From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield. When suicide bombers unknown blew up the United Nations headquarters in Iraq,

the event offered cruel echoes of other fights against occupation in the Arab world.

But it also revealed that not all terrorist bombings are treated alike in the Arab press.

Peter Valenti, who teaches Near Eastern Civilization at New York University,

says that Arab writers immediately and unanimously deplored the innocent loss of life.

The headline that we find in the United Arab Emirates-Albayan newspaper on August 21st summed it up.

It was a crime, and all the other Arabic newspapers across the board

basically describe it in the same kind of terms. This was a crime against humanity. Innocence

were killed, a waste of life. Peter, is it fair to say that the reaction in the Arab press

to this bombing is strikingly different

from the reaction, for example, to the recent suicide bombing in a bus in Jerusalem that killed

many Israeli civilians?

In general, I would say that's not true, though we don't see a lot of language deploring the bloodshed in the Jerusalem bombing.

Strong language, which came out in El Cud's main editorial on August 21st, and that's a Palestinian paper,

said that no one here thinks that the killing of children, mothers, or the elderly,

as happened in the latest Jerusalem bombing, helps the cause of children, mothers, or the elderly, as happened in the latest Jerusalem

bombing, helps the cause of Palestinians for liberation. So what you see is deploring the death

of innocence, such as children. However, most Arab writers do not spend a lot of time talking

about the human dimension. They talk about the tactical dimension. The lead

editorial in Jordan Zaldra'i, which very often represents Palestinian opinion, said in conclusion

the bombing in Jerusalem brings no benefit. One paper actually referred to the bombing in Jerusalem

...