Americans born in Jerusalem should be allowed to have Israel marked on their passports
The attorneys in the Zivotovsky case have appealed to Donald Trump to get the State Department to start listing Israel upon passports for people with US citizenship born in Jerusalem:
The attorneys in the landmark Jerusalem passport lawsuit are calling on Trump to instruct the State Department to list “Israel” as the birthplace of American citizens born in Jerusalem.Absolutely. It's time to start proving Jerusalem be a non-issue to getting a passport listing Israel as the country it's in. If Trump can prove he's capable of ensuring this, it'll be another gold star for his record.
Attorneys Nathan Lewin and Alyza D. Lewin represented Jerusalem-born Menachem Zivotofsky, whose parents first sued the State Department in 2003, after it wrote “Jerusalem” rather than “Israel” on his passport as his place of birth. In June 2015, the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that the president has exclusive power to decide which country to recognize as sovereign in a given territory.
In the wake of President Donald Trump’s Dec. 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the Lewins hope the previous U.S. policy will be reversed.
“Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky and his parents view the president’s announcement today as the formal recognition by the United States that Jerusalem, being the capital of Israel, is necessarily in Israel as surely as Tel Aviv and Haifa are in Israel,” the Lewins said in an exclusive statement to JNS.
“We will be requesting promptly that, in light of the president’s statement today, Menachem Zivotofsky be issued a United States passport designating his place of birth as ‘Israel,’” the statement continued. “The president’s formal recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel should also entitle every United States citizen born in Jerusalem to have his or her United States passport automatically show ‘Israel’ as his or her place of birth.”
Although the president announced U.S. recognition of Jerusalem, he did not immediately take any steps to implement it, such as relocating the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The passport question thus could emerge as the key test of how the president’s declaration will be implemented.
Labels: dhimmitude, islam, Israel, Jerusalem, State Dept, United States, White House
