“Israel’s leaders often refer to their country being in a “tough neighbourhood” but recently there have been some extraordinary signs of friendliness with parts of the Arab world,” said BBC writer Yolande Knell. I can agree with this statement, as recently Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife met the Sultan of Oman and visited for an eight hour visit. This was the first time a visit like this has occurred in over two decades, and I believe that this is proof that there is some attempts at fixing the poor relations between these countries which have the possibility to relate in many ways.
In Iraq, the UN discovered many mass graves containing thousands of bodies in areas originally controlled by the Islamic State group (IS). According to the UN, “They could contain as many as 12,000 victims.” Most of these victims were civilians who opposed the IS control. However, contrary to dealing with the people who disagreed in a civil manner, the IS responded to those people with brutal killing anyone who opposed them. The sites contain evidence that will help identify many unfortunate victims. Also, it will help the prosecutors charge for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possible even genocide. I believe that it could be treated as a genocide, with just the sheer amount of victims found in the graves. However, according to the Webster dictionary, a genocide is, “the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.” With this in mind, ruling this as a genocide doesn’t really fit as everyone wasn’t killed because of their ethnicity but because of their beliefs. I feel as if one of the biggest impacts of these findings is that it reveals to the world truly how brutal the IS was. People typically don’t realize the severity of an issue into they see numbers representing it. When they see that 12,000 people have been murdered and then just tossed into pits together, it reveals the human rights issues seen in other parts of the world.