Tamara's been watching a lot of Law & Order lately (it's in marathon mode on one of the cable channels -- she catches an episode or two a night while futzing around the house after she gets home from work).
Tonight I caught part of an episode from 1997 titled "Ritual." In this episode a man who has brought an Egyptian doctor ("Ismail Nasser") to town to hack off part of his niece's genitals is killed during an argument about it, by the girl's father. The prosecutors wrestle with whether they even want to put the father on trial or not. After all he was just trying to protect his daughter. The prosecutors offer the best plea bargain they think they can get away with, and simultaneously do their best to wrest custody of the girl from her mother and grandmother, who approved of and supported the prospective genital mutilation.
It occurs to me that if the Egyptian doctor named Ismail had instead been an Israeli mohel named Isaac, flown into hack off part of someone's nephew's genitals, the prosecutors would have thrown the book at the dad without a second thought, probably with a hate crime charge to sweeten things up a little, and probably all the detectives and prosecutors would have gone in together to send a gift over for the bris. If the episode had even been made, of course. Which it wouldn't have been.
Just sayin'.
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