Saturday, November 25, 2006

Terror, Inc.

[This post was "inspired" by a short piece I read in the newspaper on Friday about a 57 year old woman, mother of nine, who is the oldest suicide bomber on record in Israel. Sent by Hamas, she tried to blow herself up near some IDF soldiers in Gaza. Tipped off by intelligence, they threw a grenade at her and she exploded. Every time I thought of this I had a curious reaction. I would at first recoil in revulsion - and then I kept thinking of funny aspects to this story. Perhaps it is a defense mechanism. In any case, I kept asking myself how? why? And I came up with the following. Imagine the scene...]

Achmed, a middle manager in Terror, Inc., has had a very bad day. Murphy's law has dogged his every step, and the day wasn't over yet.

First, there was the mix up with the photographers. They were three hours late showing up at the fence, and Achmed had to babysit the ISM guys for all of that time. He kept telling them that there was to be no action until the cameras showed up - after all, the main point was to get pictures of Israeli soldiers firing at protestors - but they were very impatient. Then they drove him crazy about weapons (I don't CARE if the other guys took pictures with the AK-47s, you're NOT touching my gun!). Finally they just droned on and on about saving the environment.... At least he had a chance to straighten out that Reuters fellow (Next time, buddy, if you want to practice with the Photoshop software, do it on your time...)

After all this, he just wanted to go home to some peace and quiet and a hot meal. But, nooooo! Wife number one, Haditha, was going through "the change". His friends warned him about this, but he couldn't believe it was happening in his own home. His normally meek wife was going crazy. After picking a fight with him she had the nerve to say "Stifle, Achmed, stifle!"

The only bright spot in the whole day was when he got to his office late in the day. That pretty young clerk gave him the eye as she was going out of the door, making him wonder for the fifth time in the past few weeks if he shouldn't take on another wife. And, for the fifth time, he concluded that there were just too many mouths to feed for that.

Now he sat staring glumly at the recruitment report sitting on his desk. A bright new marketing guy did a survey and an analysis, and the figures were grim. It was getting harder and harder to recruit terrorists, and here were some of the answers why.

It seems that the smart ones were letting themselves get caught at the Israeli checkpoints. Three squares a day, a chance to finish the high school matriculation exams, and a great addition to your resume if you ever wanted to go into politics, made a stay in an Israeli prison a great option. The dumber ones, well, that was another story. The number of "work accidents" just kept rising.... There were talented ones who couldn't stand the idea of a few years behind bars. But just when they learned the ropes and hit their stride, the IDF would hunt them down and turn them into stains on the pavement...

The IDF was finding and destroying the labs too. It was a real blow when they found the explosive teddy bears...


He felt a headache coming on. The guys upstairs were putting a lot of pressure on him to make his quota. Where could he find some new blood?

Pacing the office, Achmed just couldn't concentrate. The day's events kept replaying in his mind. The guy droning on about recycling....first wife going through menopause....that cute clerk.....can't afford one more....must find new source for suicide bombers....

All at once an idea occurred to him. He couldn't believe it, if this worked out, all of his problems would be solved with one step!

He even thought of a great tag line for the advertisements..."Martyrdom. It's never too late."

Smiling happily Achmed dialed his home number.

"Haditha, I have a great idea. Let's invite the Imam home for tea tomorrow..."

4 Comments:

Blogger aliyah06 said...

This is great--I gotta wonder how close to truth it comes, since so many of the women 'martyrs' are social rejects (barren, or facing honor killing, or unmarriageable).

Too bad they don't work as hard building their state as they do trying to commit genocide....

2:11 PM, November 26, 2006  
Blogger Baleboosteh said...

Ditto what aliyah06 said - Especially the last line of 'Too bad they don't work as hard building their state as they do trying to commit genocide'

A very interesting post WBM!

2:24 AM, November 27, 2006  
Blogger westbankmama said...

Thanks guys - it really is scary when you can't tell if something is satire or the truth...

9:28 AM, November 27, 2006  
Blogger bec said...

i love this!

6:38 PM, November 28, 2006  

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