In a diary several months ago, I made a joking observation that the problem in the I/P conflict is that the only thing Jews and Muslims can agree on is circumcision. While I was indeed joking, it seems reality has yet again lapped satire.
From Yediot Ahronot's English site
A delegation of five Muslim doctors from Senegal arrived in Israel this week in order to participate in a joint workshop with Israeli doctors at Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center in Jerusalem.
The purpose of the visit was to set up a joint mission of doctors that can help the war on AIDS in Africa.
The doctors came to Hadassah to learn special techniques used in circumcision and practiced in both Judaism and Islam, with the intention of assisting in such procedures in Africa.
It seems that Israeli surgeons learned how to quickly perform large numbers of circumcisions in a fairly speedy manner in the early 1990's.
Inon Schenker, an AIDS prevention specialist, pulled out a medical logbook from a shelf and opened it to a page filled with handwritten entries.
The notations, from 1993, recorded ritual circumcisions performed on Jewish men from the former Soviet Union at the height of the wave of Immigration to Israel from Russia and neighboring republics.
The entries showed 32 circumcisions by a single doctor in a day's work, an assembly-line rate that Schenker believes shows the potential in Israel for helping combat AIDS in Africa
.
.
.
In the heyday of Russian Immigration to Israel in the 1990s, about 1,000 adult male circumcisions a month were performed on newcomers in hospitals and clinics, in accordance with Jewish law.
"Israel is the only country with such experience in mass adult-male circumcision, and it can respond to a very important humanitarian challenge," said Schenker, director of Operation Abraham, a project launched last year that dispatched Israeli surgeons to teach circumcision in Africa.
The article doesn't explain in detail exactly why so many Jewish men from the former Soviet Union weren't properly circumcised. My guess is that it's because in Soviet Russia, foreskin remove you.
Apparently, these surgeons have been using their expertise for months to help people from the nation of Swaziland, where due largely to AIDS, life expectancy is now 31 years
As the coordinator of the program says:
"If you had a vaccine with a 60% effectiveness rate, every government would force people to line up and have it," says Derek von Wissel, director of Swaziland's National Emergency Response Committee on HIV/AIDS.
Universal male circumcision in sub-Saharan Africa could prevent 5.7 million new infections and 3 million deaths over 20 years, according to studies cited by the U.N.
However, Swaziland was one thing. After all, according to the CIA World Factbook, 40% of the population practices the "Zionist" religion.
Success in Swaziland has led Senegal to give it a try.
And it's good news for other reasons.
A source told Ynet that, "This type of collaboration has never existed. It is the first time there is an equal collaboration between Muslims and Jews, surely on this issue". In spite of the fact that Operation Abraham has Israeli hospitals and medical associations working for it, including, it is not a governmental initiative, but an Israeli civilian initiative.