It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world

Consider two stories that broke in the past few days:

At Abu Graib prison in Iraq, several American soldiers were discovered to have humiliated Iraqi prisoners by photographing them nude and in groups.

In Gaza, palestinian gunmen rushed a pregnant woman's vehicle and riddled her and her four young daughters with bullets at point blank range.

Curious to know which of these two stories was getting more attention and raising more outrage around the world, I did the following two Google News searches:

["iraqi prisoners" American prison] and
[pregnant woman palestinian]

The first search returns 2,540 hits. The second returns 304 hits. That's the relative emphasis that the world puts on humiliating criminals versus murdering a pregnant woman and her children.

But don't jump to the conclusion that there are 8 times as many stories expressing uniform outrage over the humiliation of the prisoners and the murder of the family. You see, not everyone is outraged about the execution of a young woman, her fetus, and her four little girls. In fact, the story linked to above notes that: "Militants from Islamic Jihad, Fatah and Hamas all claimed responsibility for what they described as the 'heroic' attack."

"Fatah." That names seems to ring a bell. Oh yes, that's the political party co-founded and led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Yasser Arafat.

What lesson should we draw from all this?