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The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, an international organization whose resolutions are non-binding but heavily influence the European Unions, is voting Tuesday on defining ritual circumcision as a “clear human rights violation.”

A general report prepared for the Council reviewed female genital mutilation and added, “Circumcision applied to young boys clearly is a human rights violation against children.”


A German legislator, Marlene Rupprecht, who also is active on the Council’s Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development, presented the “Children’s Right to Physical Integrity” report.

Last week, Sweden politicians and physicians called for a ban on ritual circumcision of all boys under the age of 18.

“Circumcision without medical grounds can only be performed if a boy is of an age and maturity required to understand the information and consent to the surgery,” according to a statement.

The concept of a baby having “the right to choose” apparently applies only to circumcision, one of the most sacred Jewish rites. There have been no protests of the violation of their rights by parents who do not allow them to damage themselves by watching watch pornographic or violent movies and do not let them harm their bodies with junk food.

“This is the first time in recent memory that aggressive political attacks on milah have found a legitimate vehicle at the European level,” Milah UK, a British nongovernmental organization working to defend Jewish circumcision of boys, told JTA in a statement on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe vote.

While the report will remain nonbinding even if passed, “it does clearly demonstrate that the sustained campaign to conflate the deplorable practice of female genital mutilation with milah is gaining traction at the highest levels,” according to Milah UK.

The JTA contributed to this report.



  1. i was one who wasn't circumcised back in 1952 …. nor was my brother in 1949 but at 40 or so years old, it became a serious problem that the skin began to grow closed on both of us … i guarantee you it is worse to have that done at 40 and created serious health problems … so get off your high horses about what folks should or should not do… most physicians are not jewish yet advise their patients to do the right thing which is to circumcise the baby rather than the adult

  2. Max, Since G-d created us the way we should be, we shouldn't perform any surgery, even if it's life-saving because, after all, maybe G-d decided it's our time to die, no? We should also quit those silly vaccination and medical treatment habits, because he is also the creator of the bacteria and viruses. It's awfully arrogant of us to feel we are worthier than his other creatures, n'est-ce pas? Ever heard of the concept of Tikkun Olam? Currently, South Africa is importing Rabbis to teach their doctors how to circumcise the boys to get a higher survival rate in male babies and, on average, a circumcised man lives 10 years longer than a man who isn't. That's what has been actually proven. Now, if you think that this 5000 years old tradition practiced by all North African and Middle Eastern people is so bad, don't do it to your sons. No one is forcing you. I just hope you won't have to deal with a teenager with phimosis, because it's a lot more painful when the nerve endings have matured.

  3. Circumscusion has proven to be healthy for me. If those UN activists are against healthy circumscion, then they should not be circunsized and nor should their sons so they life expectancy is shorten- either way, they are circumsized by life expectancy or their penis size bit women tell me they find more please from circumsized men so obviously they have a problem in their inability.

  4. Marlene Rupprecht is worth a closer look I think. She is responsible for childrens issues in the German Socialdemocratic party the SPD, previously a teacher in a school for educationally subnormal children, was one of the main circumcision opponents in the Bundestag, the German parlament. Here is what she said in an article of “Die Zeit Online”: “I don’t want that Germany will be remembered in history as the country that legalized physical injury to defenseless children because of some scriptural passages and traditions some thousand years old. Respecting life – this is what we should have learned from the Nazi era!” She is 65 and sees herself as very religious. “G’d made us perfect, he doesn’t want us to cut something away. As especially the Jews were a people with a learning potential they should be careful not to harden too much in the diaspora sticking to traditions outdated a long time ago.” She said she was reluctant to use force, it would be better the jewish parents would see that by themselves. She would do everything to revive Jewish life in Germany. But she was cross that Jewish circles used the “Shoah club and all that” and that then everybody gave in. She had the deepest respect for the Jewish and the Muslim religion in Germany “but we are not a religious state. Here the Grundgesetz, the Constitutional law is in force. No religion stands above it.”
    For those who read German here is the link:

  5. How do you know what your lifetime health and sexual history would have been like had you not been circumcised??
    Life expectancy at birth in the USA is one of the very worst of any western nation. Major factors at play are drug overdoses and murder. The Japanese have the longest life expectancy, and seldom circumcise.
    Contemporary mores humour women who have a number of sexual partners between the time they leave for college, and when they settle down in their 20s with one man. American universities have many foreign students. Hence it is not hard for American women to have college flings with both kinds of men. Some women who have done this have used social media to share that they prefer intact.

  6. I never heard of the “Parliamentary
    Assembly of the Council of Europe” before this brouhaha. I bet it is, in effect, an NGO.

    “…an international organization whose
    resolutions are non-binding but heavily influence the European Unions [sic]”It sounds like a large committee filled with well-educated people with opinions and goals, a sandbox where Scandinavian idealists can play. I bet the European heavyweights, France, Germany and the UK, pay it little mind.

  7. @Shemayah Shiloh Phillips: It is extremely unlikely that states or Congress will ever pass a law saying anything about Jewish or Moslem ritual circumcision, other than it must be performed by well trained persons.
    That said, our sexual and child rearing cultures are evolving in such a way that the circumcision of gentile boys will die out, because parents will see it as cruel and sexually damaging. This will create a serious dilemma for secular and progressive Jewish parents. “Uncircumcised Jew” is already not an oxymoron in Europe and Latin America, will acquire traction in the USA and Canada, and is an emerging category even in Israel, where many Jews are very secular.

  8. @David Neubart : No one defends Moslem barbarity, especially honour killings. The Nordic defense of the natural penis is aimed at their growing Islamic minorities, with their very small Jewish communities being “collateral damage”.

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