Translated from Arabic, the novels June Rain by Jabbour Douaihy and Dear Mister Kawabata by Rachid El-Daïf constitute a written testimony that allows us to discover the cultural heritage of the Lebanese village Zgharta. The novel of Douaihy is inspired from a historical fact, the massacre of Miziara which has happened in a church. The heroic abaday myth glorified and dethroned at the same time emerges in an authentic context in Juin Rain. However, Douaihy represents a positive divine figure (...) which incarnates the revolt against violence in a holy space. This heroic world is devalorized by the exogenous westernized vision. In fact, El-Daïf denounces violence that he associates to ignorance, rejection of modernization that he links to the resistance of a divine figure in the collective conscience of the villagers. (shrink)

The concept of transitional justice has been widely discussed inThailand following the massacre of the Red Shirt protesters in 2010, whichresulted in the highest death toll resulting from a military action againstpolitical protestors in Thai history. The eighth anniversary of that tragedyoffers an opportunity to analyse Thailand’s response to the use of militaryviolence against these political activists. This analysis is performed throughthe application of the seven conceptual components of transitional justice:regime change, finding truth, prosecution, security sector reform, victimscenteredness,reparation, and (...) memorialization. The current study is based onan analysis of various textual sources, such as books, journal articles, newsarticles, online sources, and other documents. The evidence shows that in thecase of Thailand, as in other countries, if the first component, regime change, isnot realised such that the authoritarian regime is replaced by one that is civilianand democratic, then justice for past violence can never be established. As aresult, the remaining six components of transitional justice in Thailand havebeen applied in a distorted and incorrect manner in the past eight years. (shrink)

In this essay, I write memory across the public-private divide as a commemorative response to the Massacre of Women at École Polytechnique. Through five layers of remembering, I explore the creation of an analytic space that simultaneously considers traumatized subjectivity, bearing witness, and feminist pedagogy.

Qutayba ibn Muslim al-Bāhilī is one of the leading soldier-bureaucrats of the Umayyads period. During the time he served as the governor of Khurāsān, he consolidated the Umayyad’s rule in Tokharistan and Transoxiana provinces, and expanded the borders of the state to China by conquering the Kashgar region. His activities for conversion of the people of the conquered regions have great importance in the history of Islam since the intense relations of the Turkish people with Islam fell upon the time (...) of his governorship. It is possible to argue that by introducing the religion to these people Qutayba had played an important role in their conversion to Islam. It is also known that he had sent a delegation to the emperor of China for the same purpose. However, despite all his achievements, it is seen that the academic studies about Qutayba in our country are very rare. Besides, some of the recent studies about him claim that he was a fraud, a trickster, and an untrustworthy person in his military activities; and had committed mass murders and massacres, persecuted innocent people, destroyed and burned the cities of conquered lands. In this article, it is examined that whether these claims and accusations have their justifications or not by consulting the main sources. In fact, what is expected from constructive criticism in this subject and every other area is to clarify the matter and make it more comprehensible of its context. However, it should not be forgotten that some conclusions over Qutayba in these studies might have been drawn to quickly in order to manipulate the conquest movements of the Umayyad period.Summary: The religious interaction and change taken place in the Arabian Peninsula with the emergence of Islam and with the political, military and cultural activities of the Muslims performed during the periods of Prophet Muhammad and the Rāshidūn (rightly guided) Caliphs had significant effects upon the lands of Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Khurāsān where the ancient civilizations located.The success made by the Muslim-Arabs in such a short time is accepted of course as one of the important events of world history. The message of Islam spread rapidly with their extraordinary efforts, and reached quickly in the early days of Islam to the Amu Darya/Oxus River, which is considered to be the natural border between the Iranians and the Turks (Iran and Turan).Although the Turks who had been struggling to dominate the region for centuries gained an opportunity with the disappearance of the Sasanian Empire from history, they could not take advantage of this new situation because of their lack of political unity and a strong state, and the power held by the regional Turkish Sultans were not enough to make their dominance happen. In this conjuncture, the Muslim-Arabs who appeared in the stage of history in a relatively late period but had the ideal of being a regional and a global power had rapidly realised their political and military activities called “conquest” in the Islamic historical sources. When it comes to the period of Caliph ʿUthmān, it is seen that the conditions were very suitable for passing to the east of the Oxus River where the Turkish elements lived intensively. At the time, the absence of a strong Turkish state in the region, and China’s occupation with its own internal problems made an important contribution for the Muslim-Arab capture of the region. In this region, which is called as “Transoxiana” in the Arabic sources, it is seen that the Turks organized their political structures as city-states and regional sultanates. In the north-eastern parts of this region, there was a strong Turkish State called the Turgish State and it provided political and military support to the people of the region who rebelled occasionally the Umayyads.After solving the internal problems of the state largely and suppressing some dangerous revolts, the Umayyad Caliph ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān became capable of initiating military activities beyond the borders of the state. Nevertheless, the period when the actual conquests were made was the period of his son Walīd (86/705-96/715). It is seen that the conquests made in his time were permanent, and the people who lived in the conquered lands accepted Islam to a large extent. The conquest made during Walīd’s time which extended from Kashgar to the Pyrenees, realised at an unprecedented pace. The most important name for the eastern side of the conquests is undoubtedly Al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf. Ḥajjāj (75/694-95/714) who acted as the supreme governor of Iraq for nearly twenty years, had achieved important successes in the regions of Transoxiana and Sindh located in the eastern part of the country by the hands of his appointed governors. However, many governors appointed by him to Khurāsān from 75/694 to 86/705 with the hope of reaching his goals in the east could not meet his expectations because of the political, social and economic problems that existed throughout the country, and because of the resulting rebellions in the regions that these problems caused.These unwanted conditions continued to be seen in the region until he appointed Qutayba ibn Muslim as the governor of Khurāsān (86 / 705-96 / 715) who was one of the young commanders and administrators educated by Ḥajjāj personally. Qutayba known as having a close relationship with Ḥajjāj and consulting him when taking important decisions acted in this direction throughout the time he stayed in this position.It is known that the internal conflicts in the region continued during the time when Qutayba was appointed as the governor of Khurāsān. However, he had brought together northern and southern Arabian tribes living in the region with religious, political and economical suggestions and had succeeded in persuading them for military activities that he decided to operate beyond the Oxus. For the Umayyads, these military operations were justified, because the regional sultans who ruled in the western and eastern sides of the Oxus repeatedly violated the agreements they had made before. The tendency of the people of Turkic, Iranian, and Tajik origin who were the real owner of these lands and lived in both sides of the rich Oxus basin for many centuries to violate these agreements was in fact result of a great concern. They now realized that the Muslim-Arabs who followed a systematic settlement policy in the region came to their lands this time without any intention of going back. Even though Qutayba followed a fair and reasonable policy towards them, they violated their agreements with him, formed alliances among themselves and waged military campaigns against Qutayba not to be the subjects of any change in their religion, worldview, and perception of existence.Qutayba, who is believed to have spent his its utmost efforts to make the religion of Islam and the Umayyad political cause permanent in the region under these unfavourable conditions, has been recently criticized by some researchers. The criticisms intensify around the claims that he persecuted people, committed massacres, and behaved unfaithfully by breaking his promises that he made with people. From the perspective of our own times, it is possible to think that sometimes he had taken extreme measures in punishing the sultans and the persons who raised armed struggles against him and caused riots by violating the agreements. However, when the period is compared with the others, it can be easily said that the Umayyads showed in these and other remote areas a considerable amount of tolerance that they had never shown it in their internal conflicts. It is a known fact that he generally clashed with the ones who disrupted agreements, sought help from external forces, established alliances against them, and refused to pay taxes. Based on historical sources, it does not seem to be possible to say that while doing these activities in the region, Qutabya did not behave entirely in a way that his behaviour could be classified as massacres committed against innocent civilians. On the contrary, it is known that Qutayba had given many chances to the people of the region in administrative and military affairs. As a matter of fact, he ruled the city of Bukhara for 20 years with a Turkish ruler whom he appointed and supported, and he included in his army a union of twenty thousand cosmopolitan soldiers assembled from the people of Bukhara, Baykend, Chach and Samarkand and paid a regular salary to them.The fact that his grave known as the “Imam Shaykh Qutayba Tomb” was turned later into a shrine and visited by the people even today despite the passage of long centuries after his death shows that he has been loved by the people of the region and that they have always considered him as a conqueror-bureaucrat who spent his life for the ideals of his religion. (shrink)

Starting with the French Revolution Massacres and Morality studies mass killing as perpetrated by states. In particular it examines the role that civilian immunity has played in shaping the behaviour of perpetrators and how international society has responded.

RESUMEN Cuando se mira la masacre de El Salado, es difícil no preguntarse por los factores que llevaron a esta comunidad de los Montes de María, en el contexto de la guerra rural que vivía Colombia a finales del siglo XX, a volverse un objetivo militar por parte de las A.U.C. (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia), es decir, a recibir la marca o estigma de 'pueblo guerrillero'; en otras palabras, a convertirse en un pueblo masacrable. El presente artículo intenta abordar esta (...) cuestión y para ello analiza las consecuencias de la ocupación de las FARC desde su ingreso a la región en los noventa. Los modos como este poder fareano dispuso de lógicas guerreristas y dejó poco margen de maniobra y libertad para los pobladores de El Salado; los saladeros no tuvieron opción ni libertad, y la cohabitación se confundió con la colaboración, la pasividad con la pertenencia. En una segunda parte, revisa los efectos de la arremetida brutal de las FARC contra cierto grupo de pobladores (en especial, ganaderos y fuerza pública); de algún modo, la masacre del 2000, ejecutada por las AUC, fue una respuesta impulsada por un odio desmedido frente a una violencia también excesiva por parte de las FARC en los años anteriores a la masacre. En este apartado, se habla acerca del odio y la venganza que se constituyen en afectos que contribuyeron decisivamente -entre otros más- a la masacre del año 2000. Las elaboraciones sobre la economía del odio de Sara Ahmed (2015) y las de Laura Quintana sobre los afectos (2020 y 2021) serán fundamentales. ABSTRACT When looking at the El Salado massacre, we wonder about the factors that led this town of los Montes de María, in the context of the rural war in Colombia at the end of the 20th century, to become a military objective by the A.U.C (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia), that is, to receive the brand or stigma of 'guerrilla people'; that is, to become a massacrable town. This article tries to address this issue, thus analyzing the consequences of the FARC occupation since its entry into the region in the nineties. Ways like this Farean power had warmer logic and left little room for maneuver and freedom for the residents of El Salado; The saladeros had no choice or freedom, and cohabitation was confused with collaboration, passivity with belonging. in a second part, it reviews the effects of the brutal attack by the FARC against a certain group of residents (especially, ranchers and the military); in a way, the 2000 massacre, carried out by the AUC, was an inordinately hateful response to excessive violence by the FARC in the years before the massacre. In this section, we talk about the hatred and revenge that constitute elements that contributed decisively -among others- to the 2000 massacre. The elaborations on the economy of hate by Sara Ahmed (2015) and the elaborations of Laura Quintana on affects (2020 and 2021) will be fundamental. (shrink)

The Flowers of War, based on the homonymous novel by Geling Yan, and City of Life and Death are recent Chinese films that deal with the so-called 'Nanking Massacre‘ or 'the Rape of Nanking‘. The events which inspired these stories in the context of the second Sino-Japanese War will be analysed through the study and comparison of both films, together with the reasons which led the directors to fictionalise a series of events so many years after they occurred in (...) 1937. This analysis will be carried out based on the testimonies of the foreigners who eyewitnessed the events at the time, and who left written testimony of the facts, and a comparison shall be made between the fictional and factual events. (shrink)

Examining the reasons for the conventional application of the term 'massacre' to some sorts of killings but not others, I arrive at this definition of the term. A massacre is the mass murder and mutilation of innocent victims by an assailant or assailants immediately present at the scene. This is a conventional and not a stipulative definition. Many standard definitions are imprecise for several reasons. They might say the killing is unnecessary or indiscriminate or at a distance or (...) they might confuse it with terrorism. lmprecise definitions do not grasp the etymological connection to the slaughterhouse, the limited space at the scene, or the cruelty required of the assailants. The difference between weak and strong, descriptive and evaluative uses of the term 'massacre' allows for dishonesty and propagandistic uses of the term. (shrink)

This article works from 10th anniversary reporting on the Montréal massacre and its legacy, arguing that the public memory of the massacre, far from being settled, is charged with ambivalence. It is argued that such ambivalence is an effect of the limits of remembrance as a `strategic practice', which has circumscribed sustained encounters with the loss(es) of the massacre. Ambivalence is read in the article as both a limit and resource for feminists interested in re-opening the question (...) of the massacre's public memory for the next decade of memorial-activism. (shrink)

Many people suspect it is morally wrong to watch the graphically violent horror films colloquially known as gorefests. A prominent argument vindicating this suspicion is the Argument from Reactive Attitudes (ARA). The ARA holds that we have a duty to maintain a well-functioning moral psychology, and watching gorefests violates that duty by threatening damage to our appropriate reactive attitudes. But I argue that the ARA is probably unsound. Depictions of suffering and death in other genres typically do no damage to (...) our appropriate reactive attitudes, and until we locate a relevant difference between these depictions in gorefests and in other genres, we should assume that the depictions in gorefests do no damage. I consider and reject three candidate differences: in artistic merit, meaningfulness, and audience orientation. Until genre skeptics identify a relevant difference, we should accept the taste for gory fictions as we would any other morally innocuous variation in taste. (shrink)

Following Sacks's model membership categorization analysis (MCA) of a suicidal person's conclusion 'I have no one to turn to,' the paper examines in MCA terms a political actor's twin conclusions that murder-suicide is a rational course of action. The case in question is the killer's reasoning in the Montreal Massacre as revealed in his reported announcement at the scene (notably 'You're all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists') and recovered suicide letter (for example, 'For why persevere to exist (...) if it is only to please the government'). (shrink)

The paper applies the theoretical frameworks of epistemic injustice and narrativist philosophy of history to read the process of re-signification of an event that took place in a prison in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1978, called “Massacre in the Seventh Ward” or “Mutiny of the Mattresses”. By looking into this case, we explore the exercise of epistemic resistance through category expansion, drawing on the most recent developments on hermeneutical injustice as a deficiency in the application (and (...) not only in the content) of the available concepts. This allows us to identify the selected case as an example of hermeneutical injustice, and to highlight some characteristics of such injustice that remain under-analysed in the specialised literature, linked to agency, temporality, and the concrete forms adopted by resistance. Among the latter, we highlight the role that can be played by the exercise of what in philosophy of history has been called the “practical past”: an intervention in the dispute of meanings about the past, born out of an explicit commitment to the present. Finally, the conclusions present some caveats to be considered in the study of epistemic injustice in the context of institutions such as prisons. (shrink)

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) presents a nightmarish vision of an America, metaphorically and literally devouring itself. ‘Home, sweet, home’ becomes the slaughterhouse and consumers become the consumed as ‘cannibalistic capitalism’ (embodied by a family of unemployed but murderous abattoir workers), wreaks havoc on the lives of a hedonistic group of youths, as the ‘Age of Aquarius’ comes to a bloody end. Chain Saw offers a model of horror that is both deeply rooted in American ideology, (...) taboos, and the key (and interdependent) institutions of the family, the worker and capitalism, yet produces aberrant and transgressive versions of these same social units. In this paper, the film’s representation of ‘cannibalistic capitalism’ will be explored in relation to Georges Bataille’s theory of taboo and transgression. While Bataille asserts that the ‘main function of all taboos is to combat violence’ (thus maintaining the power, integrity and conformity of social institutions), he also suggests that the taboo paradoxically begets its own violent transgression. In The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , capitalism’s transgressive excesses both ignite the taboo’s prohibitive power while revelling in and glorifying its violation. This paper offers a ‘taste’ of a Bataillean approach to the theorising of horror and the spectatorial ‘pleasures’ of submitting to the anguish it provokes. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper draws upon transitivity and Appraisal within Systemic Functional Linguistics to study the traumatic discourse of Nanjing Massacre in Chinese Mainland’s and Japan’s history textbooks. Through corpus analysis, this research finds that the Chinese discourse mainly uses effective process, relational process, verbal process to construe Japan’s victimizering experience and China’s victimhood, and employs negative Affect, opposite values of Judgment, negative Appreciation, Expand, Raise and Sharpen to construct a critical voice for the Japanese army and a sympathic tone (...) for the Chinese. By contrast, the Japanese discourse largely uses pseudo-effective and middle processes, mental and existential processes to cover up Japan’s victimizering experience, and employs negative Judgment, positive Appreciation, Contract and Raise to construct an almost uncritical voice for the Japanese army and the massacre. The difference in the representation and evaluation of Nanjing Massacre results from the politics of official memories in both countries. As China endeavors to strengthen its patriotic education by using Nanjing Massacre as an ideological weapon for national solidarity, Japan expedites its nationalist historiography move to recreate its normal national image by marginalizing the massacre. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Diseased Body Politic, Athenian Public Finance, and the Massacre at Mykalessos (Thucydides 7.27–29)Lisa KalletIn the midst of his account of the Sicilian expedition Thucydides pauses to describe the economic and financial effects of the Spartan fortification of Dekeleia in Attica in 413 (7.27–28); one result of signal importance for the empire was Athens' decision to abolish tribute, and in its place to levy a harbor tax, the (...) eikostē. Following this digression the historian relates an episode emblematic of the atrocity of war, the wholesale slaughter of the inhabitants of the defenseless Boiotian town of Mykalessos by 1,300 Thracian mercenaries. Most scholars would not adhere to Eduard Schwartz's view that the financial/economic digression has nothing to do with the representation of the Thracians' savagery;1 nevertheless, the two sections have tended to be examined separately, the former by historians of the Athenian empire and finance2 or by Thucydidean scholars looking at the passage historiographically but as distinct from 7.29,3 and the latter by Thucydidean scholars exploring its function in the History.4 There are, however, strong grounds for reading them together: in particular, a degree of detail in each not otherwise warranted by the narrative, a framing device, and the shared use of language common to the description of disease, all suggest that Thucydides was intentionally linking the two sections. By this linkage, I propose, Thucydides not only draws a connection between Athenian public finance and human suffering, but also develops themes central to the work as a whole, namely, those of moral responsibility, human nature, [End Page 223] the conflict between reason and passion, and the nexus of finances, leadership, and military power.First, the detail in both the fiscal digression and the episode at Mykalessos immediately stands out, given their placement within the Sicilian account, the most self–contained and focused part of the History.5 Much of the substance of 7.27–28 concerns a gradual process of fiscal and economic deterioration, yet Thucydides is prompted to embed a diachronic, thematic account in the context of an event utterly trivial to the expedition and the entire course of the war, namely, the tardy arrival of Thracian mercenaries in Athens and the decision to send them home. Moreover, shocking atrocity that the massacre at Mykalessos was, it was peripheral to the war, a minor event that could have been easily omitted, or relegated to a sentence. It is relevant to note in this connection the differing treatments of Skione and Melos. What happened in those places, in 422 and 416 respectively, was identical—a siege and subsequent massacre of the males and enslavement of the women and children—yet Thucydides relates the information about Skione as a passing mention in one sentence (5.32.1), whereas he devotes pages to Melos (5.84–116).The prominence given to the fiscal digression and to what happened at Mykalessos, through such detailed narrative and especially the juxtaposition of the two sections, is in itself a sign that Thucydides intended a larger significance—through their interrelation—to be accorded to these events. The comparative example of Melos is again relevant, for its significance lies partly in its juxtaposition to the Sicilian books (which would explain why Thucydides chose to highlight it, rather than the identical case of Skione's treatment), as is similarly the case with the juxtaposition of the Funeral Oration and the plague (and Perikles' last speech).Thucydides constructs a second link between the two sections by using the subject of the Thracian mercenaries as a framing device for his digression on the economic effects of Dekeleia: in 27.1–2, the Thracians arrive in Athens too late for the expedition for which they had been intended, that of reinforcing the army in Sicily. The Athenians, Thucydides continues, decided to send them home, because "to keep them for the Dekeleian War seemed very costly; for each received a drachma a day" ( [End Page 224] ).6 Yet rather than immediately return to Sicilian events, or continue with the Thracian narrative, he instead undertakes a lengthy analysis of what was a gradual process of fiscal deterioration that could have... (shrink)

Late in the afternoon of July 11, 1995, the Bosnian Serb army, under the command of General Ratko Mladic, seized the northeastern Bosnia town of Srebrenica. Declared a by the United Nations two years earlier, the predominately Muslim community had swollen from a prewar population of 9,000 to over 40,000, many of whom had been from elsewhere in Bosnia. As Mladic's troops swarmed over the town, the women, children, elderly, and many of the men took refuge two kilometers away in (...) the United Nations's Srebrenica headquarters, staffed by a Dutch battalion, in the village of Potocari. Meanwhile, the remaining Srebrenica men and boysfled through the woods on foot, trying to reach Muslim-controlled territory, nearly 40 miles away. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Diseased Body Politic, Athenian Public Finance, and the Massacre at Mykalessos (Thucydides 7.27–29)Lisa KalletIn the midst of his account of the Sicilian expedition Thucydides pauses to describe the economic and financial effects of the Spartan fortification of Dekeleia in Attica in 413 (7.27–28); one result of signal importance for the empire was Athens' decision to abolish tribute, and in its place to levy a harbor tax, the (...) eikostē. Following this digression the historian relates an episode emblematic of the atrocity of war, the wholesale slaughter of the inhabitants of the defenseless Boiotian town of Mykalessos by 1,300 Thracian mercenaries. Most scholars would not adhere to Eduard Schwartz's view that the financial/economic digression has nothing to do with the representation of the Thracians' savagery;1 nevertheless, the two sections have tended to be examined separately, the former by historians of the Athenian empire and finance2 or by Thucydidean scholars looking at the passage historiographically but as distinct from 7.29,3 and the latter by Thucydidean scholars exploring its function in the History.4 There are, however, strong grounds for reading them together: in particular, a degree of detail in each not otherwise warranted by the narrative, a framing device, and the shared use of language common to the description of disease, all suggest that Thucydides was intentionally linking the two sections. By this linkage, I propose, Thucydides not only draws a connection between Athenian public finance and human suffering, but also develops themes central to the work as a whole, namely, those of moral responsibility, human nature, [End Page 223] the conflict between reason and passion, and the nexus of finances, leadership, and military power.First, the detail in both the fiscal digression and the episode at Mykalessos immediately stands out, given their placement within the Sicilian account, the most self–contained and focused part of the History.5 Much of the substance of 7.27–28 concerns a gradual process of fiscal and economic deterioration, yet Thucydides is prompted to embed a diachronic, thematic account in the context of an event utterly trivial to the expedition and the entire course of the war, namely, the tardy arrival of Thracian mercenaries in Athens and the decision to send them home. Moreover, shocking atrocity that the massacre at Mykalessos was, it was peripheral to the war, a minor event that could have been easily omitted, or relegated to a sentence. It is relevant to note in this connection the differing treatments of Skione and Melos. What happened in those places, in 422 and 416 respectively, was identical—a siege and subsequent massacre of the males and enslavement of the women and children—yet Thucydides relates the information about Skione as a passing mention in one sentence (5.32.1), whereas he devotes pages to Melos (5.84–116).The prominence given to the fiscal digression and to what happened at Mykalessos, through such detailed narrative and especially the juxtaposition of the two sections, is in itself a sign that Thucydides intended a larger significance—through their interrelation—to be accorded to these events. The comparative example of Melos is again relevant, for its significance lies partly in its juxtaposition to the Sicilian books (which would explain why Thucydides chose to highlight it, rather than the identical case of Skione's treatment), as is similarly the case with the juxtaposition of the Funeral Oration and the plague (and Perikles' last speech).Thucydides constructs a second link between the two sections by using the subject of the Thracian mercenaries as a framing device for his digression on the economic effects of Dekeleia: in 27.1–2, the Thracians arrive in Athens too late for the expedition for which they had been intended, that of reinforcing the army in Sicily. The Athenians, Thucydides continues, decided to send them home, because "to keep them for the Dekeleian War seemed very costly; for each received a drachma a day" ( [End Page 224] ).6 Yet rather than immediately return to Sicilian events, or continue with the Thracian narrative, he instead undertakes a lengthy analysis of what was a gradual process of fiscal deterioration that could have... (shrink)

From the apathetic reaction to atrocities committed in Vietnam by the United States and its allies, one may conclude that moral restrictions on the conduct of war command almost as little sympathy among the general public as they do among those charged with the formation of U.S. military policy. Even when restrictions on the conduct of warfare are defended, it is usually on legal grounds alone: their moral basis is often poorly understood. I wish to argue that certain restrictions are (...) neither arbitrary nor merely conventional, and that their validity does not depend simply on their usefulness. There is, in other words, a moral basis for the rules of war, even though the conventions now officially in force are far from giving it perfect expression. (shrink)

Both the Kevelson Seminar topic, ‘Lawyers as Makers of Meaning,’ and the appearance of a highly-publicized television series in the United States dedicated to the life of President John Adams (1735–1826) invite inquiry into Adams’ role as a lawyer who shaped the meaning of the American Revolution (and his role in bringing it about). Three trials from Adams’ early legal career illustrate that he presented both himself and fellow resistance leader James Otis, Jr., as heroic loners struggling for the rights (...) of Americans against British injustice. Although he did not call it that, in 1970 lawyer and future Massachusetts Superior Court Justice Hiller Zobel, in his book The Boston Massacre, undertook what we would consider a semiotic approach that investigated the relevant codes and contexts—both the legal complexities and the audiences, other lawyers, judges, and posterity about which Adams spoke, simplifying and minimizing their roles as he maximized his own (and Otis’s). Zobel’s own relationship with Adams’ legal career appeared in his own tenure on the bench, especially in the famous ‘Nanny’ (discussed by Denis Brion, in this issue) case in which he explicitly presented the Boston Massacre Trials as a relevant precedent. Despite Adams’ willingness to subordinate his clients’ welfare to the patriot cause early in his career, it can be argued that HBO television and historian David McCullough, by presenting him to the public only flawed by his outspoken, stubborn honesty, have nevertheless performed a public service. Their version of Adams offers Americans in the twenty-first century an alternative role model to the dishonest, ill-informed politicians who use public opinion polls rather than political theory, moral philosophy, and historical knowledge as the basis of their decisions. (shrink)

This essay explores a view held by many critics of Israel, which posits that the October 7th massacre is a war crime that is part of a just war of independence, fought by Palestinians against Israel for over a century. Raef Zreik recently presented such a view in these pages. However, this essay argues that a proper understanding of traditional just war theory renders this view false. Even if Zionism is considered a colonial wrong, Palestinians did not have a (...) just cause for war against Zionism until after the Six-Day War in 1967 and perhaps later. Furthermore, the essay contends that the massacre is not a part of this war, as Hamas lacks the moral power to represent the Palestinian people and to fight in their name. (shrink)

After the 1970 civil war in Jordan, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) moved its operations to Lebanon, recruiting fighters from Palestinian refugee camps. Its presence altered the balance of power among Lebanon's sects, and in 1975 the PLO was drawn into a civil war with its Lebanese allies against the Maronite community whose military strength was centered in the Phalangist militia. PLO advances against the Phalangists led to Syrian intervention in 1976 to restore the status quo.

Among Turks, major religions with universal messages have always been welcomed with tolerance. The fact that Turks generally did not convert to religions other than Islam led to the interpretation of Islam as the most suitable religion for the character and national culture of Turks, and for this reason, Turks accepted Islam voluntarily, not by force. The proximity of the Turks to the Muslim regions made it easier for them to become Muslims and they became Muslims in groups. The statement (...) in the Qur’ānic Ayat âl -Kursi; His pulpit has encompassed the heavens and the earth كُرْسِيُّهُ السَّمٰوَاتِ وَالْاَرْضَۚ وَلَََا يَؤُ۫دُهُ حِفْظُهُمَاۚ وَهُوَ الْعَلِيُّ الْعَظ۪يمُ the similarity in the fact that Gök Tengri, which they have believed in since the beginning of their existence, is both in the sky and much closer to them (closer than their jugular veins) has facilitated the change of belief in the Turks. The seven stories of the sky, which their ancestors saw as Uçmak, the fact that hell is seven stories below the earth, free thought and tolerance in both religions and the fact that there is only one God religion. The compatibility of the belief in God with hundreds of years of customs and traditions facilitated the acceptance of the idea that Islam was a suitable religion for them. The enmity against Muslim Turks, which started in the Christian world with the progress of Turkish tribes towards the West after the adoption of Islam, has increased the efforts of fanatical missionary Christian writers to create prejudice with their publications, which are far from historical facts, to demonize Turks in the Western public opinion. The common characteristics of these writers are that they fictionalize alleged inhumane crimes against Christians and present them as if they were true, and that they unconditionally support Greeks and Armenians, whom they see as the real owners of Anatolia. In this way, they accelerated the spread of "Islamophobia" in Western public opinion, and the persecution and massacres of Muslims were ignored. However, neither the Holy Qur’ān, the Turks, nor the Prophet Muhammad deserve these accusations and slanders. However, the literature review revealed that no specific research (thesis, book, article) has been conducted on the subject. In this context, although Muslim-Turkish enmity has been used in different ways in original studies conducted by researchers, the impact of missionary activities that started especially in the 19th century and the main reasons for this enmity have not been investigated specifically by missionary writers. The publications of the two missionary authors researched in this study have not been translated into Turkish until today. As a methodology, the literature review on the impact of missionary and missionary activities on Muslim Turcophobia was applied in the form of the publications and analysis of the missionary authors taken as an example for the study during the period. The study aims to investigate the root causes of Muslim Turcophobia and to draw the attention of researchers to the issue in the context of two missionary writers (George Horton (d. 1942), Sir Edwin Pears (d. 1919)) who insulted, slandered, and attacked Muslims and saw Muslims as a threat to Christianity in the Turkish nation. (shrink)

The Armenian world was shattered by the 1915 genocide. Not only were thousands of lives lost but families were displaced and the narrative threads that connected them to their own past and homelands were forever severed. Many have been left with only fragments of their family histories: a story of survival passed on by a grandparent who made it through the cataclysm or, if lucky, an old photograph of a distant, silent, ancestor. By contrast the Dildilian family chose to speak. (...) Two generations gave voice to their experience in lengthy written memoirs, in diaries and letters, and most unusually in photographs and drawings. Their descendant Armen T. Marsoobian uses all these resources to tell their story and, in doing so, brings to life the pivotal and often violent moments in Armenian and Ottoman history from the massacres of the late nineteenth century to the final expulsions in the 1920s during the Turkish War of Independence. Unlike most Armenians, the Dildilians were allowed to convert to Islam and stayed behind while their friends, colleagues and other family members perished in the death marches of 1915-1916.Their remarkable story is one of survival against the overwhelming odds and survival in the face of peril. (shrink)

The concept of totalitarianism as an “ideal type” found its fullest realization in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.1 Following the Soviet collapse, scholars gained access to an enormous amount of information concerning the inner workings of the Soviet system and the intentions of the Soviet leadership. For the first time, comprehensive data concerning the functioning of the coercive apparatus, the scope of terror and deportations, and, perhaps most important, the true extent of the militarization of Soviet economy and society (...) is now available. These data allow a much better understanding of Soviet reality and of 20th century totalitarian…. (shrink)

As the massacre of the Greek Catholic Church was going on, as the Lviv Cathedral was held in March 1946, much has been written by historians, religious scholars, publicists, and theologians. The archival documents that became available for research cover not only new facts pertaining to this event, but also reveal the strategic and tactical plans of the senior state and party leadership of the USSR, their direct participation in the implementation of this action.

This study seeks to understand a diaspora community narrative of rape and abduction suffered during the genocidal massacre of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire and its aftermath. Based on interviews with 50 Aramean, Assyrian and Chaldean migrants in Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands, whose families are from the village of Bote, known as one of the ‘killing fields’ in southeast Turkey, the article explores the ways in which descendants remember the ‘forgotten genocide’ of Aramean, Assyrian and Chaldean communities in (...) 1915. The research reveals that the descendants of survivors make sense of the sexual violence experienced in Bote mainly through a religious narrative and that, for them, the genocide is, in spite of all the sufferings the males had to go through, a feminized event. In their gendercide narrative, the abducted and raped women are identified as the ‘heroines’ of the genocide. (shrink)

By posing the problem of the relation between the degradation of the environment and the market economy, one presupposes a preliminary answer to a more general question: As a result of his “instincts,” is man, by necessity, predatory upon the natural order which surrounds him? If the answer to this question were affirmative, the current massacre of the environment would, at best, represent no more than an acceleration of mechanisms which are as old as the emergence of man, and, (...) if the truth be told, any hope of the relationship between man and nature finding a new balance would be in vain. It is not very likely, however, that the answer would be a positive one. For one fundamental reason, nature is to a large extent a creation of man which has constantly modified itself throughout the history of man, ever since the invention of fire. What we call ‘nature’ is a structured, mobile complex of cycles which relate to our mineral environment and our living environment and which enable man to survive on earth; and it is impossible to ignore the action of man himself within these cycles. (shrink)

Building of Samaria.—Phoenician worship in Israel.—Miracles of Elijah.—Syrian chariot warfare.—Syrian campaigns west of Jordan.—Benhadad at RamothGilead.—Greatness of Jehoshaphat.—Joint war of Ahab and Jehoshaphat.—Doctrine of lying spirits.—Combined war against Moab.—Siege of Samaria.—Revolt of the Edomites.—Second battle at Ramoth.—Naboth’s vineyard.—Massacres of Jehu.—Massacre by Athaliah.

This paper first argues that a state can justifiably fight a hopeless war of self-defense when its enemy determines to massacre its people after it surrenders or is defeated. The main reason is that, in this situation, even if the victim state surrenders, it still has to suffer from harms that are similar to or worse than the harms involved in fighting a hopeless war. This paper then discusses some complicated issues raised by applying this argument to various situations (...) in which the victims of war and the victims of massacre are not identical. I argue that, when the victims of massacre are randomly chosen, the victim state can justifiably fight such a war. When the victims of massacre belong to a specific group of people, the victim state should not fight such a war, even though the victims of massacre can defend themselves. This paper finally comments on an alternative approach to addressing the same issue. (shrink)

This debate took place over ten years ago. To say that it was a debate is, in fact, not really accurate, because not long after the discussions had begun, it turned into a criticism and massacre of the expression "two combine into one" and of those who used it. Later, it became the platform on which those so-called "authorities on theory," and those like Chen Boda who did the bidding of Lin Biao and the "gang of four" became the (...) "heroes" of this massacre. The expression "two combine into one" by that time was being used as a political indictment against those guilty of the enemy-versus-us contradiction. And in the Great Cultural Revolution it became an even more fearful crime. It was of course very difficult to carry out a scholarly discussion in that kind of atmosphere. The expression "two combine into one" and some of the arguments raised by those comrades who advocated the use of this expression were originally worthy of study, even though some of their positions were really untenable, such as the statement that all objective things are "two combined into one," and that we should use "one divides into two" in the process of understanding them. What really is the inherent meaning of the expression "one divides into two"? In what sense and in what contexts should it be used? This also needs to be examined carefully. But because philosophical research was turned into political criticism, these theoretical evaluations and their mutual discussion never progressed, and thus, aside from remembering that these philosophical propositions "one divides into two" and "two combine into one" were at the time laden with political meaning, there is little understanding of their philosophical content. And few even of those who work in philosophy have had the courage to study them philosophically. Thus this "debate" which confused scholarly differences for political struggle, and for even the enemy-versus-us struggle, may be said to have added nothing positive to our understanding and research on the law of the unity of opposites in Chinese philosophical circles. It provided us with only a profound lesson. (shrink)