Syria: Lest we forget

Look past the stones, think of the real people of Tadmur-Palmyra. Powerful words by Michael D. Press:

What might not have been clear if you followed the news stories and photographs is that there is also a modern town of Palmyra (Arabic Tadmur) adjacent to the ancient site, with tens of thousands of inhabitants. And here in microcosm is an unsettling problem/trend of the entire war: media outlets and academic interest have obsessed over ISIS’s treatment of antiquities, often at the expense of dealing with their human victims. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died in the war; millions are refugees, millions more internally displaced. But they are muted in our coverage. We can name the sites that have been looted and damaged: Palmyra and Apamea and Mari – the Temple of Bel, the Arch of Triumph, the Great Mosque of Aleppo. But the Syrian dead are nameless.

David Press 'Callousness among the Ruins' Textual Cultures, Material Cultures Thursday, March 31, 2016 [some good other stuff in this blog too].