On 15 April, as news emerged of the fire raging at the iconic Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, social media was ablaze with hashtag-laden expressions of grief.
President Emmanuel Macron declared that the whole French nation was overwhelmed with "emotion", while Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo could not find "strong enough words to express the pain" she felt.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, among bazillions of others, tweeted that the incident was "heartbreaking". US President Donald Trump called it "horrible" and offered the helpful suggestion that "perhaps flying water tankers could be used" to extinguish the flames.
Meanwhile, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker bewailed the "sad spectacle" and "the horror" of the fire at Notre Dame, an institution allegedly belonging to "the whole of humanity".
Granted, humans on the receiving end of French colonial oppression or of the Catholic church's long history of crimes might fail to detect a common cause.
I'm not going to argue that it's impermissible to lament the demise of historically and globally significant architecture - or that anyone shedding virtual tears on behalf of Notre Dame automatically doesn't give a damn about other global causes.
But the magnitude of blaze-induced grief is nonetheless unsettling given that far more serious human tragedies rarely elicit such a level of international "heartbreak".
Where are the calls for flying water tankers or the all-pervasive despair when, for example, Israel periodically undertakes to set the Gaza Strip on fire? During Israel's 50-day Operation Protective Edge in 2014, the United Nations calculated that the Israeli military killed no fewer than 2,251 Palestinians, among them 299 women and 551 children.
Talk about loss and destruction. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.