The
Fraud of the White Helmets
Hollywood buys into yet another lie
By Philip Giraldi
July 09,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- I
actually forced myself to watch the documentary
The White Helmets, which is available
on Netflix. It is 40 minutes long, is of high
quality cinematographically speaking, and tells
a very convincing tale that was
promoted as
“the story of real-life heroes and impossible
hope.” It is overall a very impressive piece of
propaganda, so much so that it has won numerous
awards including the Oscar for Best Documentary
Short this year and the White Helmets themselves
were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. More
to the point, however, is the undeniable fact
that the documentary has helped shape the public
understanding of what is going on in Syria,
delivering a Manichean tale that depicts the
“rebels” as always good and Bashar al-Assad and
his government as un-redeemably evil.
It
has been
reliably reported that
celebrities like George Clooney, Justin
Timberlake and Hillary Clinton really like the
White Helmets documentary and have promoted it
with the understanding that it represents the
truth about Syria, but it is, of course, not the
whole story. The film, which was made by the
White Helmets themselves without any external
verification of what it depicts, portrays the
group as “heroic,” an “impartial, life-saving
rescue organization” of first responders.
Excluded from the scenes of heroism under fire
is the White Helmets’ relationship with the
al-Qaeda affiliated group Jabhat al-Nusra and
its participation in the torture and execution
of “rebel” opponents. Indeed, the White Helmets
only operate in rebel held territory, which
enables them to shape the narrative both
regarding who they are and what is occurring on
the ground. Because of increasing awareness of
the back story, there is now a growing movement
to petition the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences to revoke the Oscar based on the
complete and deliberate misrepresentation of
what the White Helmets are all about.
Exploiting their access to the western media,
the White Helmets have de facto become
a major source of “eyewitness” news regarding
what has been going on in those many parts of
Syria where European and American journalists
are quite rightly afraid to go. It is all part
of a broader
largely successful “rebel” effort
to manufacture fake news that depicts the
Damascus government as engaging in war crimes
directed against civilians.
The
White Helmets have certainly saved some lives
under dangerous circumstances but they have also
exaggerated their humanitarian role as they
travel to bombing sites with their film crews
trailing behind them. Once at the sites, with no
independent observers, they are able to arrange
or even stage what is filmed to conform to their
selected narrative. They have consistently
promoted tales of government atrocities against
civilians to encourage outside military
intervention in Syria and bring about regime
change in Damascus. The White Helmets were, for
example, the propagators of the
totally false
but propagandistically effective claims
regarding the government use of so-called
“barrel bombs” against civilians.
The
White Helmets
were a largely foreign creation that came into
prominence in the aftermath of the unrest in
Syria that developed as a result of the Arab
Spring in 2012. They are currently
largely funded
by a number of non-government organizations
(NGOs) as well as governments, including Britain
and some European Union member states. The
United States has directly provided $23 million
through the USAID (US Agency for International
Development) as of 2016 and almost certainly
considerably more indirectly. Max Blumenthal has
explored in some detail
the various funding resources and relationships
that the organization draws on, mostly in Europe
and the United States.
Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter
has described
how the White Helmets are not actually trained
to do the complicated rescue work that they
depict in their self-made videos, which have
established their reputation by ostensibly
showing them in action inside Syria, rescuing
civilians from bombed out structures, and
providing life-saving emergency medical care. As
an expert in Hazardous Materials handling with
New York Task Force 2 USAR team, Ritter reports
that “these videos represent de facto evidence
of dangerous incompetence or, worse, fraud… The
bread and butter of the White Helmet’s self-made
reputation is the rescue of a victim—usually a
small child—from beneath a pile of rubble,
usually heavy reinforced concrete… The
techniques used by the White Helmets are not
only technically wrong, but dangerous to anyone
who might actually be trapped… In my opinion,
the videos are pure theater, either staged to
impress an unwitting audience, or actually
conducted with total disregard for the wellbeing
of any real victims.”
Ritter
also cites the lack of training in hazardous
chemicals, best observed in the videos provided
by the White Helmets regarding their activity at
Khan Sheikhun on April 4th. He notes
“As was the case with their ‘rescues’ of victims
in collapsed structures, I believe the rescue
efforts of the White Helmets at Khan Sheikhun
were a theatrical performance designed to
impress the ignorant and ill-informed… Through
their actions…the White Helmets were able to
breathe life into the overall narrative of a
chemical weapons attack, distracting from the
fact that no actual weapon existed….”
But
perhaps the most serious charge against the
White Helmets consists of the evidence that they
actively participated in the atrocities,
to include torture and murder, carried out by
their al-Nusra hosts. There have been
numerous photos
of the White Helmets operating directly with
armed terrorists and also celebrating over the
bodies of execution victims and murdered Iraqi
soldiers. The group has an excellent working
relationship with a number of jihadi affiliates
and is regarded by them as fellow “mujahideen”
and “soldiers of the revolution.”
So
by all means let’s organize to revoke the White
Helmets’ Oscar due to misrepresentation and
fraud. It might even serve as a wake-up call to
George Clooney and his fellow Hollywood
snowflakes. But
the bigger take-away from the tale of the White
Helmets would appear to be how it is an
unfortunate repeat of the bumbling by a gullible
U.S. government that has wrecked the Middle East
while making Americans poorer and less safe. A
group of “moderates,” in this case their
propagandists, is supported with weapons and
money to overthrow a government with which
Washington has no real quarrel but it turns out
the moderates are really extremists. If they
succeed in changing regime in Damascus, that is
when the real nightmare will begin for
minorities within Syria and for the entire
region, including both Israel and Saudi Arabia,
both of which seem intent on bringing Bashar
al-Assad down. And the truly unfortunate fact is
that the Israelis and Saudis apparently have
convinced an ignorant Donald Trump that that is
the way to go so the situation in Syria will
only get worse and, unless there is a course
correction, Washington will again richly deserve
most of the blame.
Phil
Giraldi is a former CIA Case Officer and Army
Intelligence Officer who spent twenty years
overseas in Europe and the Middle East working
terrorism cases. He holds a BA with honors from
the University of Chicago and an MA and PhD in
Modern History from the University of London
This
article was first published by
Unz Review
-
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
