Rescue The Abducted Boys? You’re Not Allowed To Do That! Help! UN!

By Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas

Look, I’m sorry. You guys caught a tough break when Hamas kidnapped those three teenagers, but you can’t come barging in here to try to find them. You have to let them slowly rot as we pay lip service to getting them released, all the while leveraging the situation for political advantage. If you keep sending your soldiers over here to rescue them, we’re going to tell the UN, and everyone knows how awkward that can get. So just leave this to us, or we’ll make noise. Nobody wants that.

The fact that all evidence points to the boys’ being held somewhere in areas ostensibly under Palestinian Authority control doesn’t mean you can just bypass our carefully arrayed obstructionism and come get them. You have to go through proper channels. The fact that those channels lead nowhere is beside the point. The point is that anything you Israelis do, we’re going to complain about, because that’s what we do.So if you want us not to go crying to the Security Council, do nothing while we pretend to be helpful.

It’s not easy trying to eat our cake and have it too. I’ve got to appear tough on Israel so I don’t fall prey to Hamas’s attempts to undermine my authority, and I’ve got to play tough on Hamas so the West doesn’t withdraw its support for my corrupt government. The chief weapon at my disposal is distraction: if I can keep international attention away from my own venality, cronyism, hypocrisy, and lies, the more likely I am to stay in power. So crying to the Security Council about Israeli behavior is a no-brainer.

I sympathize with your situation, I really do. But this isn’t about you, and it’s certainly not about those teenagers. You know as well as I that you’re the only ones in this region who see teenagers as anything but propaganda tools. This is about political survival for me and my cronies, not some sentimental attachments to flesh-and-blood human beings. I’m perfectly willing to sacrifice my own people, so don’t go thinking I care about yours, no matter how young. You just leave them to me, or whomever, and go about whatever it is you do that doesn’t involve highlighting my comically hypocritical impotence.

What, you’re still trying to find them? That’s it. Help! UN! The Israelis are oppressing us again!