Victim Politics and Foreign Policy

If you're walking by a park, and you see two dogs fighting, are you concerned? A certain level of such fighting is probably expected, so probably not. Even if you're concerned you're probably not outraged. On the other hand, if you see a man kicking a dog, you're probably concerned and almost certainly outraged.

Unfortunately this analogy can be applied to how the West reacts to fighting in the non-Western world. Just substitute dogs for non-western people. For example each time Israel kills a Hamas operative and accidentally takes the life of a civilian, it draws massive media and human rights groups outrage. When Palestinian on Palestinian violence kills 200 in a single month, the same people and organization that routinely criticize Israel are largely silent. Thats just the most obvious example.

When Syria killed 20,000 of their own citizens, when Iran and Iraq spent 8 years at war with each other left somewhere around 500,000 dead, when North Korea killed 2,000,000 of their own people through a state-created famine, was Western outrage a 10th of what it is against Israel for its fighting with Arabs, or America for fighting in Iraq?

It might be understandable for Americans to be more concerned about what their country is involved in then what other countries are doing, but what excuse does Europe have? Do the lives of Arabs or North Koreans not matter when a westerner isn't doing the killing? Or do we expect such behavior from Non-Westerners? Or is it becuase the West is strong, that automatically makes any opponent a victim who its morally right to side with?