When a South Korean student began his killing spree on the grounds of Virginia Tech back in April this year, slaughtering 32 people, the incident generated extensive coverage worldwide and grabbed the headlines in the regional press as well.

There were editorial comments too in the regional press expressing total shock and questioning the state of mind of Cho, the Korean student behind the carnage. And in the letters pages of the local papers readers expressed sympathy and compassion for the families of the fallen.

An equally gruesome incident happened this month but hardly a line appeared in our newspapers. And there weren’t any editorials condemning yet another round of slaughter of the innocent. Very few if any letters appeared expressing sympathy and comfort to the victims or their families.

Seven children aged between 4 and 12 were brutally killed by bombs unleashed by a US-led airstrike against a compound in the remote region of eastern Afghanistan just a few days ago. US authorities admitted that it was a targeted strike, and that it was a “mistake.” Following the deaths of over 350 innocent civilians in the past few months at the hands of the occupational forces, this was just another round of “mistakes.”

Offering hollow apologies for their errors, spokesman Maj. Chris Belcher of the United States Army said, “We are truly sorry for the innocent lives lost in this attack.” “Sorry” after the fact! What good will this apology bring to the families of the victims?

And when Khalid Farouqi, a member of Parliament from Paktika, angry at the actions of the US forces and claiming that apologies were no longer adequate, stated that, “Nobody can accept the killing of women and children. It is not acceptable in either Islam or international law,” there wasn’t any significant press coverage.

Dr. Ajub Gul, a physician at the main hospital in the provincial capital, Tirin Kot, said more than two dozen patients were brought in with serious wounds following the bombing of this civilian enclave. “There are many more wounded, but they can’t come because of the continuous shelling,” he said. “The aircraft are targeting the civilians inside and outside of their houses. There are many villagers under the rubble.”

Violence has swelled in Afghanistan, claiming about 2,400 civilian lives during 2007, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Western military and Afghan officials. Those dead at Virginia Tech pale in comparison! And yet, in the regional media one did not find any screaming headlines or bewildered editors spew forth their words of condemnation. Are Afghani lives insignificant compared to the lives of Americans? Is it the color of their skin, or is it because the press views them as mere statistics?

Arab media can often be mistaken for an arm of the Pentagon press, with glib reports describing Iraqi resistance to the occupation as “insurgency” or “terrorism”, and decrying the loss of American lives, while paying scant attention to the growing number of civilians being killed there.

Over 650,000 civilians have lost their lives in Iraq since the invasion, but our media fails to highlight this point. Instead, those fighting against this brutality are more often than not termed as “militants.”

Even the columns by some of our so-called regional commentators or “experts” smack of a patronizing attitude toward the mess in the region, seeking to deflect attention from US or Israeli brutality in Iraq or Palestine and blaming “terrorists” or “Al-Qaeda” for all regional ills. Notice how every ill has its root in “Al-Qaeda” today!

Richard Perle or Paul Wolfowitz couldn’t have stated it any better than some of our own neocons.

To them, everything Israel and the US are doing militarily is for the benefit of the region. The loss of innocent lives is inconsequential.

Where has the rest of our Arab press disappeared if they are not crawling under some obscure rock? Are they simply content to reprint wire copies from international press agencies glossing over the murder and butchery of the innocent, grotesquely brushed aside as “mistakes?”

It is indeed a shame accompanied by a sense of betrayal that there are no laurels to spread around within the Arab media.