The Anti-Defamation League has charged that Foreskin Man, a comic book written by the proponent of a controversial campaign to ban circumcision of males in California, is filled with anti-Semitic caricatures.  The second issue of the comic pits the blond and brawny Foreskin Man against Monster Mohel, a bearded black-hat and prayer shawl-wearing rabbi who appears to take diabolical glee in depriving infants of their foreskins, and who is aided by a gun-toting posse who dress like ultra-orthodox Jews. 

 

The Foreskin Man comic was written by Matthew Hess, who is one of the leaders of the “intactivists,” a group that appears bent on trying to use California’s often abused “ballot initiative” to enforce on others their beliefs that male circumcision, which is practiced by Jews and Moslems (and has been adopted for health reasons by many others), is painful, barbaric, and similar to the sort of female circumcision that is practiced in parts of Africa (medical experts disagree).  Hess, who is affiliated with the organization MGM (Male Genital Mutiliation) Bill that published the Foreskin Man comics and is also attempting to pass an anti-circumcision measure in Santa Monica, told the San Francisco Chronicle, “We’re not trying to be anti-Semitic, we’re trying to be pro-human rights.”

 

The dialogue in the Foreskin Man comic is laughably bad: “You (gasp) th-think you’ve won, Foreskin Man?  Jethro wants Glick c-circumcised.  I’ll just keep coming back until his Foreskin is m-mine,” cackles the diabolical Monster Mohel. It would be easy to dismiss the two published issues of the comic if it didn’t echo so directly the anti-Semitic images and themes that have fueled so much prejudice, hatred, and murder in Europe’s long, sad history of pogroms—and if panels from the comic were not all ready appearing on “white power” racist Websites.