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Sunday, May 6, 2012

Canada's Jews, Israel's Good Friends

Nadene Goldfoot
Canada is considered to be one of Israel's good friends,  with the government in Ottawa behind Netanyahu's Israeli government through thick and thin, like even when Obama's American administration was strained.

Israel's President Peres is flying to Canada and will speak about the Iranian issue of nuclear threat.  There are the changes in the Middle East to discuss as well, with her neighbors' rebellions in what is called the "Arab Spring" and the Muslim Brotherhood coming into power.

He'll promote the continued economic and scientific cooperation between the two countries and will be at the signing between the Royal Society of Canada and the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities in science and technology as well.

Quebec is predominantly a French-speaking province and has had several anti-Israel protests there. Most of the Jews in Quebec live in Montreal.  The Jewish population in Quebec has fallen to 93,000 from 120,000.   in a population in 2011 of 7,903,001.

I don't know where they went but I did meet some in my Ulpan in Haifa, Israel, becoming teachers of English like myself back in 1980.  It was exciting meeting English speakers there from all sorts of places like Canada, England and Australia.  There were some accents that I was hardly able to understand.

Other Jewish communities are in Ottawa and Toronto as well.  The Jewish population is only about 372,000 in Canada as of 2005; much smaller than in the USA of about 5 million.


Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec
http://www.israelnationalnews.com Peres Flies to Canada; Iran Top Issue
http://judaism.about.com/od/jewishhumor/f/jewry_canada.htm

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