On Sunday, an explosion was heard inside the Temple of Bel, a 2,000-year-old site that Maamoun Abdulkarim, the Syrian antiquities chief, called “the most important temple in Syria and one of the most important in the whole Middle East." It is a site that is now under the control of the Islamic States group, which considers all pre-Islamic religious art and architecture to be blasphemous and worthy of destruction. While, as of this writing, the iconic pillars of the Temple of Bel are still standing, there is tremendous concern that the Islamic States group has already done considerable damage and will not be content until the entire structure is razed to the ground.
This is cause for grave concern, and people of goodwill everywhere are rightly horrified at the thought of such priceless treasures being lost forever. The Palmyra region that the Islamic States group has seized is home to many such relics that cannot be replaced. But there is a sad irony that international outrage at the Islamic States fighters is much more pronounced now that they are targeting buildings, while their concerted effort to massacre whole populations and purge Christianity from the Middle East has become, to some, little more than background noise.
Last summer, the Islamic States fighters filmed their execution of 1,500 Iraq army prisoners of war and released the video to the world, which showed soldiers and civilians begging for their lives as they were shot in the back of the head. In Iraq’s Ninevah Plains, home to many of the world’s oldest Christian communities, the Islamic States group is engaged in wholesale slaughter of Christians, which has prompted the creation of militias desperately trying to protect themselves and their homes from ISIS aggression. Even a handful of Americans have left their homes and traveled to the Ninevah Plains to help these beleaguered people fight back. Many of these volunteers have no military experience or training, but they can’t bear to stand by and watch their fellow believers being exterminated.
It’s deplorable that world leaders don’t seem to share that level of concern.
The existence of the Islamic States group is an intolerable affront to human decency, and its trail of death and destruction needs to be brought to a speedy and decisive end. Yet world governments, wary of past military missteps, find themselves unable to confront the Islamic States fighters with a cohesive and workable strategy to defeat them. Perhaps the lack of outrage has allowed them to remain complacent in the face of such unspeakable horrors. Hopefully, the destruction at the Temple of Bel and damage to other antiquities is the spark that finally fuels that outrage. It’s just tragic that the preceding deaths of thousands of innocents weren’t enough to do the same.