Jerusalem PostJanuary 20, 2014
Knesset producing film to fight anti-circumcision laws
by Lahav Harkov & Sam Sokol (with Herb Keinon)
The Knesset is producing a short pro-circumcision documentary, to be
filmed this week and shown in a committee of the Parliamentary Assembly
of the Council of Europe next week.
On Monday, MK Nachman Shai (Labor) will represent Israel in the PACE
Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development, where
he plans to screen the film.
German ex-MP Marlene Rupprecht, who pushed through a motion limiting
ritual circumcision last year, invited four doctors to the committee.
She also invited filmmaker Victor Schonfeld to present It’s a Boy, an
anti-circumcision documentary he had produced.
“It’s a Boy is very bad for the Jewish tradition. Victor Schonfeld is a known anti-Zionist,” Shai said.
[And the relevance of that is...] “We demand equal time for our views.”
Shai received approval from Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein on Monday
to hire a production company that will interview experts on the topic of
circumcision.
The seven- to eight-minute short will also feature Israeli doctors
who traveled to Africa to circumcise men in an effort to fight AIDS.
“Maybe we’ll call our film ‘It’s a Circumcised Boy,’” Shai quipped.
The Knesset plans to reuse the film to explain the importance of not
outlawing ritual circumcision during lawmakers’ visits to Europe and
other places around the world.
Meanwhile, Thorbjørn Jagland, secretary-general of the Council of
Europe, during a meeting with Muslim and Jewish clerics on Monday
slammed the 2013 resolution by his organization’s legislative arm
expressing opposition to ritual circumcision.
The council is a pan-European intergovernmental organization of 47
member states that is not affiliated with the European Union, and which
cannot pass binding laws.
Speaking with a delegation of rabbis and imams that the New York
based Foundation For Ethnic Understanding organized, Jagland asserted
that “starting to limit the rights of minorities is a very dangerous
avenue to pursue.
“Whenever we have limited their rights, it has always led to
catastrophe,” he told the delegation, that included Said Aalla, the
former imam of Strasbourg, where COE is headquartered, as well as René
Gutman, the city’s chief rabbi.
FFEU president Rabbi Marc Schneier praised Jagland, and said he
believed that the battle for ritual circumcision was “not an issue which
affects only Jews or only Muslims, but truly hurts the traditions of a
large percentage of the peoples of faith both here in Europe and around
the world.”
“What the secretary-general basically said is that this is a moot
discussion because they can discuss and debate and deliberate all that
they want but there is no way that the Council of Europe is ever going
to accept such a resolution or proclamation.
It is just not going to happen,” Schneier told the Post. “If we were
to ban circumcision then Muslims and Jews would no longer be able to
continue living in Europe.”
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed a
resolution in October calling male ritual circumcision a “violation of
the physical integrity of children” and urging the organization’s member
states to “initiate a public debate, including intercultural and
interreligious dialogue, aimed at reaching a large consensus on the
rights of children to protection against violations of their physical
integrity according to human rights standards.”
Jewish organizations reacted harshly, with the leaders of some
European communities deeming the measure to be deeply anti-Semitic.
Israel and Turkey, both COE member states, issued denunciations. Israel
has prepared a text for a counter-resolution, which it hopes to pass
through PACE.
This is not the first time that the COE secretary-general has
denounced the PACE resolution. In November, Jagland told a gathering of
European rabbis in Berlin that “in no way does the Council of Europe
want to ban the practice of male circumcision.”
“Female genital mutilation violates human rights. Male circumcision
does not. That is my position. That is the position of the Council of
Europe,” he said.
While the PACE resolution has no legal standing, such resolutions
exert a powerful moral influence in Europe, and the secretary-general’s
statements asserting the body’s opposition to the concepts embodied in
the resolution can be seen as an effort to change the prevailing
discourse surrounding circumcision.
European Jewish activists believe that Jagland’s statements are part
of a battle to set the moral agenda in Europe on issues of religious
freedom, and that the resolution, non-binding as it is, was the opening
salvo of an effort to turn local initiatives against circumcision into a
continent-wide moral crusade against the practice.
Speaking with The Jerusalem Post on Monday, Conference of European
Rabbis chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt expressed his concern that PACE
“has not yet rescinded its position against circumcision,” but expressed
hope that during next week’s debate “the members of PACE will reflect
on their infringement of religious freedom, which is a fundamental value
of the Council.”
Maren Lambrecht, a COE official, confirmed to the Post that it is
procedurally impossible to cancel a previously passed resolution, but
indicated that a special panel will examine the topic next week and that
several medical experts and religious leaders will attend and present
their views on the matter. While there will not be a formal decision
taken at the end of this meeting, she said, the discussion is necessary
due to the “harsh international debate” engendered by the 2013
resolution, among other reasons.
“What it could lead to is that some of the people who might be
interested in preparing a new text would listen to some of the debates
next week, and maybe this could influence what they are going to write
in a new report,” Lambrecht said.
Despite news reports, she said, “there will not be a discussion at
this meeting on the [Israeli] counterproposal” during the session.
