For a long time, I had believed that most people actually care about others, particularly the loss of civilian lives; and what was often stopping them from expressing that concern, or doing something about it, was information. That is, they were more likely to take action - small as it may be - if they knew what was going on. During the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, as thousands were killed and millions got cholera in a man-made epidemic, I kept telling myself that it was lack of awareness that was stopping us from showing actual support, though there were early troubling signs suggesting that my hypothesis was not true. I came up with a complicated, though quite weak, argument for myself, when the local champions of Muslim unity looked the other way when Afghan refugees were harassed. Eventually, the list of 'exceptions' got so long that my theory collapsed on its own.

Within the recent past, conflicts in the Middle East, North Africa, Ukraine and, more recently, in the Persian Gulf has taken the........

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