Boys and girls! Meet:
"Captain Israel" is a comic book illustrated and written by Arlen Schumer. Footing the bill for Captain Israel's production is Stand With Us, an Israeli advocacy group.
Much less fun than Captain Israel is MGMbill.org. Does MGM stand for top-notch movie entertainment? Yes!
But not in this case. Here it stands for Male Genital Mutilation. The MGMbill.org people (ostensibly) want to put an end to circumcision. They even managed to get onto San Francisco's November ballot a measure to make circumcision illegal. (This past Thursday, though, a San Francisco county superior court judge removed that measure from the ballot, reasoning that while the state can decide such matters, individual cities cannot.)
The president of MGMbill.org is Matthew Hess. Matthew Hess created his own superhero. Meet:
Shown here wielding a (magic?) 8-ball, Foreskin Man appears to also be battling a cold sore on his lip. Maybe he has herpes. Either way, nothing will stop him from fighting such evil-doers as
and
Other characters in the "Foreskin Man" comic book series include:
and
and who could ever forget
That's right: Jethro Sacks and Vulva Girl.
Could I make this stuff up?
As you might expect, Captain Israel has issues with Foreskin Man. And here's the proof:
This was drawn and written by Arlen Schumer. I met Schumer during my adventures at Comic-Con. In the audience of our panel discussion, he afterwards politely came up to me and proffered his eight-page, lavishly illustrated comic book before quietly going on his way.
The next day, having read the fine print inside "Captain Israel," I googled Schumer's name, and from there learned about MGMbill.org, the "intactivists" out there vigilantly fighting for the rights of infant boys to keep their foreskins, and, of course, the handsomely blonde Foreskin Man, who might as well have a swastika on his chest instead of the Batmanish-type thing he's now sporting.
As I hope is already obvious, what fuels MGMbill.org is good old-fashioned anti-Semitism.
I was never a big fan of Captain America. I just can't get excited about what amounts to Captain Geopolitical Entity. And my first thought upon seeing Captain Israel was that a comic book from Bizzaro World had accidentally fallen into ours.
Without in any way referencing to the whole Jewish-Palestinian issue, I would just like to say, on behalf of the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis in WWII: Go, Captain Israel, go.
Follow John Shore on Twitter: www.twitter.com/johnshore
'Foreskin Man': Proof that anti-circumcision activists are anti ...
Lisa Derrick: 'Foreskin Man' Comic Book Attacks Circumcision
Support Anti-Circumcision Bill With Anti-Semitic Hero 'Foreskin Man'
What exactly is it that is supposedly anti-semitic? The bad guy is Jewish, and particularly gruesome. But that in itself isn't anti-semitic. That's just the point of comics, the good and the bad are exaggerated. He's the bad guy because he wants to cut parts off of the baby's penis and suck on it, NOT because he's Jewish. There also isn't anything that implies in the comic that all Jews are like this. (So there's no bigotry either.) Just as in the first book nothing implied that ALL doctors are horrendous slobbering monsters. The boy's mother is Jewish, and so opposed to circumcision that she tells Foreskin Man to take the baby to another woman. This is not anti-Semitism, this is challenging forced body modification.
I think it traumatizes a lot of young men, particularly if it *doesn't* at least provide some sense of tribal membership, no pun intended. I'm not sanguine about banning the religious practice, (I think it'd be better if Judaism itself examined the issue) but the routine procedure that parents are pressured into is *not* even about that.
Certainly any claimed 'health benefits' would be better served by putting that money into neonatal care and nutrition than this practice, which is dubious at best.
How is being against the ritualistic practice of severing the flesh of an infant as an offering to a Diety anti-semitism?
It's the same or similar idea behind animal sacrifice, of offering a flesh sacrifice to a god, the brit is * A god commanding his followers, to severe the flesh at the end of an infant boys penis as a sacrifice to god to honor the covenant between man and that god*
Think about that for second. How does that *not* sound like some cult-like practice? I'm half jewish, I've been to these rituals, they put the baby on a table or alter and do this to him. seriously I watched one and thought, wow, replace that baby with a chicken and you can see the objectivity.
In fact some Jews perform the ritual "Kapparot." which is a custom in which the sins of a person are symbolically transferred to a fowl. The fowl is held above the person's head and swung in a circle three times while certain words are spoken.
These are arcane religious cult-like rituals, and people shouldn't be allowed to hide behind religion as a rationale for harming infants or animals.
'transfer of sins' . . .
Granted it's borderline offensive, but it's still pretty funny.
The Hebrew Hammer was way better.
The comic parody, Smegna Man Gets Circumcised, (published at Smegmaman.com) is a lot funnier; has a great plot; and passes along sound information about the medical and cosmetic benefits of the procedure– and, in the end, the villains meet a very appropriate end.
They are documented as so minimal that the APA cannot recommend routine circumcision
"Male infant circumcision is by far the most widely practiced surgery in the world"
Nope, it's actual cataract and lens surgery and Inguinal hernia surgery. btw, only 33% of world infants get circumcised, most of the world is intact.
Please find proper medical information. everything you have sited is inaccurate. routine circumcision is *a strictly cosmetic procedure, with no health benefits related to it's routine practice*
I do agree with this, which is why I'm against subjecting infants to this before he's able to make a choice.
You have not made it obvious in the slightest. Is it right to subject a helpless infant to painful and unnecessary surgery? What if that surgery is performed to brand him with a religion that he has not accepted?
It may be "sacred" to some Jewish people, but the boy whose genitals are being crushed and ripped isn't undergoing a spiritually transcending experience - he's either screaming his lungs out or unable to make any noise because of the incredible pain.
Have you ever witnessed a circumcision? I've seen a few in person. The first step is always to rip the foreskin from the glans, to which it is fused at birth. The foreskin is then forced onto a bell. In a "free-hand" circumcision it may be cut, but the more popular clamp now literally rips the foreskin from the penis. In Jewish ritual, the brit periah traditionally has the rabbi tear the remaining skin off with his fingernails, followed by the metzizah. You can see a video of a typical hospital circumcision here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDuDhkiDdns&list=FL3YGrxcJdXFc&index=16
Is opposing infant circumcision anti-Semitic? By equating the two, I would argue that you are insulting the Jewish religion. Subjecting a child to this painful surgery is absolutely wrong, however, there is much more to the Jewish religion than this obscene and archaic act. Jews have abolished other rituals like animal sacrifice; it's time to do away with infant circumcision as well. If a Jew wants to express his dedication to his faith, then why not defer the circumcision until he is an adult? Would not that be far more spiritually significant than forcing it on a helpless infant?
It was not established with Abraham, who lived around 2000BCE. It did not become a Jewish ritual until 500BCE.
It's like animal sacrifice, except instead of sacrificing an animal to god, you severe the flesh of the end of a babies penis.
It's freaking nutty, and cult-ish.
There are no benefits of circumcision, only the disadvantages of an insensitive and damaged penis.