And the circumcision saga continues. Earlier this week, Jena Troutman of Santa Monica withdrew a proposal to ban circumcision in her city following an outburst of anti-Semitic themes and imagery around the issue, including a comic book called “Foreskin Man” which features the villain, “Monster Mohel.” Under her ban, which needed more than 6,000 signatures to appear on Santa Monica’s November 2012 ballot, circumcising a child would have become a misdemeanor crime punishable with a $1,000 fine or one year in jail. A similar measure will be on San Francisco’s November 2011 ballot.
Monster Mohel |
The Foreskin Man online comic series, created by the “intactivist” group MGMBill.org – the organization largely responsible for the campaign to ban circumcision through the ballot box, is anti-Semitic, to say the least. The series portrays an evil-looking Orthodox Jew as the “Monster Mohel”; in many of the images the mohel’s eyes have no pupils and his jaw is clenched with snarling teeth. In one scene, the mohel and two other Jewish men enter a room with guns, asking “Where is the child,” only to then wave scissors over the screaming baby lying on a pool table.
And if that’s not enough, the “Monster Mohel” character description is horrifying: “Nothing excites Monster Mohel more than cutting into the infantile penile flesh of an eight day old boy,” it reads. Meanwhile, the comic’s hero, Foreskin Man, is buff and blond. “You see this Aryan blond attacking this ugly Jew,” said Dr. Martin Gilboa, a San Diego pediatrician and trained mohel. “That comic book could have been taken right out of the Nazi archives.”
Simply put, the campaign to end circumcision has gone too far. What started for many as a measure to end what they see as genital mutilation has turned into a show of anti-Semitism. It’s a timely reminder of the anti-Semitic sentiment that still exists today, even in a country such as the United States.
