Art Net News, Looting Bankrolling ISIL?

Another piece of fluff journalism on ISIL looting supporting militany (Is ISIS Bankrolling Terrorist Activities with Stolen Antiquities? Art Net News, Tuesday, September 2, 2014):

some journalists are also suggesting that the terrorist organization might have smuggled a large number of priceless antiquities, pillaged from archaeological digs. “They had taken $36m from al-Nabuk alone (an area in the Qalamoun mountains west of Damascus). The antiquities there are up to 8,000 years old,” a foreign intelligence official told the Guardian. The journalist Sheera Frenkel went even further claiming that a British archaeologist who verifies whether antiquities reaching London are legally sourced had told her: “We are seeing unheard of numbers of stolen goods making their way into auction houses which are considered reputable.”

But because its an art news outlet the stories are dismissed out of hand: 

The Conflict Antiquities blogger Sam Hardy, however, is dismissing the rumored whopping profit figures as “contradictory,” saying that it “is unimaginable that the Islamic State is making $36m from a 0.2%-0.4% share of the market value of the antiquities that have been looted from one district.”

Which, actually it is. In any case, the original report was clarified by a second text the following day (see here).

While on the topic of accuracy, let's stop calling ISIL "terrorists", the name means something else. These people are militants.