BRUSSELS: No, Europe's cutting concern undiminished

The Jewish Daily Forward
October 9, 2015

Europe Council Reiterates Opposition to Circumcision

he Council of Europe refuted reports in Israeli media that it had canceled a resolution from 2013 that called nonmedical circumcision of boys a harmful violation of children’s rights.

The clarification Thursday on the position of the Council, a body for pan-European dialog that has no executive powers and is not part of the European Union, came following statements by Israeli politicians, Jewish activists and media suggesting the Council had reversed its position on the practice.

According to those statements, the change came in the passing on Sept. 30 by the Council’s Parliamentary Assembly of Resolution 2076 on “Freedom of religion and living together in a democratic society.”

Milah UK, a leading Jewish advocacy group supporting the practice, on Tuesday said in a statement that Resolution 2076 “cancels a previous motion that had cast into doubt the legality of religious circumcision.” Milah is the Hebrew-language name for the ritual circumcision of eight-day-old males. Muslims also circumcise their children.

The previous resolution referenced by Milah UK is Resolution 1952, which the assembly passed in 2013 and which lists milah along with female genital mutilation and calls both practices a harmful “violation of the physical integrity of children.”

But Nathalie Bargellini, a spokesperson for the Council’s Parliamentary Assembly, on Thursday told JTA that Resolution 2076 “does not cancel nor replace Resolution 1952.” She noted the more recent resolution references the older one.

Bargellini also said that Resolution 2076 “calls for strict conditions governing the exercise of this practice.” According to the new resolution, “circumcision should not be allowed ‘unless practiced by a person with the requisite training and skill, in appropriate medical and health conditions,’” Bargellini said.

Resolution 1952 carried no such recommendation for outlawing certain types of circumcision — a divisive issue in Europe for its relevance to immigration by Muslims and to children’s rights.

Though it is nonbinding, the 2013 resolution was controversial and was seen as significant because it was the first time that a prominent pan-European institution weighed in on the circumcision debate.

Earlier story

JERUSALEM: Jews, Muslims unite to undo Europe's cutting caution

The Jerusalem Post
October 1, 2015

Council of Europe cancels anti-circumcision measure after joint Jewish-Muslim effort

Jewish and Muslim MKs united over past two years to advocate for reversal of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe resolution calling to ban ritual circumcision of children.
by Lahav Harkov

Two years of efforts by the Knesset to combat a resolution by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recommending that countries ban [no, age-restrict] ritual circumcision bore fruit Thursday, when it was reversed via a resolution on religious freedoms. Passed with 73 in favor and six opposed, the resolution recommends that PACE member states “seek reasonable accommodations with a view to guaranteeing equality that is effective, and not merely formal, in the right to freedom of religion.”

It gives general guidelines to promote coexistence and fight hate speech, allowing religious communities to practice their faith, manage welfare institutions and express their opinions.
The resolution refers specifically to Islamophobia, but not to anti-Semitism.

The council recommended that states require circumcisions to be performed by people trained to do so, in appropriate medical and health conditions, and that parents be informed of any medical risk to their child.

The resolution also addresses ritual slaughter, stating that PACE is not convinced it should be banned, and recommends following the French or German model of protecting animals from unnecessary suffering while respecting religious freedom.

MK Esawi Frej (Meretz), who represented the Knesset at the vote, called the decision a victory for common sense.

“The argument about whether to circumcise is legitimate, but opponents of the ancient ritual should fight through education and public relations and not try to force their opinions through legislation,” Frej said. [While those who cut children force their opinions with a knife.]

In October 2013, PACE’s Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development Committee approved a resolution by German rapporteur Marlene Rupperecht stating that ritual circumcision, in addition to piercings, tattoos, plastic surgery, medical intervention in cases of possibly transgender children and female genital mutilation, violates children’s right to protect their physical integrity. [The words "protect their" are not in the resolution. Obviously small children can not protect their own integrity.]

It also recommended that laws be passed “to ensure that certain operations and practices will not be carried out before a child is old enough to be consulted.” Jews perform ritual circumcision on boys when they are eight days old, and Muslims do so at the age of 13.
PACE resolutions are non-binding, but are taken seriously by member states.

Since the resolution passed, the Knesset, under Speaker Yuli Edelstein’s leadership and the guidance of Knesset Diplomatic Advisor Oded Ben-Hur, has sent delegations of MKs, Jewish and Muslim, to PACE and to countries from Azerbaijan in the East to Paris in the West, to enlist their European colleagues from other countries in the battle against the decision and other initiatives to ban ritual circumcision. MKs advocated for ritual circumcision to be dealt with as a matter of religious freedom, as opposed to children’s rights, moving it to PACE’s Culture, Science Education and Media Committee, which discusses religious issues, among others.
...

WASHINGTON: US Envoy at work defending circumcision

Jewish Daily Forward
July 8, 2014

Anti-Semitism Envoy Wades Into Europe Circumcision Wars

Ira Forman Uses Bully Pulpit To Defend Rite
by Ron Kampeas

Washington - The Obama administration's anti-Semitism monitor has added an issue to his office's portfolio: defending circumcision in Europe.

Circumcision has become a top focus for Ira Forman, the State Department's special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. He has been using the pulpit his office provides to warn European governments that moves to ban ritual circumcision could lead to the demise of their countries' Jewish communities.
[There are no moves to ban it, only defer it.]
"Because circumcision is essentially universal among Jews, this can shut down a community, especially a small vulnerable community," Forman said.
[That does not follow.]

No European country has outright banned the practice, but there is increasing pressure to do so, and some countries have imposed restrictions such as requiring medical supervision. Forman is the State Department's third anti-Semitism monitor. While he has maintained his predecessors' focus on anti-Semitic acts and rhetoric worldwide, he said that protecting circumcision has become urgent because calls for bans are gaining legitimacy, particularly in Northern Europe.

In the past six months, Forman has raised the issue in meetings with ambassadors to Washington from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. He says he plans to raise it with envoys from other Northern European countries, where pressures to ban circumcision are most acute.

He also has asked the relevant desks at the State Department to have U.S. diplomats raise the issue in their meetings in their host countries.

Forman, who is Jewish, contrasted efforts to prohibit circumcision with bans on ritual animal slaughter - in place in some countries for decades - which at least have workarounds, for instance by importing frozen kosher meat.

"Circumcision, if you ban it, you have three choices: You do it underground illegally, you take a little 8-day-old baby across state lines - and if you have contiguous states [with bans], doing that becomes harder and harder - or three, you emigrate," he said.

[He left off "four, you stop doing it."]

A comprehensive 2012 survey of European Jews by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights found substantial majorities of Jews classifying a hypothetical ban on circumcision as a "big problem."

"I will wait for the developments concerning a statutory regulation on the Brit Mila," the survey quoted a German respondent as saying, using the Hebrew phrase for ritual circumcision. "This will be crucial for my decision on whether or not to leave Germany."

Leaders of Jewish communities in countries that are contending with public pressure to ban the practice similarly warn that such a move could spur an exodus of Jews. "I have said that a country which saved the Jews during the Second World War, if they would establish any law against circumcision, they would have done what Hitler wanted to do," said Rabbi Bent Lexner, chief rabbi to Denmark's Jewish community of 7,500.

European officials say their countries have instituted protections for circumcision in response to public pressures.

"A ban on circumcision is not in question for the Norwegian government," Frode Overland Andersen, a spokesman for his country's Foreign Ministry, told JTA. German and Danish officials have issued similar assurances.

Jewish communal officials appreciate the assurances that circumcision will not be banned. Nonetheless, Jewish communal officials warn that the danger of circumcision bans in Europe has not substantially diminished.

"The trend is really moving against us in one considerable way, and that's in terms of general European public opinion in Northern and Western Europe, particularly Scandinavia," said Rabbi Andrew Baker, the American Jewish Committee's director of international Jewish affairs.

Calls to ban circumcision gained momentum after the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed a resolution last October that called for a public debate on the "rights of children to protection against violations of their physical integrity." It lumped male circumcision with female genital mutilation and corporal punishment.

The assembly, however, lacks power. In April, the council's leadership advised members that male circumcision was "by no means comparable" to female genital mutilation and recommended against further attempts to target the practice.

Nonetheless, children's ombudsmen in a number of Northern European countries have called in recent years for restrictions on the practice, as have medical professionals' groups. Jewish leaders say that as Northern Europe becomes increasingly secularized, its populace tends to place more value on freedom from religious coercion than on freedom to practice religion.

"These are post-religious and post-ritual countries," said Rabbi Michael Melchior, the Israel-based chief rabbi to Norway's 800 Jews. "And the vast majority of the population don't have a clue what ritual is. They see ritual in general as something which belongs to some dark evil - they have medieval conceptions [of rituals] which have nothing to do with modern society."

In one way, some Scandinavian governments have nodded toward circumcision opponents by including in their laws requirements that circumcision take place under medical supervision. Norway's parliament passed such a law last month. Norwegian Jewish leaders applauded the measure because it allowed the rite to be carried out under a physician's supervision.

In Sweden, said Lena Posner-Korosi, president of the country's 20,000-strong Jewish community, circumcision is permitted until two months, which effectively shuts out the Muslim community, in which boys are often circumcised as toddlers.

Anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe helps drive the anti-circumcision clamor, Jewish communal leaders say. If anything, sensitivities in Northern Europe about the 20th-century record on Jews are what has led governments to protect circumcision.

"One of the important parliamentarians told me it is convenient for us to put the Jews at the front of this issue," Melchior said. "Because in the public in Norway still, it is much more difficult to go out against the Jews than the Muslims."

Jewish officials said that anti-Semitism, while a concern in other areas, is not a factor in the debate, although Jewish stereotypes have emerged in its wake. When pro-circumcision activists in Germany cited American studies showing that the practice was practically harmless and had possible medical benefits, opponents suggested that American Jewish doctors had skewed the studies.
[Some obscure opponents perhaps, but the main opposition case was the benefits are exaggerated or bogus.]

The key to preserving circumcision, according to Ervin Kohn, president of Norway's Jewish community, is lobbying the political class, which is sensitive to international image.

"For most of the Norwegian people it is strange, so they believe all sorts of things and don't know too much and are easily impressionable," he said, regarding views on circumcision. "Those who know are the politicians - they made the right decision."

Jewish communal leaders in the Scandinavian countries said that blunt intervention from abroad could backfire, noting the hackles that were raised when Israel's government issued dire warnings against banning circumcision after last year's Council of Europe vote.

However, they welcome Forman's more subtle overtures, saying that the Obama administration's signaling of its interest in ensuring a future for European Jewish communities has proven salutary.

"I'm still on a high from presenting President Obama to the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah," said Posner-Korosi, describing a visit to Stockholm last year during which Obama also honored Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who risked his life to save tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews. "It conveyed such a strong message, not just about Raoul Wallenberg but about anti-Semitism, about recognizing minorities."

Looking out for minorities is the point, Forman said.
[The minority at risk here is boy babies with no voice or choice.]

"Our priority is to make sure these communities don't go out of existence," he said. "It would be a tragedy not just for the communities. It would be a tragedy for Europe, for these cultures."
[Does Judaism really stand or fall on infant male genital cutting...?]

JERUSALEM: Knesset to make pro-circumcision film

Jerusalem Post
January 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.

BERLIN: Circumcised men support Council of Europe resolution

Mogis e.V
January 16, 2014

PACE: Open Letter regarding Motion for Resolution | Doc. 13364

Dear Members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe!

We address you as representatives of men who have been negatively affected by foreskin amputation in childhood.

On January 27th you will be deciding whether to further discuss a resolution that seems to be intended as a reaction to your earlier resolution 1952 “Children’s rights to bodily integrity”, accepted on Oct 1st, 2013. The passed resolution argued, amongst other issues, for recognition of “circumcision” of boys to be assessed as a violation of the child’s right to bodily integrity. It also urged the member states to define medical minimum standards for “circumcisions” and called for a discussion about legal solutions that make the affected’s ability to consent a prerequisite for such surgery.

PACE Resolution 1952/2013 was developed over the course of 15 months, and it appears that a plan may be in the works to toss it out it with haste, under a considerable amount of outside pressure.

First and foremost, it needs to be stated that foreskin amputation is a surgical procedure, in which a functional body part is irreversibly removed. This carries with it the compelling loss of numerous functions and has life-long consequences; not to mention the risks involved in the surgery itself, which also depend on the circumstances of the operation as well as on the person performing it. Therefore, the discussion of legal regulation must be engaged primarily from a human- and children’s-rights point of view, supported with evidence- and observation-based medical expertise.
The new resolution presented to you states that “Claims that circumcision harms the health and body of young boys do not rest on scientific evidence.” This astonishing claim is refuted by declarations from all European paediatric organizations, the latest being the paper authored by 38 prominent paediatricians from 16 countries in March 2013: \url{https://tinyurl.com/european-circumcision-study} .

It comes to the following conclusion: “There is growing consensus among physicians, including those in the United States, that physicians should discourage parents from circumcising their healthy infant boys because nontherapeutic circumcision of underage boys in Western societies has no compelling health benefits, causes postoperative pain, can have serious long-term consequences, constitutes a violation of the United Nations’ Declaration of the Rights of the Child, and conflicts with the Hippocratic oath: primum non nocere: First, do no harm.”

We, the negatively affected, know the described consequences first-hand. At the age at which a foreskin-amputation typically is performed, no boy can be properly educated about the possible life-long consequences of the removal of an average of 50% of the penile skin and up to 70% of its erogenous tissue, since these only come into effect at an age of sexual maturity.

These consequences include: – the destruction of the natural physiology of the penis, consisting of inner and outer tissue: the highly sensitive inner tissue is largely removed (foreskin) along with much of the outer skin, whilst the distal remainder (glans) is now bereft of is natural protection and left to dry out, which in the long-term invariably causes keratinization of the mucosa and thereby desensitizes the glans. – loss of the natural gliding mechanism of the penile skin, unique to the penis, which reduces comfort in intercourse and can lead to pain for the partner due to increased friction. – drastic loss of sexual sensitivity: the foreskin comprises far more nerve endings then the glans, as well as highly sensitive tactile corpuscles that the glans lacks. – painless masturbation is often impossible without additives (there are already lubricating creams, gels and oils for circumcised penises being marketed).

Additionally, we experience several psychological long-term effects, such as perceived loss of control over our own body, inferiority complexes, inability to engage in relationships, avoidance of sexual relations, shame and depression over having been genitally altered.

With these possible consequences, we, the negatively affected, are left completely alone in adulthood. In statistics that show complications, only those cases are included that have a temporally immediate connection to the surgery – the effects later in life, however, are not recorded. Due to a lack of awareness for the problems, many affected men do not even realize the cause of their suffering – not to mention the lack of qualified medical and psychological assistance.

Considering the wide range of possible risks and later effects of foreskin amputation mentioned here, the decision about this kind of surgery has to be the exclusive right of the affected person, who must bear said consequences for the rest of his life. This implies a consent requirement of age of maturity, including thorough education about the risks and consequences.

We know that you, the members of the Assembly, are bound only to your own conscience. We appeal to your responsibility toward the protection of society’s weakest members – who cannot defend or organize themselves. Please muster the courage to proceed as do the prestigious European paediatric organizations, the child ombudspersons of the Nordic countries and many women’s- and human-rights groups:
Judge and decide from the perspective of the child – it is about his body and his right to live with the entire body he was born with.

---

Earlier, it was announced that Ronald Goldman, Executive Director of the Boston-based Circumcision Resource Center, has been invited to participate in an interdisciplinary dialogue about circumcision in France on January 28.

Earlier story

STRASBOURG: Council of Europe condemns violatons of children's physical integrity

Parliamentary Assembly, Council of Europe (PACE)
June 26, 2013

PACE committee condemns violations of the physical integrity of children

Strasbourg, 27.06.2013 - "Some parents, often with the best of intentions, give their consent to medically unjustified operations or interventions, which may have serious consequences for the physical integrity of their children, some of whom suffer for the rest of their lives," said Marlene Rupprecht (Germany, SOC), whose report was today adopted by the PACE Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development.

The practices condemned by Ms Rupprecht include the circumcision of young boys for religious reasons, female genital mutilation in some cultures, medical interventions in the case of intersexual children, and the submission to or coercion of children into piercings, tattoos or plastic surgery.

If circumcision seems to be indicated for medical reasons, its necessity should be closely examined on a case-by-case basis; in the religious context, families should be systematically made aware of the risks of the procedure and be provided with full information on the alternatives, the report says.

The committee found that female genital mutilation, which evidently has no medical benefit whatsoever but is a procedure intended to control the sexual behaviour of girls and women throughout their lives, must be officially prohibited through legislation, backed by effective measures and sanctions to eradicate the practice and make the public aware of the problem.

The report recommends various steps that can be taken to effectively protect children, in particular filling the most evident legal loopholes (for example, by prescribing that only qualified medical staff be allowed to undertake circumcisions, in sterile conditions), educating families so that they understand the risks involved in certain operations, and, in the longer term, changing deeply rooted and unquestioned religious and cultural practices that can very often be harmful to children.

This issue is to be debated at the next plenary session of the PACE in Strasbourg (30 September-4 October 2013).