By Yitzhak Benbaji and Alexander Yakobsen
Let’s set aside the question of whether Hamas’ decision to fight Israel this summer was legitimate, and ask a separate question: Did Hamas have the option of using legitimate combat methods?
By James Pattison
Western states are less likely to wage major wars in the future. This is for (at least) four reasons. First, despite several ongoing conflicts, the world is generally becoming more peaceful. There are fewer mass atrocities and conflicts to which to wage war in response. Second, the US and UK’s misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have severely diminished any public appetite for large-scale war or humanitarian intervention. The significant public opposition to the mooted intervention in Syria indicates that any Western leader is likely to have to go against public opinion.
By Adil Ahmad Haque
The atrocities committed by Daesh (the self-proclaimed “Islamic State”) against the people of Iraq and Syria extend beyond murder, mutilation, and enslavement to the destruction of cultural property. It should surprise no one that such deliberate destruction of cultural property is prohibited by international law.
By Jonathan Peterson
In March 2015 the Islamic State reportedly looted and bulldozed the ruins of the ancient cities of Nimrud and Hatra in Iraq. These attacks on ancient cultural sites appear to be part of an emerging pattern of plunder and destruction which includes the destruction of a mosque built on the site of the supposed tomb of the prophet, Jonah in Mosul in July 2014 and the smashing of ancient Assyrian statues in the museum in Mosul in February. With the fall of Palmyra to the Islamic State in Syria on May 21, 2015 further plunder and destruction of important cultural sites and objects may well be expected.
By David Rodin
“I don’t believe that a cartoon is worth a single life. The problem is that there are quite a few people who believe otherwise and then we are confronted with this dilemma: what do we do?”
