Passport officials refused to list Israel as birthplace for Israeli-Canadian woman born in Israel
Employees at a Canadian passport office initially denied Anastasia the option to list Israel has her place of birth.
Imagine becoming a Canadian citizen—only to be told your birthplace can’t appear on your passport. That is the experience Anastasia, a Concordia University student, says she faced at a Canadian passport office in Montreal last week.
“I came to the office with all of my documents,” she recalls, “and everything seemed fine until she pointed out that she cannot write Israel on my passport next to my birth city, Kfar Saba.” When Anastasia asked why, the employee allegedly replied “because of the political conflict.”
Stunned, Anastasia pressed for clarification: “I asked her, okay, so if my birth country was any other country… you would say it’s okay? But only because it’s Israel, you cannot write Israel?” According to Anastasia, “she said yes.”
Israeli born woman is told by Canadian Passports employees that she cannot put Israel as the place of her birth on her passport due to political conflict. 🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/EmNxV25A8Q
— Scarlett Grace (@ScarlettGrace92) November 14, 2025
When she demanded to see a policy, another employee reportedly joined the conversation, claiming that “because Mark Carney declared a Palestinian state, some cities are declared as Palestine,” listing “Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Jerusalem.”
Yet, he added, for her case, “we’re just gonna write your city without Israel.” Her lawyer, Neil Oberman, immediately challenged the decision. “They must and they cannot not write Israel as your birth country… this is clear discrimination,” he told her, sending a formal letter demanding written explanations, training documentation, and policy disclosures.
Our client, a Canadian citizen, was told that her place of birth—Kfar Saba, Israel—could not appear on her passport “because of the political conflict.”
— Neil G. Oberman (@NeilOberman) November 13, 2025
No law supports this.
No regulation authorizes it.
No democracy should tolerate it.
Passports are not political documents.… pic.twitter.com/q5UERBeoVK
The confusion left Anastasia feeling singled out. “I started feeling like something was wrong with me… that Canada has a problem with the place I came from,” she says. “It felt like another continuation of what we see on our streets… on our campuses.”
This is not her first encounter with what she believes is bias linked to Israel. She recounts a currency exchange refusing to accept Israeli shekels, saying it was “against our policies… because of the political conflict.”
Anastasia Zorchinsky, a Canadian citizen born in central Israel, says a Canadian official told her she couldn't have her country of birth on her passport because of the "political conflict." https://t.co/NDptRjAoJv pic.twitter.com/lZBafYRhDR
— National Post (@nationalpost) November 16, 2025
UPDATE: After we conducted the interview, the National Post published an article reporting that, according to Jeffrey MacDonald, communications advisor for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, “(n)o changes have been made regarding the issuing of passports for individuals born in Israel,” suggesting that the issue was likely an error made by a frontline Service Canada officer.
Alexandra Lavoie
Quebec based Journalist
Alexa graduated with a degree in biology from Laval University. Throughout her many travels, she has seen political instability as well as corruption. While she witnessed social disorder on a daily basis, she has always been a defender of society’s most vulnerable. She’s been around the world several times, and now joins Rebel News to shed light on today’s biggest stories.
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