Of Pallywood and Human Drama

Two stories from yesterday, which highlight the moral, and policy confusion currently affecting the United States under the current administration.

The first was a story from the website Truth Revolt, which showed how the claim that Israel had “shelled a UN school” may very well be false, and that Hamas operatives appear to have moved the bodies of terrorists killed by an Israeli missile into school, and then placed the corpses of young children beside them in order to create the impression that a civilian target was hit by Israel. Despite that the history of Palestinian terror groups creating false narratives like this one is so common they coined  word for it (“Pallywood”), that didn’t stop the Obama Administration’s rush to judgement, calling the attack “disgraceful.” As ex-Naval Intelligence analyst J.E. Dyer noted:

It’s not actually funny that hardly a word of this communication is valid or pertinent. It’s horrifying, because it came from the government of the United States.
There was no shelling; the number of displaced persons housed at the school is irrelevant (and seems to have been included for rhetorical effect), given that the school was not hit, nor was it likely to be; the exceptional care taken by the IDF is what ensured that the school would not be hit, even though Hamas was putting the area around the school in danger; and the suspicion (in this case, the knowledge) that “militants” are operating nearby does, precisely and emphatically, justify strikes, which is why it is a war crime to hide military activities behind civilians and/or protected sites.

Meanwhile in Northern Iraq between 10,000 and 40,000 members of the ancient  religious community known as the Yazidis are trapped on an isolated mountain top, suffering from famine and dehydration.  Those who have not fled to the mountains face being hunted down and execute by ISIS jihadists.  Those not killed face being sold into slavery.

Yazidi Iraqi Parliamentarian Vian Dakhil issued a heart-rending cry for intervention which is spreading rapidly through social media. Yet the same administration which rushed to condemn U.S. ally Israel over an incident which may not have happened at all, is completely absent as Jihadists perpetuate genocide. Are the Yazidis, and the Iraqi Christians, who are likewise facing extermination at the hands of ISIS, not worth so much as a hashtag from this administration?

It may be the case that there are few “good” options remaining for U.S. action in Iraq, thanks largely to the Obama administration policy of retreat and the terrible vacuum that policy has created. But consider, that had a Kurdish Peshmerga counteroffensive not been rebuffed by ISIS, due reportedly to Kurdish forces running out of ammunition, this current slaughter may have been prevented. As noted by Bloomberg News:

When asked about arming the Kurds, U.S. officials talk instead of their efforts to “coordinate” between Kurdish leaders and the government in Baghdad. They rely on legalisms to explain why they still prevent the Kurds from financing the war effort by selling oil on the world market. But Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refuses to share weapons with the Kurds. And tankers carrying Kurdish oil are stranded from the Gulf of Mexico to Singapore because the government in Baghdad insists on its right to sell all of Iraq’s oil.

Perpetuating the false narratives of “Israeli war crimes” constructed by Hamas and their supporters abroad carries with it a moral consequence greater then just the spreading of falsehoods and the hamstringing of U.S. ally Israel.

It also distracts from the genuinely monumental and historical crimes of Hamas’ ideological compatriots, ISIS.