| News In Depth |

Birthright Restored

By Ari Z. Zivotofsky and Naomi Zivotofsky | November 4, 2020

Ari Zivotofsky’s 18-year battle finally ends with “Israel” listed on his son’s passport

Photos: Eli Cobin, Family archives

When the cover story of the June 10, 2015 Mishpacha declared: “A loss, but not a defeat,” we really still held onto the hope that after the US Supreme Court had ruled against us twice, our Jerusalem-born son Menachem’s passport would some day actually list his place of birth as “Israel.”

But standing on the windy hilltop in the ubiquitous passport application line outside the US Embassy in Jerusalem last week, we couldn’t believe our 18-year saga was finally over. With siyata d’Shmaya and the persistent hard work of some key people — including our indefatigable attorneys of Lewin & Lewin together with members of the Trump administration, particularly Ambassador David Friedman — Menachem, and countless others, will now have a country along with a city to claim as their place of birth.

As many Americans living in Israel know, any American citizen living overseas is at times in need of official US government documents. The three most common are a passport, a consular report of birth abroad (a “birth certificate”) and a consular report of death (a “death certificate”). For the latter two there is a space for “city” and “country” — but for a birth or death in Jerusalem, only Jerusalem was written and the country space was glaringly left blank. For passports too, a US citizen born in Jerusalem had no options but to simply have “Jerusalem” listed as the place of birth, as US policy has always been not to recognize any country as having sovereignty over Jerusalem. In general, passports of those born outside the US only have a space for one word as place of birth, which is supposed to be the country, not the city, of birth.

But in addition to feeling like a slap in the face for all those Jerusalem-born babies, this same policy permits those born anywhere in Israel who oppose Israel’s existence to remove “Israel,” and it also permits individuals born before 1948 to list “Palestine.” What this policy meant is that those who seek Israel’s destruction can “erase” Israel from their passport, but citizens born in Jerusalem who want to include Israel were forbidden from doing so.

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Comments (1)

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My Passport Fight // Rabbi Dr. Chaim Simons, Kiryat Arba, Israel
5 years ago
Reply

I was very happy to read that after an 18-year old battle, Ari Zivotofsky’s son’s passport gives his place of birth as Jerusalem, Israel, instead of Jerusalem with no country.
This reminded me of a similar fight I had in 1970 regarding the registration of my eldest daughter’s British birth certificate. At the time my family was among the Mitnachalei Hevron living in the Military Compound in Hebron. Since I have British citizenship, my daughter was automatically British. I went to the British Consulate in West Jerusalem (on Mount Zion) with the various documents and was given a form to complete. I wrote my place of residence as “Hebron, Israel.” The clerk there immediately crossed out the word Israel and said one must write “Hebron, Jordan.” Britain had recognized the area of Yehudah and Shomron as a part of Jordan.
I strongly objected to this. He then telephoned someone — I don’t know who — and said that he had a person who strongly objected to having “Hebron, Jordan” on his daughter’s birth certificate. They then agreed to write just Hebron.
Needless to add that the hospital of her birth, Shaare Zedek, was just written on her British birth certificate as “Jerusalem” without the addition of Israel.