Tonight, I watched “The White Helmets,” which won the Oscar for best foreign documentary. It is well worth watching, though I don’t recommend that you watch it while eating a meal. It is heart-rending. It is about a corps of volunteers who save lives in Syria when the bombs are falling. Not much is said about politics. It is about humanity. It is hard to forget that the bombs are falling because the Syrian dictator Assad decided to obliterate his own people rather than compromise and risk losing power. The bombs are falling because Russian airplanes are targeting apartment buildings and hospitals.

President Obama drew a line in the sand a few years ago and said that Assad must go. But then he did nothing. Hillary Clinton wanted a no-fly zone to stop the aerial bombardments of civilian targets, but Obama vetoed that. He thought it might anger the Russians, who were intent on protecting Assad.

The film says that 400,000 Syrians have been killed, as Assad continues to eliminate his population, and the Russians carry out their deadly airstrikes to support their ally. Millions of Syrians have left their homes, but we don’t want them. We won’t help them, and we don’t want them.

The cinematographer for this Academy Award-winning film was barred from entering the country by Trump’s Muslim ban. He did not attend the ceremony when his film won the Oscar.

P.S. I don’t usually watch Netflix because it profits Reed Hastings, who is one of the big funders of charter schools. But I wanted to see this moving film.