This article is a parody in response to the very real news that a Palestinian town is naming a street after a local who killed two Israelis.
This piece originally appeared in the Jewish Journal on October 30, 2015.
The hometown of the Boston Marathon bomber is dedicating a street in his honor.
The municipality of Bishkek announced on Thursday that it would rename ‘Moonlight Drive’ for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was sentenced to life and is being held in the highest-security prison in the United States, known as the Supermax.
The penitentiary houses some of the country’s most notorious criminals, including Sept. 11 conspirator Zacharias Moussaoui and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.
At the time of the bombing, Tsarnaev was a pot-smoking sophomore sleeping on the front porch of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Pine Dale Hall dormitory. Tsarnaev was majoring in marine biology when he was convicted of participating in the Boston Marathon bombings of April 15, 2013, along with his brother Tamerlan.
The motivation for the bombings was strictly political in nature, making it relatively easy to justify.
The street naming was just one of several privileges bestowed upon Tsarnaev by the country of his birth, including an honorary degree in marine biology from Kyrgyzstan’s International School of Medicine and a lifetime subscription to High Times Magazine.
“This is the least we can do for Martyr Tsarnaev,” Bishkek Deputy Mayor Arsen Anzor Akayev said, adding that the convicted killer “is a source of pride and a badge of honor for our entire country.”
A family in Bishkek also praised Tsarnaev, by naming their newborn son after him.
Meanwhile in Kyrgyzstan’s Jalal-Abad province, a baby girl has been named “Bomber of Boston” in a salute to the attack that killed three people and injured an estimated 264 others.
According to Deputy Mayor Akayev, the bombings were “in retribution for US crimes against humanity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The victims of the Boston bombings were collateral damage, in the same way that innocent victims have been collateral damage in US wars around the world. Talking like a Jihadist always makes me so hungry. Anybody feel like Beshbarmak with a Bozo chaser?
View other essays by Gidon Ben-Zvi published by the Jewish Journal here.
