European Jews are on alert after a political party in Norway voted to propose a bill in parliament to ban ritual circumcision of children under the age of 16.
The Progress Party vote came one day after the environment committee of Belgium’s Parliament of Wallonia voted in favor of banning ritual slaughter, which would pose a threat to both Jewish kosher slaughter and circumcision, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The supporters of the Norwegian bill contend circumcision constitutes mental and physical harm to children and a serious violation of children’s rights.
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The Progress Party is Norway’s third-largest party and the biggest coalition partner in Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s cabinet.
The director of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, immediately fired off a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett calling for the urgent cooperation with Jewish organizations in Europe to prevent the spread of anti-Jewish legislation.
“I have no doubt that the State of Israel – the state of the Jewish people – cannot remain indifferent to it, and I call on you to exert all your political influence in order to prevent the exclusion of Jews from life in various European countries,” the Rabbi wrote.
He vowed to “act in every way we can to fight this disgraceful bill.”
“There is no doubt that this is an anti-Jewish decision that is blatantly antisemitic, because the bill does not harm Muslims who are not obligated to circumcise their children as infants and can perform the procedure even at an older ages as the bill allows,” Margolin wrote.
The proposal will be introduced in Norway’s parliament for debate after a review by a committee.
According to the World Jewish Congress, there are about 1,200 people in Norway’s Jewish community.
San Francisco ban
In 2011 in San Francisco, a measure to criminalize circumcision reached the election ballot after garnering the required 12,000 signatures.
It was withdrawn from the ballot before the vote, however, by a superior court judge in California who ruled it violated a California law that makes regulating medical procedures a state, rather than a city, matter.
The ban would have made it illegal to “circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the whole or any part of the foreskin, testicles or penis of another person who has not attained the age of 18 years.”
Under the ban, any person who performed circumcisions would face a misdemeanor charge and a fine of up to $1,000 or serve a maximum of one year in prison.
The campaign for the ballot measure was led by San Francisco resident Lloyd Schofield, who created an advocacy group called the Prohibition of Genital Cutting of Male Minors.
“The foreskin is there for a reason,” Schofield told ABC News. “It’s not a birth defect. It serves an important function in a man’s life, and nobody has a right to perform unnecessary surgery on another human being.”
‘Intact America’
Nationally, a group called Intact America alone now has a 25,000 person mailing list, the Houston Chronicle reported last month.
The paper noted anti-circumcision activism became organized in 1986 when a California nurse named Marilyn Milos founded the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers.
The movement against circumcision has long faced charges of anti-Semitism, the Chronicle reported, noting controversial literature such as “Foreskin Man,” a 2011 comic series.
The comic featured an Aryan-looking superhero who rescues boys from a grinning Semitic caricature known as “Monster Mohel,” referring to the Jewish mohels who perform circumcisions.
A leader of the “inactivist” movement in Houston, Maurer, told the Chronicle he sees circumcision as a violation of the “right to physical integrity that begins at conception.”
“I don’t think tying down a baby by wrists and ankles and cutting his penis is right or humane or decent,” he said.
Since 2012, the American Academy of Pediatrics’ official position on circumcision has been that the benefits outweigh the risks.
The benefits are said to include decreased risk of HIV and HPV transmission.