Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.
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Petach Tikva, August 26 – The Palestinian killer of a 46-year-old Israeli father of four claimed today that he performed his act of murder yesterday in this suburb of Tel Aviv not as a sincere expression of his desire to murder people he sees as ideological enemies, but as detached, ironic mimicry of the mainstream acceptance of such behavior in his society, which of course he finds laughable.
Khalil Abd al-Khaliq Dweikat, 21, was apprehended Wednesday afternoon after an incident in which police allege he injured a Jewish man and an Israeli Arab in a stabbing attack; the Jew later died of his injuries. After an initial period of isolation and interrogation, the alleged perpetrator requested that his attorney assure the public he perpetrated the killing ironically, and demanded that they not make the mistake of thinking him a bourgeois mainstream drone who just does what society expects; in fact he imitates that behavior in an effort to mock it.
“I would like to stress that my client does not admit to the charges against him, at least not in the conventional sense,” pronounced Nabil Aswani. “Most of you probably never heard of it, but Mr. Dweikat was engaged in what can best be described as a type of sardonic performance art, in which he takes conventional behaviors that mainstream sensibilities accept without question, and subjects them to the critical lens of doing the same thing, but with a beard, thus undermining their axiomatic status in society. I think that’s what my client told me, anyway. I brought him the wrong kind of soy latte when I went to see him this morning, and he may have been less than cooperative in the communication department.”
Jailers reported as well that Dweikat has made repeated requests to hear music by artists no one has heard of, only to be informed that playing music in the detention facility violates Prison Services policy. Guards recalled that the prisoner’s response involved a rolling of the eyes and sarcastic inquiries whether the policy could be read from actual paper, or was that too archaic for their mainstream sensibilities.
Police and prosecution officials expect the case to go to trial, at which they will seek an ironic sentence of life imprisonment for the defendant, or at least an ironic plea bargain under which the defendant will receive an ironically reduced prison sentence in exchange for information about other terrorists’ activities.
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