The brutal killing of a Palestinian toddler last week by Israeli colonists triggered a public outrage over mounting cases of Israeli atrocities committed on Palestinians. But the barbaric murder of 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh prompted only a few murmurs of condemnation across global media, with a vast majority of them choosing to remain silent.

The only major news outlet that took an editorial position on the killing was the Guardian. “Wars kill people, including teachers in their classrooms, nurses in their hospitals, and farmers in their fields. But when children die in the hail of steel soldiers direct at one another there is a special kind of obscenity,” said the newspaper in an emotionally-charged editorial, adding: “Children have no agency, not even the slightest shred of the responsibility or complicity that adults to one degree or another may possess. They know nothing of propaganda, they did not cheer in angry rallies, they did not send off their menfolk to fight with a blessing, they did not sit at meetings where the pros and cons of making war were gravely discussed by middle- aged men. No, they just die.”

The newspaper then went on to examine the deeper questions behind repeated instances of Israeli brutalities: “The more fundamental reason why Israel went in [to Gaza] is not related to what Hamas or Israel has done, but to what Israel has left undone… If you want peace, prepare for war, says the Roman proverb. But here it is the opposite: if you want to avoid war, prepare for peace. The Netanyahu government is paying the price for having sedulously avoided real negotiations with the Palestinians through a long series of subterfuges and distractions culminating in the recent barren passage that, over many months, wore down even the ever- patient and optimistic John Kerry.”

By contrast, the slaying of Cecil the lion by an American big-game hunter in Zimbabwe unleashed a barrage of furious newspaper editorials across the world, with almost every major news outlet competing to condemn the latest instance of animal cruelty with a unified voice unheard in the murder of the teenager from Palestine.

“US should forbid the import of lion trophies,” thundered the Boston Globe, while recounting with vivid details the circumstances of the black-maned lion’s death: “Cecil, a well-known lion at a national park in Zimbabwe, was lured out of the park and shot with a bow earlier this month. The arrow didn’t kill him; instead, the hunters tracked the wounded animal for the next two days before shooting him with a gun.”

The New York Times took note that Cecil’s death “has unleashed a global storm of Internet indignation” and forced Dr Walter Palmer, the hunter and a dentist from Minnesota, into hiding. “On the face of it, the reasons are not hard to discern: In an era of dwindling wildlife, proliferation of threatened species and large-scale poaching of elephants and other beasts, big-game hunting in Africa does not hold the allure it may have had in Teddy Roosevelt’s day,” it went on to comment in an editorial, adding: “Palmer didn’t need Cecil for food; nor had the lion shown any danger to humans. Finally, the slow, inhumane way in which he was killed is enough to give pause even to those who support hunting.”

The death of Cecil filled the Globe and Mail with “sadness and disgust” and prompted the following lines from its editorial: “It is an undeniably human response to be repelled by violence and cruelty, but there is something especially disturbing about the killing of Cecil … that has generated worldwide grief and despair.” However, the newspaper also captured the hypocrisy of human society with its observation that “Our historical relationship with animals is indeed complicated, and no one would pretend that we’ve got it right when we lavish love on our cats and dogs and then look away when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals posts a video of an abattoir’s casual horrors”.

Perhaps a helpful perspective in the contrast between Western media reactions to the deaths in Palestine and Hwange came in the form of a stinging editorial by the Sunday Mail from Zimbabwe.

Placing the reactions to Cecil’s shooting in comparison with the death of Zimbabwean nationalist Leopold Takawira, popularly known as the Lion of Chirumanzu, in the 1970s, the newspaper said: “Takawira was buried a full 12 years after his death. How he died was typical of how the Rhodesian regime treated the men and women who dared stand up to its racist politics… All this was because he was black and wanted to be free. There was no outcry from America, Europe and Australia over the death of the man who is still known today as the Lion of Chirumanzu. There were no screaming newspaper headlines. There were no public demonstrations and outpourings of anger in the capitals of capital. He died as many African freedom fighters died: alone, in chains and in terrible pain… His life and death are apparently not as important as the death of Cecil the Lion.”