I remember reading a truly appalling account of how the head of antiquities at Palmyra Khaled al-Asaad endured a month of torture and was later murdered for his refusal to reveal where he had hidden many artefacts from the site. This act of heroic courage should be what history associates with ISIS's barbaric occupation of Palmyra in my opinion.

The loss of Palmyra's heritage while heartbreaking can at least partially be put right with careful restoration, but we have to be careful not to minimise the horrifying amounts of human suffering inflicted by ISIS who committed atrocities against living humanity as well as atrocities against human history and culture.