"ISRAEL" BANNED FROM CANADIAN PASSPORTS

'Israel' banned from Canadian passports (JPost)
A federal policy that bans Canadians from listing Jerusalem, Israel, as their birthplace on their passports does not violate the Charter of Rights, the Federal Court of Appeal said Tuesday.

The ruling came in the context of a three-judge panel decision that the Canadian government was not required to allow 19-year-old Eliyahu Veffer, the son of a Toronto rabbi, to amend his passport to indicate that his birthplace, Jerusalem, was part of Israel.

"There is no discrimination here," the judges wrote in the decision released late last week.
Veffer still maintains the freedom to express his faith and his subjectively held views as to the status of Jerusalem; he is just not able to do so in his Canadian passport."

The Canadian National Post reported that the decision upheld a 2006 court ruling that Canada's passport policy was neither discriminatory nor a violation of religious freedom, despite the fact that Israel was the only exception to a practice of letting passport applicants list their birth country of choice when dealing with cities in disputed territories.

The federal government, citing the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over the control of Jerusalem, insisted that immigrants who were born there are issued passports without any reference to a country.

The appeal court wrote that Veffer's passport was no more than a travel document showing proof of citizenship and that "there is no evidence that the absence of a country name beside Jerusalem hinders his ability to travel in any way."

The ruling, which concludes that any damage to Veffer's religious freedom was "negligible," emphasized that Canada's refusal to recognize Jerusalem as part of Israel was consistent with the UN's stance on the issue. ....

During Veffer's court battle, the government issued a recall after it discovered that 146 passports that listed Jerusalem, Israel, had slipped through the cracks.

The policy took effect in 1976, but does not apply to people born before 1948, when Jerusalem was part of the territory then named Palestine.