Ten Years of Innocence Abused

As I am inordinately busy lately, not just outside the blogosphere, but offline generally, it comes in handy that we are celebrating today the 10th anniversary of The Onion's inspired and so true portrayal of innocence abused, which I herewith publish in its entirety, because it's so much better than anything I could write anyway.

Crazed Palestinian Gunman Angered By Stereotypes

March 5, 1997 | Issue 31•08

HEBRON, WEST BANK — In an emotionally charged press conference Monday, crazed Palestinian gunman Faisal al Hamad expressed frustration over the stereotyping of his people.



Faisal al Hamad, seen here shrieking anti-U.S. slogans, says that "not every crazed Palestinian gunman is exactly alike."

"As a crazed Palestinian gunman, I feel hurt by the negative portrayal of my people in the media," said al Hamad, 31, a Hebron-area terrorist maniac. "None of us should have to live with stereotyping and ignorance."

He then began screaming and firing into a busload of Israeli schoolchildren.

"It hurts that in this supposedly enlightened day and age, people still make assumptions about other people," al Hamad said. "We should not rely on simple generalizations. Each crazed Palestinian gunman is an individual."

Al Hamad said that he himself has often been unfairly stereotyped. "Any time I enter a crowded temple with fully loaded AK-47s in both hands, people just assume I'm going to open fire," he said. "That really hurts."

"Yes, I sometimes do gun people down in the name of the One True God," he noted. "But there is so much more to me."

Several weeks ago, al Hamad was again the victim of stereotyping during a vacation he took with his family to Washington, D.C.

"When we arrived at the airport in Washington, security guards detained us for more than 12 hours, just because I had 140 pounds of plastic explosives strapped to my chest," al Hamad said. "Do you think they would have called the FBI if I weren't a crazed Palestinian who's on their Ten Most Wanted List? I don't think so."



When this truck blew up in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur last year, Israeli officials suspected PLO involvement. "That really hurt that they would just think that right off the bat," al Hamad said.

Al Hamad said his vacation was ruined when federal agents seized a crate of chemical weapons he had brought into the U.S. as a gift for a friend in New York.

"I explained to them that the weapons were a birthday present for the blind cleric Sayid al Farouq, a good friend of mine from high school," he said. "But they did not believe me and took me into federal custody for nine weeks. Again, it's a case of people jumping to conclusions on the basis of skin color. And that can be very frustrating."

According to al Hamad, stereotypes against crazed Palestinian gunmen don't work because they don't take into account the vast variety of proud histories and diverse cultures among them.

"There are so many different kinds of crazed Palestinian gunmen. Each of us has our own unique reasons and motivations for our bus bombings and suicide missions," he said. "No two fundamentalist agendas are alike."

Al Hamad also stressed the importance of understanding and celebrating the cultural differences between crazed Palestinian gunmen and non-crazed, non-Palestinian non-gunmen.

"All the different peoples of the world have something special to offer each other," he said. "Our diversity is our greatest strength. Let's not make a weakness out of that strength."

To emphasize his point, al Hamad fired into a crowd, killing nine.

"I'm proud to be a crazed Palestinian gunman, obviously," he said in between shouts of anti-imperialist slogans. "But I'm an individual first. I'm me. Die, Yankee infidel pig swine!"

The Onion's ridicule hasn't lost a bit of its clout over the years, quite the contrary. Just do a simple Google search and see how reality beats even the most inspired of satire.