ABSTRACT
Media coverage of terror has slid in and out of the coverage of war, largely because recent wars have been preceded and followed by episodes of terror. A loosely linked chain was created in the wake of September 11, whereby al-Qaeda’s attack led the US to declare war against the regime in Afghanistan, and then against Iraq, motivated, in part, by the allegation that Saddam Hussein had supported the September 11 terrorists. Similarly, the outbreak of Palestinian violence in 2000 and the bloodshed which followed, led to the so-called “a-symmetrical” or “low-intensity” war which the Israeli army had declared against the terrorists. In all three wars, the lines between terrorists and “harborers” were blurred, with the two becoming interconnected symbols in an “axis of evil.”
