Why a Lion Mattered More Than a Massacre

In Mosul, the world rescued a lion. It barely noticed the massacre just blocks away

Simba and Lula in Mosul Zoo before rescue

In March 2017, a U.S.-led coalition airstrike hit a residential neighborhood in west Mosul, Iraq. The target was ISIS. The outcome was something else entirely. A building collapsed, and more than 100 civilians were killed — many of them children, most of them sheltering from the fighting.

The event was acknowledge…