The Crimes of Palmyra

NY Times editorial board The Crimes of Palmyra.

To ISIS, the destruction of the Palmyra temple, like the destruction of ancient statues and monuments in Nimrud, Hatra and other regions under its control, is of a part with the destruction of “apostates,” the decimation of communities like the Assyrian and Yazidi religious minorities, or the enslaving of women, or the beheading of Western hostages: It is an ethnic, religious and cultural cleansing of anything the zealots deem alien to the pure Islamic state. [...] But for all its well-publicized atrocities, it is neither all powerful nor immune to military and economic pressures from the West.