to them, thus delaying the arrival of the medics to the person who needs that ambulance as quickly as possible.   

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