Ottawa Star - Volume 1 Issue 8

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Ottawa Star www.OttawaStar.com • October 10, 2013 • Volume 1, Issue 8

In Israel you can be a Jew, Arab, Druse and more but not Israeli

YouTube stars headed for inaugural Buffer Festival for web videos

Grace Helbig of the popular YouTube Channel DailyGrace See Page 9

By Tia Goldenberg, The Associated Press

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use its current charter plan as a central theme in an election campaign. The PQ government responded by saying that it welcomes Parizeau’s suggestions, as it does the contribution of any citizen. But as some political commentators suggested, Parizeau is not just any citizen. He co-founded the PQ in 1968 and has been its leader—both literally, and figuratively, over the years. Parizeau is now urging the PQ to draw back, after a political lifetime spent urging it to push forward. He repeatedly gained the admiration of the party’s more hawkish wing by fighting its leaders whenever he felt they strayed too far from the independence goal, as he did when he quit the Rene Levesque cabinet in 1984. And, unlike almost all other PQ leaders who took a go-slow approach

ERUSALEM—Israel’s population registry lists a slew of “nationalities’’ and ethnicities, among them Jew, Arab, Druse and more. But one word is conspicuously absent from the list: Israeli. Residents cannot identify themselves as Israelis in the national registry because the move could have far-reaching consequences for the country’s Jewish character, the Israeli Supreme Court wrote. The ruling was a response to a demand by 21 Israelis, most of whom are officially registered as Jews, that the court decide whether they can be listed as Israeli in the registry. The group had argued that without a secular Israeli identity, Israeli policies will favour Jews and discriminate against minorities. In its 26-page ruling, the court explained that doing so would have “weighty implications’’ on the state of Israel and could pose a danger to Israel’s founding principle: to be a Jewish state for the Jewish people. The decision touches on a central debate in Israel, which considers itself both Jewish and democratic yet has struggled to balance both. The country has not officially recognized an Israeli nationality. National and ethnic loyalties are often layered in Israel, a country founded on the heels of the British colonial mandate and initially populated by Jewish immigrants along with a small indigenous Jewish population and a larger Arab community. There are Jews and Arabs. But the Jewish majority distinguishes itself between those from eastern Europe and those whose families originated in Arab countries. These communities are further divided based on the country, or even the village, their ancestors came from. The 20 per cent Arab minority also has Israeli citizenship, and many identify themselves as either Christian or Muslim. Israel is also home to a smattering of other minorities. The national population registry lists a person’s religion and nationality or ethnicity, among other details. Any Jew, no matter what his country of origin, is listed as a Jew. Arabs are marked as such and other minorities, such as Druse, are listed by their ethnicity.

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Photo: Gage Skidmore

Call for Parti Quebecois values charter to be watered down By Alexander Panetta, The Canadian Press

MONTREAL—A politely worded bit of prose from a prominent part-time writer has recommended that the Parti Quebecois values charter be softened in a second draft. The author is Jacques Parizeau, eminence grise of the Quebec sovereignty cause and hero to the movement’s grassroots.

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The former PQ premier, who organized the 1995 independence referendum that nearly took Quebec out of Confederation, offered his views in a column in Le Journal de Montreal. He appeared on the cover of the tabloid beside the all-caps headline: “IT GOES TOO FAR.’’ The headline font was, however, far louder than the column’s tone. In a carefully worded piece, Parizeau suggested the headwear ban be narrowed to apply only to people in positions of authority, like judges and police, which he says is what a provincial inquiry on the issue recommended a few years ago. “I wouldn’t go any further for the moment,’’ Parizeau wrote in the column. That approach happens to be closer to the position of the Coalition party, which holds the swing vote in the legislature. That would place Parizeau at odds with his old party should it choose to


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